Netflix's Cyberpunk 2077 anime has a very violent trailer

Netflix has released a new trailer for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and boy does it love a jump cut: this thing should come with a seizure warning. The 10-part series is being made by the Japanese animation studio Trigger Inc. (in collaboration with CD Projekt Red), best-known for Little Witch Academia and Darling in the Franxx, though the Edgerunners vibe seems more in-line with Ghost in the Shell.

The show is about, naturally, "a street kid trying to survive in Night City" who eventually becomes an edgerunner. Yes it does sound a bit like being a Blade Runner, though in the Cyberpunk universe edgerunners are merc outlaws rather than cops. As we can see in the trailer, it also seems to involve chilling out on the moon in-between acts of violence.

CD Projekt Red is co-producing the series with Rafał Jaki (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077) as showrunner and exec producer, and it's been in the works since 2018. On the Studio Trigger side the director is Hiroyuki Imaishi (Gurren Lagann, Kill la Kill, Promare), while among the other talent there's a notable videogame luminary in composer Akira Yamaoka (formerly of Konami and best-known for the Silent Hill series).

Trigger Inc. and Netflix have previously released the intro sequence, and given the studio's pedigree hopes are high for a great Cyberpunk 2077 spinoff. There's even a hint of Evangelion in some of this: not so much the trailer's wild incoherence as the OTT character reactions and gross-out body mod moments. Studio Trigger, incidentally, was founded by former Gainax employees (the studio behind Evangelion).

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners releases on Netflix this September. Don't get your hopes too high, but we reckon it "looks really good."

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."