Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

I did enjoy it and actually got exactly what I expected. It managed to keep a lot of the important ideas from Cyberpunk 2077 that Mike Pondsmith’s universe is brimming with. It shows both the beauty and the treachery of the Night City and the true intentions of its inhabitants. As a player of the game with two playthroughs and some 200+ hours, I recognized a lot of the locations, the gangs, and some characters (it's a little disappointing that there wasn't at least a cameo or allusion to Johnny Silverhand, but at least I got Adam Smasher, and Wakako). Aside from being a fascinating look into the world of Cyberpunk, it's also a cool advertisement for the game, at least I had the itch to install and play Cyberpunk 2077 again. Oh, and it's obvious that this was made by Studio Trigger, which went completely wild in the last two episodes. Everything was incredibly over the top, insanely frantic, and simply awesome. The animation was excellent, the fights were perfectly dynamic and epic. The music was well chosen. It was quite striking, and it also worked well with the individual scenes. The only major problem I had was the pacing. At times I wished it wasn't so frantic and there was more time to flesh out some of the (mostly minor) characters or provide smoother transitions between twists. This is a general issue I have with Trigger. They just don’t know how to take their foot off the gas. What they do instead is step on the gas even more to reach breakneck speed, and I have a hard time keeping up with them.  At least in the second half, the show worked for me in terms of powerful emotions (the first half was a bit weaker). The ending got to me even though I knew it was going to end this way. It was great to visit Night City again. 8/10 (13.09.2022)