Cyberpunk 2077 Netflix anime series announced, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

During today's Night City Wire stream, CD Projekt Red announced Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, an anime series spun off from Cyberpunk 2077. Coming to Netflix in 2022, it's being made by Trigger, the Japanese animation studio known for Kill La Kill and Little Witch Academia. Given the success of Netflix's The Witcher, yeah, I'm not surprised.

Edgerunners is not a direct adaptation of CP2077, rather a new ten-episode series set in the same place Night City. CDPR say it's "about a street kid trying to survive in a technology and body modification-obsessed city of the future. Having everything to lose, he chooses to stay alive by becoming an edgerunner—a mercenary outlaw also known as a cyberpunk."

Edgerunners will be directed by Kill La Kill director Hiroyuki Imaishi, with character designs from Yoh Yoshinari and Yuto Kaneko of Little Witch Academia, and a score is by Silent Hill's Akira Yamaoka. See today's announcement for more of the people involved. I don't watch much anime but did see Kill La Kill, which is way better than I expected from an anime about schoolgirls in sentient clothes fighting. I'm quite curious about this.

"I've always loved cyberpunk as a genre, but always found it difficult to create as an original work," director Imaishi said. "This is why I'm very excited to be working with CD Projekt Red on this project. It won't be easy to please both game and anime fans, but I love a challenge, and I'm looking forward to the production. We'll do our best to meet and exceed expectations."

Netflix's Witcher series was based on the original Witcher books, the same source material as CDPR's games, but it sure seems the popularity of the games helped give the Netflix series an audience out the gate. Netflix actually teaming up with CDPR for their next game makes sense, especially considering Netflix's fondness for algorithmic commissioning.

Cyberpunk 2077 is due to launch on November 19th. Night City Wire also brought a new trailer, which you can see and read about over here.

Whatever you call it, hit our E3 2020 tag for more from this summer's blast of gaming announcements, trailers, and miscellaneous marketing. Check out the PC games at the PlayStation 5 show, everything at the PC Gaming Show, and all the trailers from the Xbox showcase, for starters.