Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 4 recap: Lucky You

In season 1 episode 4 of the Netflix anime series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, the collaboration between video game studio CD Projekt Red and Japanese animation house Studio Trigger, David is eager to learn the ropes of his new chosen mercenary profession. After their last job, Maine’s team debriefs at the local dive bar Afterlife.

Maine and Dorio discuss how Faraday’s lack of full disclosure exposes their crew to a lot more risk. David calls and inveigles Maine to educate him more in the business.

So, he’s sent to Aldo to deliver a package to Pilar, the crew member with the robot arms.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 4 recap: Ya best keep up

Then David’s training begins in earnest as Lucy teaches him how stamina is still essential even for netrunners and edgerunners. Maine gives him some hard-won wisdom from his years in the game.

Dorio gives him tips on hand-to-hand combat. David tries to get better with daily strength and conditioning exercises.

The crew also pull off some jobs in the meantime, even going up against a rival chrome gang. David acquires a few injuries in the process, especially since he stubbornly refuses to learn how to shoot, and the bad guys are eager to give them a hurting.

To be fair, David does try to train with firearms under Rebecca’s instruction, but his memories of his mother always rise up and he can’t pull the trigger. All the while, he’s building his relationships with each of the crew members.

He’s always keeping his eye on Lucy, trying to express his romantic interest and failing. Towards the end of one mission, David plunks down for a new set of cybernetic lungs so he can keep up with the physical rigors of their missions.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 4 recap: The death of Pilar

Walking back to their headquarters after a night at the Afterlife bar, the crew come across a random guy with a penile implant. He’s on top of a shipping container, pissing down into a barrel.

The sound of his piss hitting the metal drum’s rim is loud and disgusting. Pilar decides he will harass the pissing guy.

Just as he’s about to joke about the man’s penile implant, he gets shot in the head as the pissing guy reveals a hidden gun on his wrist implant. It’s totally unexpected and out of nowhere.

The rest of the crew are frozen for a second, with David being the last to react. The pissing guy is clearly a cyber psycho.

Maine kicks away David to safety as the cyber psycho fires a rocket at them. Rebecca goes ballistic over the death of her brother, Pilar.

Maine tells Kiwi to hack her brain and put Rebecca to sleep. Becca goes limp.

As the crew battle the cyber psycho, David is worried about Lucy. She’s able to hack into the cyber psycho’s systems and set his augmentations afire.

Then David uses his Sandesvistan speed to blindside the guy and shoot him in the head.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 4 recap: The moon is for lovers

As David checks on Lucy, he’s unaware that the cyber psycho is still alive. Maine decapitates his head before the cyber psycho can shoot David.

When it’s all over, Lucy is injured, Pilar is dead, and Rebecca—Pilar’s sister—is traumatized. With the ruckus, the police are also on their way.

Maine decides everyone who needs to, should go to the ripperdoc for repairs and medical attention, while they stay back and handle the authorities’ questions. After Lucy gets patched up by the ripperdoc David takes her home.

As they hang out on a roof top watching ships launch to the moon their intimate and vulnerable talk leads to them making love for the first time.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 4 recap: Review

This is the last of the transition episodes where the animators are trying to establish David as a noob edgerunner and his relationships with the crew, that will pop his cherry and carry him through a life of crime in Night City. The truth is that I found episodes 3 and 4 to both be clunky in some ways that only animated series’ with a brief running time (each one clocks in at less than 30 minutes) are burdened with.

The nifty trick that Studio Trigger does so you don’t notice these bumps is how much they focus on blowing up the exposition where it’s important, even to the neglect of other areas. For example, we see what would essentially be the training montage in action or sports movies play out on this episode.

When it’s interspersed with talking heads that have David establishing his developing dynamic with Lucy and Maine, then we are treated to some narrative meat. That replaces any questioning of how David still hasn’t collapsed from his constant, blasé use of the Sandevistan chrome.

While I still don’t buy the whole idea that David is just “built different,” we aren’t left enough room to think about it when more important things are afoot. For instance, where we see our hero getting baseball batted by a gangster because he didn’t know how to keep his head on a swivel and watch corners when he’s on a mission indoors.

His brief scenes with Pilar also give us some attachment to the lewd and joking chrome head. David may not have had a deep friendship with him, but he certainly didn’t deserve to get his brains blown out by a cyber psycho.

Hence, his death in this episode does carry some emotional heft, especially when we see his sister Becca get furious and express the extreme end of the apt reaction. At the same time, it drives home the point that edgerunning is one a hell of a dangerous life in a very dangerous city like Night City.

Still, if this life of crime has its hazards, David will definitely embrace them if it offers moments of beauty with Lucy. She is a stark contrast to the experiences of the job.

As Lucy and David make love against the background of the rockets launching to the moon, the reality of it mirrors how they first developed an intimacy when they went on a braindance tour of the moon. Never mind the money and the power, his love for Lucy reciprocated and proven, is the true reward he’s always wanted.

The same thing he didn’t know he hankered for is what ultimately seals David into the criminal life.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 can be streamed in full on Netflix.