Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 2 recap: Like A Boy
Season 1 episode 2 of Netflix’s Cyberpunk: Edgerunners begins at the ripperdoc clinic where David and his district ripperdoc surgeon argue about the Sandevistan augmentation he found. David wants it implanted on him.
The ripperdoc says he’ll likely just die using it. He eventually relents and installs it on David in a procedure with great pain.
David stalks into his class at the Arasaka Academy and picks a fight with his bully Katsuo. Equipped with his Sandevistan implant, he easily beats up the bully.
At the Arasaka Tower, Katsuo’s father Tanaka-san, examines the footage of David thrashing his son. Baffled why he’s being shown this video, Tanaka’s assistant explains the Sandevistan implant.
David may be an excellent candidate to test run the experimental product.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 2 recap: Shane on the train
The next day David gets a call from the academy principal about his expulsion. He dismisses it before the voice message can play in full.
He dresses up, remembering his mother is dead, and walks to the train station under a cloud of gloom. Riding the train, he spots the white-haired girl he clocked the day prior.
She is also augmented in some way, stealing chipsets from off necks by hacking in, ejecting them, then walking away swiftly with the mark none the wiser. The stealth of it is amazing.
She tries to steal David’s chip, but he uses the Sandevistan’s speed to grab her wrist. In a confrontation, held down by her laser whip, she proposes they work together by stealing only from Arasaka suits on the train.
She introduces herself as Lucy. They agree to split the sales proceeds at 70-30 (in favor of Lucy).
They decidedly use both their skills where Lucy hacks and ejects the chips while David uses his incredible speed to grab them from the air and gain distance before any of the marks realize they’ve been stolen from. They get off at the next station when David’s nose suddenly begins to bleed before he suddenly collapses.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 2 recap: Better living through immunoblockers
When David wakes up, he is in an ambulance and heading to the hospital, strapped down to a gurney. Lucy and the EMT talk about what pills David is taking to abjure the effects of his chrome augmentations.
But it becomes clear that David isn’t on anything. As Lucy laughs at the audacity of this feat the EMT suddenly puts a gun to David’s head.
He’s being taken in since his Sandevistan is worth a lot on the black market. Lucy knocks out the EMT nurse and busts David out from the ambulance right in the middle of a tunnel highway.
She avoids the incoming traffic by maneuvering the wheeled gurney in an incredible display of agility and reflexes. Lucy takes David to his ripperdoc.
The surgeon is impressed that the boy was actually able to use the Sandevistan speed implant eight times in one day before he passed out. It’s an unprecedented number.
The surgeon advises David to have a max of three uses per day, unless he wants his brain to pop from the neural stress. Lucy sells the surgeon their take from the train, but they only get two days’ worth of David’s immunoblockers.
He will need the meds from now on if he wants to keep using his augmentation and avoid sliding into murderous cyber psychosis.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 2 recap: Fly me to the moon
After David explains that he hasn’t paid rent Lucy takes him to her apartment. There the young David drinks beer and has a smoke for the first time.
Lucy laughs as he coughs from all the stimulants. She messes around with his jacket and projects the word “Edgerunners” on the back, through the jacket’s software.
“Another word for cyberpunk,” she explains. She takes David with her to the moon, on a virtual Braindance experience.
As they enjoy the low gravity and stare into the void of deep craters, they share tender moments talking about their dreams, fears, and hopes. Suddenly, David is rudely awakened from the moon experience by a big cyborg.
The big guy claims that David’s Sandevistan implants were supposed to be his. Other menacing-looking cyberpunks surround the big guy.
David looks over at Lucy, who’s smoking nonchalantly. She has sold David out.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 2 recap: Review
When done right, the cyberpunk genre is about having some of the coolest projections into a dark future. The soundtrack of this series at least reflects that with aplomb.
The Matrix OST by the (then) Wachowski Brothers is comparable to the quality of the curation in the OST in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Including the jagged dance rock opening theme “This Fire” by Franz Ferdinand, there’s also incredible tracks like “Friday Night Fire Fight” by Aligns and “Retrogenesis” by Private Press, which fit the cyberpunk theme much better.
Wasting no time in creating the underdog narrative of David, the series establishes the motivation and milieu where a young man, whose mom just died, might not make the best decisions. This eventually sends him on an arc of crime and edgerunning.
Yet the introduction of Lucy, referencing Ghost in the Shell’s Kusanagi with her outfit and haircut (except the hair color), as someone who might be able to guide and even come to love the prickly, surly young man is executed with organic poise. Even their meet-cute is on brand and worthy of future legendary outlaws.
All the while the series stays true to the game’s aesthetics and concepts. The character creation and the narrative themes are astoundingly accurate for genre: it pulls no punches with the adult sex and gore.
Some viewers have actually found it too gruesome at times. But nobody among fans of cyberpunk will accuse the series creators of playing safe.
The magic sauce on top of it all is how this already established game world can be enjoyed sans prior knowledge by first timers to the Cyberpunk 2077 setting. Heck even the cyberpunk milieu itself.
The information expositions are doled out in steady stream with no avalanche info dump. Lucy and David are easily relatable, and you can be emotionally invested in their story from the get-go.
Rope in your grandma or uncle and they’ll be able to clock a David or Lucy type that they know straight away. There is no confusion in their motivations.
In episode 2 the voice actors (in both English and Japanese) have done an excellent job again breathing life to them and their budding romance, throwing up atmosphere for the argument and brag of the dystopic Night City. This series has so far packed more emotional wallop than a few of today’s big live action streaming fantasy or sci-fi titles.
At least I’m left wondering if Lucy really betrayed David after such a snuggly, romantic date to the moon. Why, Lucy, why?
Next. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 1 recap: Let You Down. dark