Cyberpunk: Edgerunners‘ David Martinez never had a choice in how his life unfolded. Unfortunately for him, the only thing Night City knows how to do is take, and take, and take without any remorse for the damage done along the way. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners shows us that in a monstrous city like Night City, there is no escaping its oppressive and violent nature. The citizens of Night City may not know it, but their fate is set in stone the moment they step foot in the city; kill or be killed and not even the rich and powerful survive. Day in and day out Night City devours itself alive.
Before we get into the nitty gritty, it’s important to know this isn’t a spoiler-free post and will be observing multiple story points within the series. For those who haven’t previously watched Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, I’m adding a content warning that isn’t limited to the following: violence, extreme gore, nudity, and sexual activity. This post won’t include images of any of the content listed, but just be wary if I piqued your interest and want to check it out after.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is an animated series that premiered on Netflix in 2022. Based in the world of its video game counterpart Cyberpunk 2077 by CD Projekt Red, we follow 17-year-old David Martinez whose young mind is being shaped by the world around him. David is inquisitive and has a strong moral compass. Through the use of David, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners shows us even the brightest minds will be consumed by oppressive systems. For David and every other citizen, the ever-watching and ever-looming Night City is the monster they can’t escape.
The series attacks the viewer’s senses immediately in the opening sequence of episode one. The viewer sees a technologically augmented man, who we learn is James Norris, brutalizing a military-filled city plaza. The man shreds through the militia, but ultimately, he ends in defeat. After the death scene, we see David laying on a couch looking haggard.
We weren’t seeing James Norris’ final moments in real time, we were seeing it through David’s eyes. It is through this scene where we learn that brutal deaths of people gone cyberpsycho are uploaded to illegal chips for people to watch in first person virtual reality. This would be like people experiencing snuff films in VR (which, for me, is an extremely unsettling thought).
“Cyberpsychosis is a mental illness, specifically a dissociative disorder, cause by an overload of cybernetic augmentations to the body.”
The series introduces the concept of cyberpsychosis immediately. Cybernetic augmentations are the norm in Night City. This means its citizens are constantly walking a thin line between “just enough” augmentations and tipping over into cyberpsychosis territory. Throughout Cyberpunk: Edgerunner’s runtime, the viewer gets to see how addictive cybernetic augmentations are and how easy it is to become cyberpsycho.
Despite David’s questionable pastime interests, he is presented as emotional, smart, and . . . just a kid. David being a child is easily forgettable if the viewer is watching passively, but it’s something I could never forget. David lives with his mother, Gloria Martinez, in Santo Domingo, a slum in Night City. Gloria works tirelessly as a first responder to ensure David can go to the top high school and ride the corporate ranks. She believes if she works hard enough, David will be safe and live a better life. Unfortunately, that isn’t how Night City works. Nobody “wins” in Night City.
David rejects the corporate life and the rich kids that come with it. He’s moody at school and gets bullied by his classmates for being poor. At his school, David is the Other (check out my blog post about Frankenstein for a deeper look into this concept) and instead of bowing down to it, he fights back. He evidently gets expelled.
Like I mentioned, Night City doesn’t stop taking everything from its citizens. What could be seen as an everyday schoolyard fight was the beginning of the city’s consumption of David. Shortly after being expelled, David and Gloria are caught in a gun fight on the highway and get into a car accident. After a few days in the hospital, Gloria passes away due to her injuries.
David’s lost everything now. He isn’t in school. He has no parents. He has no money. He has no future.
Somehow, Night City hasn’t taken everything it wants from David yet. After this loss, David meets Lucyna “Lucy” Kushinada who introduces David to the cyberpunks she is associated with: Maine and his crew. This is when David starts getting cybernetic augmentations and things continue going downhill for him. It’s difficult to blame for getting the augmentations, though.
Gloria was passionate about being free of unnecessary augmentations and with her gone, David was at Night City’s volition. Night City wants its citizens dumb, greedy, or full of rage and ultimately, striving for something unachievable. The dumb can’t run from the monster they can’t see. The greedy citizens are walking the corporate road that was paved with blood in the name of Night City. Those who are enraged are too angry to think rationally. Trapped. Just how Night City wants them.
David’s purpose shifts from wanting to make his mom proud to wanting to be useful to Maine while also seeking revenge. For David, augmentations were the only way to achieve both. Furthermore, moral influences aside, it’s hard to be 17 and not be influenced by the cool punk crew you’re trying to impress. David, broke in more ways than one, just wanted a family and he was beginning to see one in Maine’s crew.
Please note what I’ve detailed is only in the first couple episodes, so if you do choose to watch the series, there is still a lot of content to see! Be warned, after this paragraph I spoil the ending.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners reminds me of Shakespearean Tragedies, and David as our tragic hero. His heart would always be his fatal flaw. No matter how much we want David and his band of punks to survive and succeed, it was never going to happen. It is even more hurtful because the attentive viewer knew this fact from the very beginning in the opening credits.
At the end of the opening credits, we are shown two silhouettes; one of David with a bullet wound in his head, and one of an unknown trenchcoat-clad man shooting David. David’s silhouette is filled with a collage of his friends, while the silhouette of the man is filled with images of Night City.
The opening tells you who the monster of the story is. There are many moments where corporate greed is the monster. There are moments where everyone who encounters David is the monster too because they continually take advantage of David’s kindness, naivety, and courage. There are so many monsters in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, but they all amount to one thing; they are all the result of Night City.
In a different city, David Martinez and his friends succeed. We see this story unfold all the time. The child becomes the destined hero and prevails against evil. The monster that is Night City would never allow that. There are no winners in Night City, it’s just one big cycle. One end of the snake attached to the other with no end in sight.
In the last three episodes, David has had one massive cybernetic augmentation that renders him unrecognizable and now is mostly in the shape of a machine. These episodes are essentially David and what is left of his friends fighting the government and militia. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners does everything it can to convince the viewer to forget David’s beginnings.
At this point Night City has taken everything from him now: his biological family, his found family, his body, and his agency. As the viewer sees David get more cybernetic augmentations in the series, this signifies the stripping of his agency and the city’s consumption of him. David’s augmentations continue to show his losing battle to Night City; and in these last episodes, we witness the city’s final bite. He was just a boy with no other choice but to be consumed, even from the beginning.
While watching everyone get picked off, it’s hard not to think about the opening scene where David is watching James Norris’ end moments. In the end, the viewer is doing that exact thing with David, and sometime after the series ends. . . so is someone else in Night City. David’s last moments will be reduced to shock value on a chip for someone to experience an adrenaline rush. All the disruption David and his friends sacrificed their life for will be stripped down to a single moment and left to get dusty on a shelf. Forgotten.
Safe to say, I was upset during all 10 episodes. I knew what was bound to happen to David Martinez. The entire runtime I couldn’t stop thinking “he’s just a kid”. Sci-fi and cyberpunk fiction often force us to look at the ugly side of life and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is no exception. David’s fate was always sealed. His flaw wasn’t that he succumbed to Night City, he never had a choice. David’s flaw was that he cared too much. His heart and the cyclical nature of Night City’s systems was always bound to catch up to him.
After finishing the series, I thought about how some cities in real life do to youth what Night City did to David. My previous post focused on monster narratives and the importance of media literacy. The everyday viewer could watch Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and take it at face value. It’s easy to see the cyberpunk aesthetic and sci-fi genre as disconnected from reality, but the series tells us a lot about how city systems inherently oppress its citizens and the youth. Like many monster narratives, it holds a mirror to us demanding we look at what we have become. North American cities have more in common with Night City than we would admit.
I recently saw this clip (please note, profanity and mention of grooming) from an interview with rapper 21 Savage applying this same sort of sentiment about environmental monsters to real life. 21 Savage is actively reflecting on how his lived experience with these same city systems affect the youth the same way Night City affected David. Reflecting on the media we consume, specifically fiction, will help us understand the world we live in.
As a side thought, I’ve been seeing people make fun of 21 Savage here because he doesn’t have the “correct words” and isn’t “articulate”. Someone doesn’t have to be an academic or have an extensive vocabulary to talk about the environment they’re brought up in.
It’s important for us (academics, readers, communicators, etc.) to encourage people to think critically about our environments and it’s essential to speak about the systemic structures that influence social trends.
Before wrapping up, I wanted to say thank you to Cassidy Andrews and Jordan Marshall for reading and helping to edit my first draft of this post. This analysis felt like a monster in itself!
Well reader, you’ve made it. Thank you, too! Have you watched Cyberpunk: Edgerunners? If you have, what was your favourite moment? If you haven’t, what is your favourite sci-fi narrative? I’d love to hear in the comments!
Thank you for reading, and remember to stay curious.
See you later,
Lysh
Featured Image Credit: Hiroyuki Imaishi. (2022). Cyberpunk: Edgerunners [TV Series]. Trigger & CD Projekt.
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