Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is shaping up to be one of 2022’s best anime. It’s getting good reviews from both the press and fans and it is easy to see why. The animation is some of the slickest ever seen on Netflix thanks to Studio Trigger.
The music is great, the action is a bloody good time, and the story knows how to blend drama well with comedy. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is not a feel-good anime that’s going to bring everyone in the room together though. So, as much praise as this anime deserves, there are also some things that don’t make sense about a few key plot points.
There will be spoilers ahead.
6 What Happened To Gloria?
Everything that happens with Gloria right before and after her death is a bit hard to swallow. Gloria and David get caught in the crossfire of two gangs on the freeway. Instead of slamming down on the pedal, Gloria keeps driving like normal. It’s hard to say what one would do in a similar situation but it seems natural to break in an incident like that. Besides that, why didn’t David and Gloria get picked up by the Trauma Team?
They may not be rich, but Gloria belongs to a medical unit. Doesn’t working for something like that guarantee some sort of inclusive medical insurance? This is Night City after all so it is not hard to believe that a greedy corporation would hurt even medically trained officers. Then there is the question of her body. Was she truly killed and turned into ashes or was she secretly brought somewhere else? David wasn’t allowed to see her which is majorly suspicious. This whole incident doesn’t add up.
5 David’s Rent
Gloria dying is only the beginning of David’s problems. They are past due on the rent as he finds out after getting back from the hospital. Thankfully, David knows about the ventilation system which allows him to sneak into the apartment akin to Solid Snake from the Metal Gear series. After the landlord locked the place up, why didn’t he station anyone to watch it? Mercenaries are a dime a dozen in Night City.
He could have either hired a guard to watch the place or done something more drastic like move all of David’s stuff onto the street. The landlord could have even stolen stuff. Then there’s the second note which makes it clear that the landlord knew David had been sneaking in through the vent. By that logic, he could have sealed that vent shut. Maybe the landlord had a heart and kept throwing out empty threats in the hopes of getting money.
4 Lucy Settling Down
Lucy is a wildcat in the second episode of the anime. She is one of those unhinged types of female heroes that are all over anime. The easiest scene to point to is when she rescues David from the corrupt medical officer. After dealing with her, she throws open the ambulance doors and takes David on his gurney onto a busy highway while laughing medically.
Lucy had some great energy in this scene and in the early episodes of the anime in general. However, as Cyberpunk: Edgerunners continued, this energy was seemingly drained away. She became reserved and wholly reliant on David. Lucy loses her strong female independence which is weird and out of the blue. Can a character truly lose a part of themselves like that so quickly? It’s an odd choice to make in a story.
3 Couldn’t Arasaka Tag The Prototype?
For as big of a company as Arasaka is, it’s strange that they didn’t implant a tracking device on the cybernetic implant that David wears. David isn’t in hiding in the anime. He’s running around Night City, in the open, with his new crew. There is no timetable given but there is a montage of feats that he performs.
It’s safe to assume that at least a week passes from the time David quits school to about episode six of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Night City is a big place, as shown most prominently in the open-world environments in the game. It is still hard to believe that an implant couldn’t be tracked down even if someone like Lucy put up a tracing blocker.
2 Couldn’t Arasaka Have Found Lucy Earlier?
Not being able to find David and the implant is one thing. Another big plot hole is how Arasaka wasn’t able to find Lucy since she escaped their facility as a child. She mostly hangs back from the action, leaving the gunplay to David, Maine, and the others. Still, she is seen running around with them, so it’s not like she has been hiding in an apartment for years.
It’s shown in some of her side activities that Lucy has been avoiding sleuths for some time in cyberspace. Again, it’s just hard to imagine she could be so untraceable until the last few episodes of the anime. There are just a lot of viewers who can’t know about Cyberpunk’s world since the lore is so vast.
1 Why Didn’t David Slow Down On The Chrome?
David may be poor financially but he is rich in knowledge. It’s said more than once in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners that David has a brilliant mind as a straight-A student. Why then didn’t he listen to reason on slowing down on the implants? He knew what happened to James Norris. He also saw what happened to his friend, Maine.
Maine going full CyberPyscho should have been enough to scare David away from bulking up tech like him. David instead went the opposite route and doubled down on the cybernetic implants. He wanted to reach the top as quickly as possible for both Maine and his mom. He should have listened to Lucy and the others then maybe he would have survived. Even if he thought he was special, it still doesn’t make sense. David should have been smarter than this as the main character for an action anime. He instead goes out like a punk, or more like a gonk.