Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 5 recap: All Eyez on Me

In this episode of the Netflix anime series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Maine’s crew is reeling from the death of Pilar, but David feels like he’s finally getting the hang of the edgerunning business. Back at their HQ, after the cops have left, Maine and David talk about the extending hacking hands augmentation that Pilar left behind.

Maine urges him to take it, saying that Pilar’s sister Becca has cleared it for his use. However, David declares that he would rather get Maine’s big firearm hands augmentation.

As Kiwi joins the discussion off her own hacking reconnaissance, she mentions that she’s discovered their former target Tanaka has a soft spot for gore and snuff braindance footage, specially made by someone named JK.

David IDs JK as Jimmy Kurosaki, a boutique braindance editor he favored. Kiwi, Maine, and David work out that if Kurosaki is Tanaka’s braindance editor of choice then he would have to physically be at the editor’s place for tailor-made tuning.

This means he will be there alone, without his bodyguards or muscle. This is actionable intelligence they can use.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 5 recap: Kidnap to edit

They track down Jimmy Kurosaki’s reservation at his favorite upscale restaurant. They ambush him at the parking lot, aiming to glean information about Tanaka’s braindance tuning schedule.

Just as they’re about to pounce on Kurosaki, an EMP pulse emanates from the editor. It knocks out both David and Maine.

It also stuns the nearby Dorio and Kiwi into nausea, while they’re hiding in the kidnap car. All within range have their neural implants rung, specifically affecting netrunners like Kiwi.

When the dust settles, Maine is unconscious, and David has been nabbed by Kurosaki. As Kiwi takes Maine back to the HQ, Dorio and Lucy head out to track and chase down Kurosaki.

David comes to, waking up in a room full of corpses. He is taken through a nightmarish scenario of slaughter, as police come after him.

He alternately shoots and decapitates his way through the authorities. As the heavily armed MaxTac SWAT team is called down on his head, David dies painfully and gruesomely, shot down like an animal as the shooters derisively call him cyber psycho.

Then David wakes up, panicked and huffing, strapped to a chair. It was all a braindance experience.

Jimmy tells him that he actually witnessed the death of James Norris, the soldier who went cyber psycho. This was the former owner of the Sandevistan that David now wears.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 5 recap: Faith in chrome

Kurosaki tells David that, despite how long he’s held up against the side effects of the Sandevistan, all who wear the augment inevitably go mad from the rigors and the blockers. Jimmy will capture David’s spectacular death as well, just like he did Norris’s.

David protests that it won’t be like that for him. That he won’t fall to the same fate that the others have.

Jimmy however has seen it all, especially the fictitious faith that all chrome augmentation addicts hold on to—that they are built different. Lucy and Kiwi bust in just in time, as David is forced to go into another round of Norris’s death.

While they are able to successfully pull David out of the braindance, Kurosaki’s armed drones come out and attack them. Both drones are bulletproof and impervious to the small arms they carry.

Dorio and David, using his augmented speed, distract the drones as Lucy hurriedly hacks into them.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 5 recap: Tanaka captured!

With Kurosaki exposed and finally bound to them, Maine and the rest of the crew setup for the ambush and capture of Tanaka. Kurosaki calls Tanaka, telling him he has new footage that he would like.

As planned, the corpo suit arrives in a cab sans bodyguard. The crew corner him but Tanaka fights back, firing off small needle missiles to distract them.

He then uses how own speed and strength augmentations to stun Maine. David steps in with his Sandevistan which allows Maine to knock Tanaka out before doing any further damage.

However, one of the needles has cut Kurosaki deep in the throat. As Kurosaki bleeds out, the crew muse on the irony that a legendary braindance editor like him won’t be getting a chance to edit the footage of his own death.

Upon finding out that Kurosaki has platinum insurance coverage and that a medical and security team are on the way, the crew exit with Tanaka safely in their hands.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners season 1 episode 4 recap: Review

This would be a routine smash and grab mission for the crew if it wasn’t full of ominous portents for David. The irony of it is that it was David who made the clever suggestion that they hit up Jimmy Kurosaki for information about Tanaka.

He soon learns that even what should be an easy target like a braindance editor can’t be underestimated in a place like Night City. David ending up captured and experimented on with the very footage of James Norris’s death, the guy who went cyber psycho wearing the Sandevistan chrome that’s now surgically implanted on his back, is a scene just so rich in mocking sarcasm.

It’s all a solid staple of cyberpunk. You know, how the kind of tech that you think is under your control eventually gets away from you.

This is the episode where, if we were in a Greek tragedy, the chorus of Fates (in this case, the editor Kurosaki) would be warning our hero of all the pitfalls that lie ahead so he can avoid them. David basically ignores all the red flags and plows gleefully through them.

He declares to Kurosaki and the very footage showing him how an experienced soldier who knew his way around military-grade chrome went apeshit, were all wrong. No.

David would be the exception to this rule. The outlier to all the percentages.

As Kurosaki dies, his last taunting, blood-sputtered chortle and look of inevitability is for David. That look declares: You won’t die clean like this, rather in a slow spiral down to madness, shooting up everything around you, including everyone you care about.

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