BD.00: Synopsis

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022)

Set in Night City—a futuristic metropolis where ethics have dissolved under extreme capitalism and rampant technological excess—Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a tragic animated saga detailing how an impoverished youth rises to become an underworld legend, only to be consumed by the city itself. The protagonist, David Martinez, is initially a student at an elite academy run by the mega-corporation Arasaka. However, his life shatters when he loses his mother, Gloria, to structural violence—a world where privatized medical services blatantly abandon the poor to die. Pushed to the brink of despair, David chooses rebellious survival against an oppressive social order by installing a military-grade Sandevistan: an illegal cyberware implant left behind by his mother that grants him superhuman reflexes.

This decision triggers a fateful encounter with a young Netrunner named Lucy, drawing David into an edgerunner crew led by the mercenary Maine. The crew comprises outlaws who embody the city’s dark underbelly: Maine’s right hand, Dorio; the eccentric techie Pilar and his gun-toting sister, Rebecca; and the cold, calculating Kiwi. Amid harrowing mercenary work, David demonstrates an extraordinary tolerance for cybernetic augmentation. At the same time, as he adopts Lucy’s dream of going to the Moon, he begins a psychological shift—anchoring his own sense of purpose to the realization of another’s dream.

In the middle act, the crew is struck by cyberpsychosis—an irreversible mental breakdown caused by excessive cybernetic enhancement. Following Pilar’s senseless death, Maine succumbs to the affliction, leading to a brutal end alongside Dorio, who dies by his side. Choosing to carry on Maine’s legacy, David inherits his predecessor’s heavy combat cyberware and steps up as the crew’s new leader, guiding Rebecca and the others. Although this extreme body modification paves the path to his own ruin, David willfully ignores his physical and mental limits under the noble justification of protecting Lucy and his crew.

In the final arc, a shadow war between Arasaka and its corporate rival, Militech, intensifies through the machinations of Faraday, a ruthless Fixer. Unbeknownst to David, Lucy had been acting alone to protect him after discovering data from Arasaka executive Tanaka, which revealed that David was selected as a test subject for a next-generation weapon. However, she is captured due to Faraday’s schemes and Kiwi’s self-serving betrayal. Driven to the absolute limits of his body and mind, David equips Arasaka’s terrifying prototype exoskeleton—the Cyberskeleton—and launches a desperate rescue mission alongside Falco, their driver.

Barely holding his fracturing psyche together with heavy doses of neuro-blockers, David wages a suicidal final assault on Arasaka Tower. There, he faces the ultimate symbol of corporate violence: the legendary cyborg Adam Smasher. Following a brutal showdown in which Rebecca is mercilessly crushed and David’s body is utterly destroyed, David manages to entrust Lucy to Falco, securing her escape. In the story’s tragic conclusion, Lucy finally fulfills her long-cherished dream of reaching the Moon. Yet David is not by her side; she is left alone on the lunar surface, bathed in the fleeting illusion of his presence.