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David Martinez.
In the original game's lore, he was merely one of the few names etched into the history of the Afterlife bar. But in the Edgerunners anime, he is the undisputed heart of the story. When the series opens, David is introduced as a restless, delinquent high school student. He spends his free time visiting a back-alley ripperdoc to indulge in the illegal thrill of braindances. Despite his rebellious streak, he comes from a home filled with genuine, if strained, warmth.
His mother, Gloria, is a hardworking employee of the municipal cleanup crew, responsible for the task of processing the aftermath of Night City's endless violence. She is a beautiful woman, a classic hard-working mother who scrimps and saves every penny, staying on call twenty-four hours a day.
Her entire life is a sacrifice dedicated to ensuring David graduates from the elite Arasaka Academy. She wants him to climb to the very peak of the city, the Arasaka Tower. The animation uses this as a clever double entendre.
To Gloria, "climbing the tower" means joining the Arasaka Corporation as an executive, becoming a true member of the elite. Later in the series, however, David will take that ambition quite literally.
"The washing machine stopped again. Did you forget to top up the credits?" David asks, his voice laced with frustration.
"Oh... right. I forgot again," Gloria replies, rubbing her temples in exhaustion.
This brief exchange tells Rakuei everything he needs to know about their situation. This family is living on the razor's edge of poverty. Gloria is clearly living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to keep the utilities running.
The world-building establishes a grim reality: in Night City, everything has a price tag. In their cramped apartment complex, even the laundry requires a timed payment. It is a world where money is the only thing that confers humanity.
As David leaves the slums for school, the contrast is nauseating.
On the walk from his home to Arasaka Academy, he passes streets where the homeless fight for scraps, relieve themselves in public, and sleep in dumpsters. This is the bedrock of Night City, the discarded and the forgotten.
But as he crosses the border into the corporate zone, the world transforms. Beautiful architecture, soaring skyscrapers, a brilliant blue sky, and pristine streets serviced by a high-speed sky-rail.
Despite their financial hardship, Gloria has done the impossible by getting David into this school. To save money, David uses a pirated version of the required educational software.
The "cracked" program carries a virus that wreaks havoc on the school's expensive hardware, leading to a confrontation with Katsuo.
Gloria is forced to come to the school to "clean up his mess" and handle the fallout. For a family already drowning in debt, the repair fees for the damaged equipment are a death sentence.
Watching this, Rakuei begins to grasp the suffocating weight of the Night City setting. It feels heavy, almost claustrophobic.
"I could just drop out and get a job," David tells his mother in the car, trying to alleviate her burden. "Poor people like us aren't valued here. No matter how hard I study, I'll never be like them, and I don't think I want to be."
"Then what have I been working for all these years?" Gloria's voice suddenly cracks. Tears begin to track down her face as she keeps her eyes on the road. "You're so smart, David. You have so much talent. That's why I kill myself to keep you in that academy. If you give up now, what am I supposed to do? I want you to be an elite. I want you to stand at the top of Arasaka Tower. I know you can do it..."
"I'm sorry. Please, don't cry," David says, his eyes filled with a mixture of guilt and helplessness. He immediately retracts his suggestion to comfort her.
Rakuei falls silent. The plot is incredibly somber. Unlike the lighthearted rom-coms that dominate the seasonal charts, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is focused entirely on depicting the structural decay and cruelty of a beautiful, deformed city. The conversation between mother and son continues, but their struggle for survival is about to take a catastrophic turn.
On the main highway, a gang shootout erupts. Stray high-caliber rounds tear through David and Gloria's car like paper. Gloria loses control, the vehicle flips, and she is critically injured.
A municipal search and rescue squad, the Trauma Team, arrives within a minute. But they don't even look at Gloria. Because she doesn't have a high-tier insurance package, she is treated like roadside debris, left to bleed out while they tend to the wealthy targets. They don't even call an ambulance; they call a meat wagon for the corpses.
Rakuei feels a surge of genuine anger. 'She's still alive! How can the Trauma Team just leave her there? What kind of hellhole is this city?!'
David manages to haul his mother's broken body to a cut-rate clinic, but he is told that treatment depends entirely on his ability to pay the mounting fees.
He opts for a budget "stability" package and begins desperately trying to raise funds by selling his mother's belongings, including several illegal chips.
Among her effects, he finds the Sandevistan, the high-grade military spinal implant from the muscular man in the braindance.
Back at school, David is confronted by Katsuo, who uses a premium chip to brutally beat him. That afternoon, David returns to the clinic only to be greeted by a notification.
She's dead.
She's just gone.
In a single day, David has been expelled, beaten, and has lost his mother to the fallout of a gang war.
"This is too much," Rakuei whispers, his eyes fixed on the screen.
He stares at David's hollow, unblinking eyes as the clinic hands him his mother's remains. The woman who was just talking about his future yesterday is now nothing more than a pile of gray ash in a cheap plastic urn.
The despair is palpable. Rakuei feels a physical weight in his chest.
The animation drops several subtle hints that the clinic Gloria was taken to is corrupt, operating as a front for "Scavengers" who harvest cyberware from patients. Gloria might have been allowed to die, or was actively murdered, for the valuable implants she had on her person.
The cruelty of the city is absolute. Because of his poverty, David used pirated software. Because of that software, he was expelled.
On the way home from his expulsion, his mother was caught in the crossfire.
Because they couldn't afford a real hospital, he took her to a slaughterhouse masquerading as a clinic, where she was processed for parts. Even the Trauma Team, the supposed "saviors," only care about the profits of their policyholders.
With his mother dead, David can't even return to his apartment. The door is locked because of unpaid utility bills. To bury his mother, he needs money he doesn't have.
To make matters worse, Katsuo gets word of Gloria's death. He sends David a mocking voice message.
"Your mom worked so hard to keep her 'special boy' in school, only to die in a freak accident. What a complete waste of a life."
That is the Cyberpunk worldview.
In the final moments of the episode, David looks at the blood-stained Sandevistan his mother had hidden away. His once-clear, youthful eyes have changed. They are now cold, hard, and fixed with a terrifying resolve.
He returns to the ripperdoc's underground shop.
"Oh, it's you! David!" the doc says with a crooked grin. "Ready to sell? That Sandevistan is worth a fortune."
"I want to..."
David looks at the bloody implant in his hand, then points to his own spine. The previous owner of this device died of cyberpsychosis because he pushed it too far. But at this moment, David has nothing left to lose.
"I want you to put this in me."
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners - Episode 1: END.
Rakuei sits in silence as the ending theme begins to play. His heart is heavy.
The premiere of Edgerunners didn't offer a single moment of catharsis or a traditional "win."
It was a relentless gauntlet of trauma designed to force the protagonist into a corner.
David knows that selling the implant might pay for a funeral, but it won't change his life. To survive in Night City, he needs power. To avenge his mother and the insults of the elite, he needs to become something more than a "street rat."
Rakuei let out a long, shaky breath.
He can't fully judge the series yet, but in terms of visual fidelity and world-building, he is already a convert. The art style is breathtaking, and the depiction of the cruel, neon-soaked world is hauntingly effective. It's a depressing start, but he is desperately hoping the next episode offers David a glimmer of hope, however fleeting it might be.
At midnight, the official data for the premiere was released.
[Cyberpunk: Edgerunners – Episode 1]
Premiere Rating: 4.02%
Peak Rating: 4.36%
Average Rating: 4.12%