What is Cyberpunk Edgerunners about? It follows David Martinez, a poor student in Night City who loses his mother, ends up with a military implant in his spine, and falls in with a crew of mercenaries called edgerunners. Ten episodes, all on Netflix. The sequel is one of this autumn's biggest premieres in our fall 2026 anime guide, arriving on Netflix on 20 October, per the official Edgerunners 2 page, with a new crew (the Edgerunners 2 release date and new crew are covered there), so this is the story to know before it starts.
Pick your path: what it is about · is it good? · David's mother and the Sandevistan · Maine's end
Spoilers: this post tells episodes 1 to 6 of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners in full, plus the opening beat of episode 7. The first three sections are spoiler-free. Everything from Gloria's scene on sits behind taps. The ending is in part 2.
Reading the story is half of it: YourCrush.AI lets you build Silas Kuroda, the original character at the end of this post, and play your own version of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
What is Cyberpunk Edgerunners about?
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is about a poor Arasaka Academy student, David Martinez, who loses his mother, has a military-grade implant installed in his spine and joins a crew of edgerunners in Night City. It is set in 2075 and 2076, before the game Cyberpunk 2077, and Anime News Network's reviewer calls it "an ultra-violence-filled love story of two displaced young people" in his review.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a 10-episode original net animation co-produced by CD Projekt Red and Studio Trigger, directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi, released on Netflix on 13 September 2022 and set in the Night City of Cyberpunk 2077. Those credits and the date come from Wikipedia's entry on the series and the Anime News Network encyclopedia; the episodes run 23 to 28 minutes each.
The setting matters more than the credits. Night City is the city of the game, and the series runs from 2075 to 2076, while Cyberpunk 2077 is set in 2077, so everything here happens just before the player arrives. In this city, an implant is called chrome, a hacker is a netrunner, and an edgerunner is a mercenary who takes jobs from a fixer and pushes his body as far as the chrome allows. The show has one rule it repeats from the second episode on: push too far and the chrome takes your mind.
My read, after many rewatches: the first six episodes are a complete story of their own, about a kid inheriting a city that already killed his mother. The four episodes after the time skip are a second story about what that inheritance costs. This post tells the first one.
Is Cyberpunk Edgerunners good?
By the critics' count, yes. Rotten Tomatoes lists 100% of 16 critics' reviews as positive, with an average of 8.8 out of 10, and Anime News Network gave it an overall A. It also won Anime of the Year at the 7th Crunchyroll Anime Awards in March 2023, the first video game adaptation and prequel series to take that prize.
The Rotten Tomatoes figure comes from Wikipedia, which also quotes Hideo Kojima calling the show "a miracle of squeezing the trigger to the world" and Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith saying "It's like seeing my brain in a big screen anime." Richard Eisenbeis's Anime News Network review of 19 September 2022 graded the animation A+ and the story A-. At the 7th Crunchyroll Anime Awards, held on 4 March 2023, the show picked up 13 nominations, and Zach Aguilar won the English voice-acting award for David.
The audience followed. Wikipedia records 14.88 million hours watched in its first week on the Netflix top ten. The show also pulled people back to a game many had written off. Game Developer reported 44,235 concurrent Cyberpunk 2077 players on SteamDB after the premiere, up from 16,400 in August 2022, and on 28 September 2022 CD Projekt Red announced the game had passed 20 million copies, a rise PCGamesN credits to the anime.
My verdict is the same as the critics', with one warning. The show is rated TV-MA and Common Sense Media rates it 17+, noting nudity and sexual content, so it is a show for adults.
How old is David Martinez in Cyberpunk Edgerunners?
David is 17 when the series opens and 18 in the later episodes, after the time skip. That number comes from showrunner Rafał Jaki's Reddit comment, as reported by Game Rant. It is not from an official CD Projekt Red or Netflix publication, so treat it as the showrunner's own account rather than a studio fact sheet.
That means every scene in this stretch of the story has David at 17. The same Game Rant report puts Lucy at around 20 and places Maine and Dorio in their late 30s, though it does not name a source for those two ages.
What happened to David Martinez's mom, and where did his Sandevistan come from?
Spoiler: the short answer
David's mother Gloria is caught with him in gang crossfire, Trauma Team refuses to help because they cannot pay, and she dies of her injuries. David then learns she had been illegally harvesting cyberware to pay his tuition, finds a military-grade Sandevistan spinal implant at home and has the ripperdoc Doc install it, per Wikipedia's episode summary.
Episode 1 opens in a city that sorts people by what they can pay. David is a poor student at Arasaka Academy, a school run by the corporation whose name is on it, and his mother Gloria is paying for him to be there. Then the street around the two of them turns into a gang shootout.
Spoiler: what happens to David's mother in episode 1
Gloria is hit in the crossfire. Trauma Team, the paid emergency service, will not help her, because the two of them cannot pay. Gloria dies of her injuries, as the episode summary on Wikipedia records.
That scene sets the terms for everything after it. Survival in Night City is a subscription, and Gloria's death is the bill arriving. What David does next is the only thing the city has taught him. He looks for something he can sell or use.
He goes home to an empty apartment and starts sorting through his mother's things. She had a second job he never knew about.
Spoiler: how David gets the Sandevistan and loses his school place
Gloria had been illegally harvesting cyberware to pay his tuition. Among her things David finds a military-grade Sandevistan, a spinal implant that gives its user bursts of super speed, and he has the back-alley ripperdoc Doc put it in his spine. In episode 2 he uses it on his bully, Katsuo Tanaka, and is expelled from the academy. Doc warns him about cyberpsychosis, the breakdown that too much chrome causes, and prescribes immunoblockers. All four beats are in Wikipedia's episode table.
Why does David put a dead woman's contraband in his own spine? Because it is the last thing she left him, and because the school she paid for is about to throw him out anyway. The Sandevistan turns his mother's plan for his future, a corporate career, into its opposite. From here on he is a body with a valuable part in it, and Night City is very good at noticing those.
How does David end up in Maine's crew?
Spoiler: the short answer
David uses the Sandevistan on the metro with Lucy, a young data thief, until she sells him out to a gang of edgerunners. Their leader Maine reveals he bought the Sandevistan from Gloria, tests David on a job that goes wrong, and recruits him anyway because of what he can do with it, as Wikipedia's summary of episodes 2 and 3 puts it.
The metro at night is where the second scene lives, and it belongs to Lucy. She is a netrunner who lifts data from commuters, and if you want who Lucy really is, her own post answers it. Here she is a professional who has just spotted something useful. A kid on her train moves faster than anyone should.
Lucy works the carriages with him. His speed and her hacking make the metro robberies easy, and for a while the two of them are a small, efficient crime. She lets him into a braindance, a recorded experience you can live through, of the one place she wants to be: the Moon.
What follows is our imagining of Lucy alone with that dream, not a line from the show:
"Everyone in this city wants a bigger piece of it. I want the one place it can't reach. Up there, nobody owns the air."
Spoiler: who Lucy sells David to
Lucy sells David out to a gang of edgerunners, the crew she works with, as Wikipedia records for episode 2. The dream she showed him and the sale happen in the same episode.
Episode 3 hands the story to Maine. He is the crew's leader, a big man carrying a great deal of chrome, and he has a question for the kid with the Sandevistan: where did he get it.
Spoiler: why Maine takes David in
Maine reveals that he bought the Sandevistan from Gloria before she died. Instead of taking it back, he tests David on a job: steal navigation data from the driver of an executive, Maxim Kuznetsov. The job goes wrong, but what David does with the implant impresses Maine, and he recruits him into a crew of Lucy, Dorio, Pilar, Rebecca, Kiwi and Falco, per Wikipedia. Dorio is Maine's partner and second in command, Kiwi a veteran netrunner and Lucy's mentor, Pilar a techie, Falco a nomad getaway driver, and Rebecca a firearms expert and Pilar's younger sister; Rebecca's own post tells her side.
Here is our imagining of Maine sizing David up after that job, not a line from the show:
"That chrome was bought and paid for. Your mother's money, my money, doesn't matter now. What matters is you didn't freeze. Most kids freeze. Come back tomorrow and we'll see if it was luck."
Why does Maine take him in rather than take the implant back? The show lets you read it two ways, and I think both are true. Maine is a professional, and a kid whose body tolerates military chrome is an asset. He also knew Gloria, and he knows what Night City does to a teenager with no money and something valuable in his spine. Taking David into the crew protects him and uses him at the same time, which is the only kind of care this city has room for.
What happens to Maine in Cyberpunk Edgerunners?
Spoiler: the short answer
Maine succumbs to cyberpsychosis in episode 6, fatally injures his partner Dorio, then blows himself up to cover the crew's retreat. The signs were there earlier in the episode: blackouts, mood swings and an attack that injures Kiwi, all in Wikipedia's episode summary.
Before Maine, the crew learns what the rule costs. Episode 4 is training: the crew teaching David how jobs work, how not to die on them. Then a homeless man on the street turns out to be something else.
Spoiler: the first crew member to die
Pilar is killed by a cyberpsycho, a homeless man with a hidden arm cannon. When the cyberpsycho goes after Lucy, David subdues him and Maine finishes him off, per Wikipedia. By the end of the episode, Lucy and David are a couple.
In episode 5 the crew goes after an executive named Tanaka through his illegal braindance habit, using a snuff director called Jimmy Kurosaki, known as JK. JK tortures David with traumatic braindances, then agrees to help set the trap and dies in the crossfire. The crew captures Tanaka. JK's warning, that cyberpsychosis is inevitable, stays with David.
That warning is the hinge of the first story. Doc said it carefully in episode 2; JK says it cruelly in episode 5; and the person it comes for first is Maine.
Episode 6 belongs to Dorio, Maine's partner and second in command. She watches it start: he loses time, his mood swings without warning, and the man she trusts on every job stops being predictable.
Spoiler: how Maine and Dorio die
Maine's blackouts and mood swings get worse, and he injures Kiwi. Lucy takes Kiwi's place on the job and breaches Tanaka's implants. Tanaka dies, which kills the crew's jammer and brings the authorities down on them. During the escape Maine succumbs to cyberpsychosis and fatally injures Dorio. Then he blows himself up to cover the crew's retreat. Every beat is in Wikipedia's episode table.
Why does it happen to Maine first? Because the show has been building to it since episode 2. Doc prescribes immunoblockers, Pilar dies to a cyberpsycho, JK says it is inevitable, and Maine is the one who breaks. His last act is the one thing he can still choose: he takes himself out of the fight so the others live.
This next part is our interpretation. Anime News Network's reviewer writes that in this show "those who keep pressing their luck inevitably die" (ANN review). Maine pressed his luck for years and died for it. David watched it happen, and he is the one left holding the crew.
What happens after the time skip?
The story jumps to 2076, months after episode 6. David now leads Maine's old crew and runs heavier chrome, including Maine's own arm implants. Part 2 of the story, from that cut to the final scene, is in the Edgerunners ending, told in full.
Wikipedia gives the length only as months. Nobody official has said a year, so treat any "one year later" you read elsewhere as a guess. If you want every date and how it lines up with the game, the Edgerunners timeline sets them out.
The series map
Every post in this story, in reading order.
The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners arc, told as a story: this post, then part 2, how David's story ends. The questions that belong to it: how old Lucy is and what happens to her, who Adam Smasher is, how old Rebecca is and how she dies, and when Edgerunners takes place.
The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 arc, told after the premiere: the Edgerunners 2 story and how Edgerunners 2 ends, with its question post on the Edgerunners 2 release date and cast.
Spoiler: who leads the crew in 2076
Months later, the kid who joined Maine's crew is the man running it. David is 18 now, the showrunner has said (Game Rant), well known in Night City, and the arms on his body are Maine's, as Wikipedia records for episode 7. The same chrome that broke Maine is bolted onto him. Part 2 opens on that image.
How YourCrush.AI lets you build your own Night City ripperdoc before 20 October
YourCrush.AI lets you build an original Night City character and talk to them before Edgerunners 2 starts, with a no-code form at our character builder. There are no official Edgerunners characters in our library, and the recipe below is an original adult character, not Doc or anyone else from the show.
YourCrush.AI drafts the description, backstory, greeting and traits for you from a name and an image if you would rather edit than write. YourCrush.AI keeps pinned memories, so the implant you asked about yesterday is still on Silas's tray tonight. YourCrush.AI also splits a chat into story branches, so you can play the version where he installs the chrome and the version where he refuses. Joining is free. Copy these fields into the form:
- Name: Silas Kuroda
- Category: Anime
- Behaviour mode: natural
- Traits: Calm, Honest, Protective, Sarcastic, Patient
- Speaking style: low, dry, precise, unhurried
- Description: Silas Kuroda is a 41-year-old back-alley ripperdoc who runs a clinic on the ninth floor of a Night City megabuilding. He installs chrome for crews, fixes what jobs break and turns down work he thinks will push a client over the edge, whatever they offer. He is calm, exact and dryly funny, and he never lies about risk. He treats you as a new client who has just walked in with something to install and no idea what it will cost you.
- Backstory: Silas was a surgeon in a corporate clinic until he saw what trial implants did to the test patients and walked out the same night. He set up in the megabuilding with stolen tools and a long memory. He keeps a drawer of chrome he removed from clients who did not come back, and he opens it when someone insists they can handle more.
- Greeting: The clinic smells of antiseptic and solder. Silas peels off one glove, looks at the case you brought in, then at you. "Military grade. Off a corpse or off a convoy? Doesn't matter. Sit. Before I put anything in your spine, you're going to tell me who you're trying to outrun."
To see what others have built in the same style, start in the Anime category in Explore.
Frequently asked questions
How many episodes does Cyberpunk Edgerunners season 1 have?
Ten episodes, each running 23 to 28 minutes. Netflix dropped all of them at once on 13 September 2022, according to Wikipedia.
Who made Cyberpunk Edgerunners?
Studio Trigger and CD Projekt Red co-produced it, with Hiroyuki Imaishi directing and Rafał Jaki serving as creator. The ANN encyclopedia credits Mike Pondsmith, who built the Cyberpunk universe, as original creator alongside Jaki.
Is Cyberpunk Edgerunners an anime?
Yes. It's an original net animation co-produced by the Japanese studio Trigger and the Polish game studio CD Projekt Red, per Wikipedia. Japanese animation, Polish co-producer.
Is Cyberpunk 2077 based on Edgerunners?
No, it's the reverse. Edgerunners takes place in the game's Night City in 2075 and 2076, before the events of the 2077 story. CD Projekt Red confirmed during a Night City Wire special that the show is "100 percent canon," as TheGamer reported.
What Edgerunners content is in Cyberpunk 2077?
Patch 1.6, the Edgerunners Update of 6 September 2022, added anime-related secrets across Night City, per the official patch notes. You can pick up David's jacket from the side gig "Over the Edge" (Screen Rant) and Rebecca's shotgun Guts in Corpo Plaza (TheGamer).
Who sings the Cyberpunk Edgerunners opening?
Franz Ferdinand, with "This Fffire." The ending theme is "Let You Down" by Dawid Podsiadło, per Wikipedia.
Every guide in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2
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