_Cyberpunk: Edgerunners_
The last two installments of _Ghost in the Shell_ forgot what they were doing. Maybe a TTRPG can pick up the flag and run with it.
You can watch this on Netflix.
We open on a cyberpsycho slaughtering cops. His enhanced spine gives him outrageous reflexes and speed, but even that can't save him when police hackers disable his systems. The cops provide enough firepower to get past his defenses and kill him.
A VR recording of the fight is stolen, and our boy, David, is enjoying (?) the experience.
David argues with his mother about an upgrade he needs for school. He says Doc has hooked him up. She wants him to buy it legitimately.
David's mom is a paramedic and was at the scene with the cyberspycho.
David's bootleg gear is infected with a virus and brings down the school network. They're now on the hook for 10x as much as the upgrade would have cost.
On the way back from school, they're caught in the crossfire of a drive by shooting. David's mom is in the hospital, and David is stuck with the bill. Also, he's locked out of the apartment because the rent is late.
Among his mother's things from the hospital is a suspicious piece of cyberware.
David scrambles for money to cover the debts.
The next day is worse: bullies beat him up in an attempt to make him drop out of school, and his mother takes a turn for the worse.
Did you know cremation costs over $1000 in the real world today? God only knows how much it costs in Night City.
No one will buy the cyberware for a reasonable fraction of its value. David decides to install it instead.
David takes advantage of his new tech to get revenge on his bully. Doing it at school gets him expelled, of course, but that's not the problem. His Sandevistan augment is visible on camera, and his bully is the son of Mr. Arasaka, head honcho of a major corp.
He recognizes the Sandevistan on video and notices that, unlike the previous owner, David is not suffering from cyberpsychosis.
Perhaps it would be useful to bring him in as a tester.
On the Subway, David catches Lucy stealing chips from the passengers.
Lucy says she only steals from corpos, and invites David to join her. They make quick work of the car.
David collapses. He really ought to be on immunosuppressants. The paramedic decides she'd rather chop his augment than treat him, and Lucy saves him.
Doc sells him the drugs he needs, but they're not cheap. Also, he's used the Sandevistan like 8 times? Too much. Keep it to twice a day or it will fry your brain.
Lucy takes him home. They discuss their dreams and where they want to go.
David's mom wanted him to get a corporate job. But that's not his dream.
Lucy wants to move to the moon. She even shows him her lunar VR program.
While they're cavorting in VR, she sells him out. He gets jerked into the real world by an attack from the owner of the Sandevistan.
Turns out mom already sold the Sandevistan. David talks fast and demonstrates his prowess with the gear, and buys one shot to prove his worth on a job, then pay back the cost one gig at a time.
Gang members are Maine, Kiwi, Dorio and Pilar.
The job goes sideways and David is forced to improvise. Maine is impressed, but their client, Faraday, is not happy.
(Rebecca shows up in this episode, but we we don't know much about her yet.)
The principal from school has been calling, trying to get David to return. He's got a scholarship to cover the fees, and there's just a small matter of an apology.
David tells him that if the bully wants a rematch, that's fine, but he won't be holding back.
Maine sends David for training. Pretty much everyone on the team gives him the runaround.
(The translators are failing to translate "cyberpunk" and "cyberpsycho" directly, which makes me wonder what else I'm missing.)
David buys additional cyberware.
Pilar gets killed semi-randomly. When the perp threatens Lucy, David takes him out.
Lucy and David reconcile. And fuck.
The team's target from David's first job, Tanaka, is the school bully's father.
Tanaka has a fetish for snuff films. Jimmy Kurosaki is the king is snuff edits, and David happens to know he does custom work for big customers.
Could this be an in?
The team try to grab him, but he retaliates and grabs David instead. David gets to test a custom VR of his own death.
Kurosaki tells David that he will go psycho eventually.
The team rescue him and force Kurosaki to help them trap Tanaka. Kurosaki dies in the crossfire.
Everything goes wrong:
Lucy dives Tanaka, but the data she's looking for is not there.
Tanaka tries to subborn David. This is all part of a corporate proxy war.
Maine goes Psycho. He kills Dorio and injuries Kiwi. He's taken out by the cops.
David and Lucy escape.
Time jump.
David is running his own crew, with Kiwi, Falco, and Rebecca on board. David's got Maine's gun arm, and some other implants.
Lucy is retired. Or taking a long break anyway.
Faraday wants to hire the team.
Lucy tells David about her origin.
Faraday switches sides and starts working for Arasaka.
David reaches the edge of his ability to handle cyberware.
Lucy has been hunting down Arasaka's hackers. Faraday and Kiwi lay a trap and catch her.
Arasaka's been working on something called a cyberskeleton. They want David to test it, due to his high compatibility.
Lucky discovered this when she was diving Tanaka's brain. She's been taking out people in the know.
Faraday hires the crew for a job, but it's a trap.
It's too late; the only way out is through.
Only automatic injections of neural stabilizers keep him from going psyco.
But once he's broken through the trap, he rallies his crew to rescue Lucy and get revenge on Faraday.
The crew assault Arasaka headquarters, who are forced to call out their final boogeyman, Adam Smasher.
David knows this is the end before he goes in. He's down to his final shot of stabilizers and there's no coming back.
David kills Faraday. Adam kills Rebecca.
In his last moments of lucidity, David tells Lucy that he wasn't able to fulfill his mother's dream, nor Maine's dream, but she can fulfill her dream.
Falco and Lucy escape, and David faces down Adam, and loses.
Cyberpunks always die or go psycho, so this is the good end.
The final scene is Lucy on the moon for real. She sees David there with her, as he was when they shared the VR moon experience.
That's the show.
So, what's my takeaway?
I joked at the beginning that _Ghost in the Shell_ had dropped the ball recently. _Cyberpunk 2020_(/2077/Edgerunners) has always been the pessimist to GITS Optimism, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that this was a tragedy.
They did a wonderful job of making all the characters engaging. The visuals and music were great. The story was well paced.
This is a very multicultural show. The setting was built in America, but the current owners and writers are Polish. The director is Japanese. We're really all over the map, but it works.
They really make you want David to win, even though you know he can't.
I was worried that they would bring back the school bully for a later plot point, and I'm glad they didn't.
The whole setup is to get David to install the cyberskeleton and use it to get his team out. Faraday uses Lucy's phone to fake being her and tell David to install it.
Lucy uses her monomolecular filament to escape just long enough to tell him it's a trap.