This show was rad as fuck. That is all.
This show was rad as fuck. That is all.
Does it spoil the game? And is it true that the subtitles are in fact dubtitles?
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
No, it does not spoil the game in any way. But there's some nice details for those who have played it. (e.g. "I know that megabuilding/alleyway/plaza!" or "I recognize that Fixer," or "wow...they are actually taking a street route directly matching the game's map.")Originally Posted by Buffalobiian
Yes, they're dubtitles. But the differences are pretty obvious, usually in-universe slang. Japanese uses "Cyberpunk" to English's "Edgerunner/Solo/Cyborg/Chromed Up"
You should watch the Japanese. The English has some big names to it, but on the Japanese side they're giving some of the best performances of their careers.
"Obvious" dubtitles are what ends up pissing me off. Not-obvious stuff goes unnoticed.Yes, they're dubtitles. But the differences are pretty obvious, usually in-universe slang. Japanese uses "Cyberpunk" to English's "Edgerunner/Solo/Cyborg/Chromed Up"
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
In the majority of cases, the English subs are more correct dialogue. Both in the slang and the syntax. It ultimately didn't bother me at all, except for the Japanese dub using "cyberpunk" in places it didn't really fit in context to Cyberpunk (the franchise setting) lore.
Yes, I am implying that while the Japanese performance is better, the Japanese script is off from the setting.
My only real complaint is it has that same problem that almost all animation studio originals seem to have.
Just watched it, and it was a bittersweet symphony of questionable decision making and the downfall of David who meant well, I suppose, but didn't have the wherewithal to pursue an above board lifestyle. It was enjoyable even if it was fairly obvious most of this cast were gonna die about four episodes in.
I only played about a dozen hours of the game, but I don't recall cyberpsychosis being this big a deal; like a threat looking around every corner; it was fairly rare if I recall.
Some basic thoughts: Funny that David's mom apparently was klepping implants off of victims of crime scenes and getting away with it. Lilo gunner girl grew more cute as the series went on. Did Lucy have to not explain any detail to David about the data she was trying to cover up? That felt really anime as far as a contrived misunderstandings go...
Alot of the violence in the show, in Imaishi's style, really clashed with how I view Cyberpunk as somewhat grounded in realism. He just has to make it over the top and cartoony, which just cheapens the effect in my eyes and clashed with the character designs. I never quite got used to it.
Still, for cyberpunk anime, I'll take what I can get, and this was certainly well made.
And what problem is that?
Knowing how cyberpsychosis works really highlights how stupid Arasaka's plan is in this show.
The way it works is, imagine everybody has a Humanity rating. Every piece of cyberware you install decreases your Humanity. The most any normal person ever has is, like, 100. And when you reach 0, you go cyberpsycho.
So Arasaka created this piece of super hardware that uses up, let's say, 120 points of humanity. Meaning no normal person can wear it. But then they find out about David. David is a little special, he has the equivalent of, like, 130 Humanity for some reason. So they want him to become the user for this hardware, because he could actually use it.
But in order to use it without going cyberpsycho, he'd have to have almost no other cyberware. But instead of grabbing him early on. Or grabbing him later and stripping out all his cyberware, they wait around for him to load himself with cyberware until he only has, like, 5 Humanity left. And THEN they put him in the cyberskeleton. Which, expectedly, puts him at, like, negative 115 humanity.
So what was even the point? They were basically guaranteeing a failed test.
That they always think it's cool and edgy to kill off 90% of the cast at the end of a show.
Last edited by DarthEnderX; Thu, 09-29-2022 at 02:05 AM.
...that sounds an awful lot like incidental offhand praise for Kaizoku Oujo, and I won't stand for it! :3
The "funniest" thing about it is how much life this gave to CDProjects Cyberpunk game.
Not sure how to say this without being condescending, but the game is pretty much trash and this anime is basically allowing CDProject to properly revive it.
Btw... not like it's going to help my dilema, but I feel like writing this anyway:
This show made me feel depressed for a week when I first saw it and honestly, it's still going on and whenever the music starts playing, I'm basically the guy/avatar/whatever in the meme videos on youtube.
This show hit way harder for some reason than it should. It's most likely due to how much I simply love the universe it's playing in...or maybe it's just this subconscious feeling that the RPG-game-version I always wanted wasn't as good and that a second show in the Cyberpunk universe (whether it's CP-Red, 2.0.2.0 or even in this one, CP77) is super unlikely.
There is something about "one-shot"-characters that I like very much and Edgerunners did really make me love them even more.
Last edited by KrayZ33; Mon, 10-03-2022 at 10:08 AM.
Totally legitimate reaction. This series is a near-faultless masterpiece of a character drama. The action and aesthetics are a Rule of Cool thing for the most part. The whole show is a "pull out all your guts and squeeze your heart until it aches" type of tragedy. That feeling. But you almost know it right from the start, since so many of the elements are drawn directly from classic tragedy setups. It's a brilliant character study.
So, spoilers below for anyone who hasn't finished the series.
The major cast are almost all engaged in doing the wrong things for the people they care about:
- David's mom steals at huge risk to herself to give David a better life than he'd normally lead, but it isn't enough to actually break through to that economic class. She's essentially gunned down as an innocent bystander by a system that rejects people trying to do their best for those they care about. But she wasn't above the board either. No one can be in Night City. It eats and corrupts everyone who lives there.
- Maine is hubris and pride personified. The flashback we get is him literally hitting the end of his road. He can't go further, he knows it, everyone around him knows it, tells him it, he just refuses to accept not being the best. He's a great father figure to a lot of lost children...but can't bear actually slowing down to be that person. If he had had the Sandevistan as originally planned, he would have burned out even faster. The others care about him, stand by him, try to convince him to walk back and slow down, but he can't. He shatters. Worse, his reckless desire to stand at the top poisons the well for the others who idolized him.
- David meets cute girl, likes cute girl, gets betrayed by cute girl, finds new family through cute girl...then refuses to talk to her directly about his monumental drive that grinding down his own humanity. And his goal is to just to fulfill the goal of his girl. Not much else. He picks up all the wrong lessons from Maine and pushes and pushes and pushes himself to where he starts to lose his own identity as well. And even before he descends into madness, he's lost so much. Same hubris that Maine has. He can handle it (he can't). He's special (not in the way he thinks). It wasn't his resistance to the implants, but because his humanity was just always that much higher than the Night City norm. He cared about others in a way that Night City destroys in most people well before they're his age. But his true failure was in not telling Lucy why he does what he does.
- Lucy is just as tragically misguided. She has a pure and honest goal. The beauty of her wish that she never told anyone else. The pair had such an instant connection that she trusted him so completely, her first instinct when distracting him long enough for the others to show up was to reveal all her innermost desires. Instant deep love. But she betrays herself and deep trust they built almost immediately because...we never really find out why. She finds out what Arasaka wanted David back for, and never tells him what she's up to the entire time she's working in parallel to him. She wants to protect her love, she wants to save him before the powers of the city tear him apart (literally and figuratively). She fails. But she's left with his final gift to her.
- Kiwi is the closest to what Night City normally sees in its people. Someone looking out for an edge, pushes their luck too hard, sees that one extra eddie they could get and sells out their own family for it. Paid the price for it, but gives back with her last breath in just one last act of repentance and regret.
- Pilar? He's just a fun guy who obviously spoiled his sister rotten at every opportunity. Never had to be said, it's just simply shown. He jokes around, he wants to make people laugh, and he's casually cut down trying to make Night City just a little bit better in his own simple ways.
- Rebecca? Just wants to fuck. That's why she's best girl. Knows she can die any time, and gives 1000% percent on everything she does from start to finish. She pined after David, knowing that he's too good of guy to cheat on Lucy even though the city is the type of place where that's easily forgiven, but never stops trying. But when everything else looks the worst, she's there. Loving her found family as much as her real one. She's the purest of pure souls.
Yeah...I'm getting misty-eyed writing this, so that's how you know the writing of this series was effective.
It touches viewers in a way that a lot of fiction can't manage, and on top of that, does it more effectively than even the good ones ever will. It builds those quick emotional connections, solidifies them. Torments you with them, but the bittersweet fondness you're left with after reflecting on it?
Fucking beautiful.
I think this whole show (the game too btw. at least in terms of plot) captured the type of storytelling CP tries to drive into it's (pnp)players.
"Aint here for a long time, but a good time.
Take big risk, get big rewards. Be the action, start the rebellion, light the fire. Never drive slow when you can blaze a trail."
The game back then did suggest to throw in lethal encounters whenever something is working out for the players "too well", that's completely different from how you lead a DnD group where you want to reward good play.
You aren't supposed to live there, you just won't... the city won't allow it. No one "grows" in NC. Everything is about HOW you lived and how it ended.
Will it be alone, will it be with your gang or crew, that's what matters. It's not about IF you go over the "edge", it's about when and how.
There are no happy endings in NC.
So what we got here is exactly how it should be, but damn did I hope it wouldn't be that way.
Did my heart skip a beat when Lucy rescued David from the scavengers/ambulance and David focused, awe-struck, on her face while all the neon lights in the dark rushed past for the whole "ride". That one will remain the best "character falls in love with someone"-scene for quite a long time for me, I'm sure.
Did my heart wail when David completely lost it in front of Rebecca and when it was made painfully clear that this is the end of his tale, just a few more steps... that's it. Fuck it! I didn't want this, but it's Night City... that's just how it's going to be for those living down there - all you can hope for is that he is sticking a big one to them, is it not?
But Lucy alone on the Moon? With that music playing? That was just so painful to watch. It's that feeling when you wish someone happiness but know it's not truely achievable and whatever you got to give her is disappointing yourself already.
It's just so miserable for me to see David fullfill everyones dream but in a monkey's paw kind of way.
You end up sitting in your room arguing with yourself about how you are supposed to feel about that.
If there are no happy endings, then wasn't that just the best way to go?
But then you realize that David is only a flipping 18 years old.
Lucy is 20-ish. That just *sucks*. Imagine this being your reward for "growing up" in NC.
Same thing with Rebecca and her Brother... they were just ... gone, even though they certainly lived the "always 100%" kind of way.
Last edited by KrayZ33; Mon, 10-03-2022 at 05:46 PM.
I found it more frustrating than you guys did. Because to me, this was a story about two people that didn't know when to stop.
Maine and David both had built pretty decent lives for themselves. And both of them threw it away, and got everyone else killed in the process, because they wouldn't listen and couldn't leave well enough alone.
Well that just adds to it, but here again it's not that simple.
Arasaka wouldn't leave David alone. If Lucy decided to do nothing. Corpos would eventually show up and grab him somehow.
The only alternative would be to become a Nomad and disappear from NC, but that would mean the "decent life" would end as well.
I know it sounds a bit corny when I repeat it like that, but the City is set up to eat you up eventually - just how Cyberpsychosis will eventually creep up on lots of people.
This was shown by how Lucy couldn't escape Arasaka fully and by how David would eventually fall to Cyberpsychosis - thinking he was special or thinking how he could handle it when he wasn't losing his humanity along the way.
David's case is especially devastating, because Cyberpsychosis isn't completely related to how much chrome you have inside you, although that always remains a factor.
You start losing your "humanity" by implanting more and more stuff and David was one of the "lucky" guys who had a caring mother and was smart as well, which is probably how he could handle so many cyberimplants in the first place. Due to the sheer amount of threats and bullshit happening in NC however he had basically no chance to actually ever make it the "normal way".
In the PnP, this is, if I remember it correctly (it's been quite a while), portrayed with the "humanity stat" you have.
A high stat means you can manage a lot of implants, each implant will remove some of that stat - a "goal" could be to remain as close on the edge of that status as possible (for maximum benefit) and not go over it (also a way to read the word Edgerunner), if you go over it? That is when Cyberpsychosis starts happening and eventually the game master will take control of your character.
Last edited by KrayZ33; Tue, 10-04-2022 at 02:15 AM.
I already explained that above! Gawd!In the PnP, this is, if I remember it correctly (it's been quite a while), portrayed with the "humanity stat" you have.
A high stat means you can manage a lot of implants, each implant will remove some of that stat - a "goal" could be to remain as close on the edge of that status as possible (for maximum benefit) and not go over it (also a way to read the word Edgerunner
Oh, didn't see that post.
As for Arasaka's plan, it's not like much went according to their plans. Did they actually want this to happen?
They tried to get data from David and observe him or maybe even get him into their ranks at first." A second Adam Smasher? Yes please."
The Cyberskeleton later was an actual transfer from Arasaka towards their HQ or something, intercepted by Militech. Arasaka however wanted to use that chance to field test the weapon.
Since Tanaka(?) was dead, Arasaka actually doesn't know who has the Sandevistan, that's why they called the the Fixer.
Someone (Lucy) is killing the netrunners they sent after the "unknown" owner (David) of the Sandevistan.
It's a coincidence that the Sandevistan user is also the one piloting their skeleton, isn't it?
Faraday wanted to use this chance to climb the Arasaka Corpo ladder in one big fat swoop, by eliminating everyone involved in the Cyberskeleton case, crippling Arasakas rival and bringing the lost Netrunner and the culprit behind the Netrunner killing back to Arasaka.
Last edited by KrayZ33; Tue, 10-04-2022 at 04:59 AM.
The impression I got was that was all a setup. Arasaka staged that entire mission through the fixer, so that David would end up in the skeleton.
Except for the part where Kiwi betrayed the group to the fixer, and the fixer was working for Arasaka. So Arasaka would have known everything.
Oh, I meant for Arasaka....
Hmmm, I had the impression that the Fixer's job was to provide Arasaka with Data about the Cyberskeleton.
After all they complain about him for not going with the plan in episode 10, not just that it got out of hand.
And Faraday used David as the chosen one because he knows he can handle it for a while before going psycho, giving him more data.
After watching episode 9 again however, It seem that Faraday told Arasaka about David and his plan to use him for the Skeleton and they went along with it.
Seems like they just wanted someone to wipe out Militech and grab him up at the city's outskirts. Cyberpsycho or not, combat data is ready to grab and Faraday was supposed to somehow grab it with the squad Arasaka provided... but I have no fucking clue how he was supposed to do that?
Either way I'm not aware about how much data Arasaka even has on their own product, because Tanaka seems to have been the only guy who had data on the skeleton, and Lucy grabbed that data, killed the guy (without the others in the gang realizing it, as I took it) and corrupted it.
Meaning the actual important character here is Lucy, yet in the german translation, they literally tell Faraday to piss off *with* Lucy instead of "leaving her here" like in the english version.
Yikes.
Rewatching these parts made me realize each characters motivation even more. At least Kiwi's and Lucy's.
Lucy - knows to not trust, so she even expects her own crew to eventually leak information to Arasaka if she told them about the interest they have in David. Which would eventually lead to the downfall of the whole group. At first I thought she just wanted to protect David from his own stupidity, but she is actually guilt ridden and she is scared of losing David when she explains what she did.
Kiwi - teached here this mindset, realized that Lucy basically did this to Maine and Dorio and blamed her for it after Faraday gave her the information on Tanaka's role and added 1 and 1 together, and went along with the "everyone for himself" attitude. Which is why she probably keeps bringing up Lucy all the time and that she teached her this kind of thinking, eventually also talking herself into this, regretting it in the end however when she asks the crew to bring Lucy back. After all, I had the impression of her being some kind of big sister to Lucy, since she taught her the ropes about NC.
Last edited by KrayZ33; Tue, 10-04-2022 at 12:56 PM.
At least for Arasaka and the Cyberskeleton, remember that it was a project led by a small group, very secretly. That's why Lucy was slowly picking off anyone who knew about it and making any kind of headway.
Fundamentally, the corpos are microcosms that mirror the city in their own internal structures. They even spelled it out to Faraday when he got there. Someone who should know better.
There are people at the top, who are untouchable. There are people who were born into the company. There are people who earned their way in. There are people who buy their way in. In that order.
Everyone below the top squabble and backstab each other for the slightest edge upward. And they get chewed up and tossed out same as the city does to everyone else.
After Maine and team killed off the masterminds of that project, someone else inherited it. They didn't care if it succeeded or not, but were happy to take the bonus if it did. The blame of it going wrong gets pointed at people who are dead, Faraday, and some generic lackey instead of an executive. Adam Smasher got some fun out of it. And the data on the project gets stored somewhere for a "next time."
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