Every anime and video game fan was excited when Studio Trigger announced the anime adaptation of the popular 2020 action role-playing video game, Cyberpunk 2077, based on Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk universe. The series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners might only have one season under its belt, but it has developed a sizable fanbase that is as big as the video game.
The main credit for the success of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners goes to the characters of the series, who were completely different despite the anime series and the video game being from the same universe. These characters also had more development compared to the video game, as they had their own individual personalities to make up the story.
Bartosz Sztybor, the screenwriter and producer of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, who has also worked with the developers of Cyberpunk 2077 (CD Projekt Red) as an animation narrative director, once revealed what obstacles forced him to change the characters of the anime series.
Bartosz Sztybor Reveals How Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ Characters Were Created
In an interview with Anime Corner last year, Sztybor was asked about the difference in writing characters for the video game and the anime series and whether he struggled with anything. The producer revealed that while writing the characters for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was different, it was not difficult at all.
Sztybor revealed:
It was not difficult at all, but maybe because I wasn’t writing anime characters, haha! Like I said earlier, the idea was to bring some live-action elements to the anime format. That’s why the characters were created as if they were live-action characters, but with anime elements. But of course, there was a moment when I started working with Studio Trigger to add the anime flavor to all characters.
Sztybor pointed out that he wanted to infuse the element of live-action in the anime series, which is why he decided to create them as if they were part of a live-action adaptation but with anime elements. Slowly, he built every character with the same thought process, and somehow they combined pretty easily for him.
The Problems With Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ Characters
Talking about the characters, the producer explained that while he did not have any problems during the creation of the characters, he faced some obstacles when they were expressing their emotions, as anime characters tend to be more intense and loud, which forced him to tone down the live-action characterization of their personalities.
Sztybor revealed:
I had problems with characters being too obvious sometimes or expressing their emotions out loud about moral statements in the dialogue, but I had to learn that it can’t be 100% live-action characterization because we’re creating an anime. We needed emotions, exaggeration, we needed to be over the top. I had to learn as a writer to go with the anime flow and sometimes forget about the rules I learned as a screenwriter because they were taming me.
Ultimately he figured out that the essence of any anime series lies in the characters and their way of expressing their emotions.
Thus, he decided to go with the anime flow and let the emotions be exaggerated, just like in every other anime series in the world. This sat well with the Cyberpunk universe.
You can watch Cyberpunk: Edgerunners on Netflix.
