Acclaimed by both fans and the critics, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022) is an anime we still hold dear in our memories—you only need to walk a few minutes in any convention to find David, Lucy, and Rebecca cosplayers. In only 10 episodes, CD PROJEKT RED and Studio Trigger delivered an original story that combined the best of the cyberpunk genre with a tragic love story that touches the core of what made us human.
Four years later, CD PROJEKT RED and Studio Trigger are working on a new season of Edgerunners. After the first season finale, this new installment will take place in the same Cyberpunk universe. Moreover, they recently introduced the first new character, with a teaser trailer set to be revealed soon.
With such hype, we sat down with CD PROJEKT RED’s writer Bartosz Sztybor during his stay at the German convention DoKomi on May 30. Sztybor worked with Studio Trigger’s screenwriters Yoshiki Usa and Masahiko Otsuka for Edgerunners‘ first season screenplay, and wrote many comic books for the franchise, including Cyberpunk: Edgerunners MADNESS.
A few months after the first season’s release, we spoke with Sztybor about the world of Cyberpunk and their work on the anime. For this interview, we talked about Sztybor’s career, sci-fi inspirations, and gained additional insight into the first season. Even though his team didn’t allow spoilers, we had a really fun talk that we hope to repeat after the Season 2 finale. Read on for the full interview.
Q: How does it feel to be received at DoKomi with such excitement?
A: It’s always amazing but honestly I’m a person that doesn’t deal very well with happiness, so for me it’s just alright [laughs].
Q: It’s not so common that a writer gets this famous in the community.
A: Yeah, that’s a pity for the whole pop culture. The focus is always on the director, while the writer is in the back. What helped me here was that I’m also like a showrunner, so as a writer I had more possibilities to bring the ideas to life, which was great.
I also think that the distinction between writing and the visuals was very clear in Season 1 of Edgerunners. People knew Trigger’s past works and saw an improvement in the story side. And the story is very CD PROJEKT RED.
I think that’s why people get excited about meeting the writers and meeting me. That’s a huge pleasure because they see that the writing is unique, which is not only my characteristic trait but also a trait of CD PROJEKT RED.
Q: Did you always want to be a writer?
A: Always. I remember when I was a kid I tried drawing. When I was trying to draw a human character, it ended up like a potato with sticks, so I decided I was not good at drawing things. That’s why I started writing. I even started writing a book when I was six years old. I finished just one page.
When I talked with people around then, many didn’t know what to do. Me? From six or seven years old I knew I wanted to write something. I started as a journalist by the way, then I turned into writing stuff.
Q: Who are the authors or what are the works that inspired you?
A: It’s not about authors or writers. I would say I was inspired by the stuff I was watching when I was a kid. I watched everything that I could. I remember I stayed up late watching movies with Jean-Claude Van Damme or Michael Dudikoff, like American Ninja. Then I also watched a lot of arthouse or European vibe films.
On one hand, I was influenced by very bad movies or super pop culture, and on the other hand, very arthouse stuff. I like ‘high art’ with bombastic action sequences. Sometimes, with stupid pop culture elements, like Steven Seagal movies.
As I said, it’s not about the authors, but more about the genres.
Q: Do you have a favorite anime?
A: Favorite anime? Neon Genesis Evangelion, which I watched a few years ago. The most depressing one I would say. But I also like classic cyberpunk stuff, like Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and others like Captain Tsubasa and even Ghibli Studio movies.
In Poland, when I was a kid, we did not have too many TV channels. But we had one called ‘Polonia 1’, which was an Italian channel. I don’t know how, but they had a lot of anime that were adapted into Italian. For years, I watched anime but with Italian names. My favorite was Tiger Mask. Even today, I remember it for the Italian title, L’Uomo Tigre.
Q: Do you think we live in a dystopian society?
A: Definitely people in the US are living in a dystopian society [laughs]. I think in Poland we still have time before reaching that point.
Q: You have worked with illustrators from many parts of the world for the Cyberpunk 2077 comic books. Was it hard at first to overcome language or cultural barriers?
A: We all communicate in English of course. And I think there wasn’t a huge cultural barrier. I work in a way opposed to the ‘work for hire’ model, in which you send the script and wait to receive the art. I want to know the artist with whom I am working. Before we start working, we talk a lot. It can be through Instagram or emails. Meeting each other makes the barrier less visible.
When I work with someone, I need to know them. Then when I start writing, I’m inspired by who the artist is and their art. I get inspired by them to create a script that could fit that person and could be good for them. That’s the problem when we do not finish the collaboration: the script will be unused. I’m unable to give the script to someone else.
The biggest cultural barriers were with Studio Trigger. There were many differences between Polish and Japanese mentality. The way we understand things and our culture references are very different. But when I worked with Portuguese, Italian, or American artists as well, there was not a huge barrier.
Q: It’s interesting how the Cyberpunk video game is based on a tabletop game which, in turn, was inspired by the 80s sci-fi. Why do you think the cyberpunk aesthetic and themes from the 70’s and 80’s still resonates so strongly with modern audiences?
A: In the past it was popular because people were afraid of the future. Right now, it has become our present. Cyberpunk is more about what reality we are right now than what could happen in the future. I think that’s even scarier than it was in the 80’s. When we watched Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell, we thought “ok, this can happen if we make bad choices.” And now we have made all the bad choices.
When we are playing Cyberpunk 2077 or watching Edgerunners, the first thought is “oh, it’s sci-fi, it’s 2077 so we still have time.” But then while you are watching the anime or playing the game, you see that it looks like our reality. The impact is even stronger.
Q: Are you familiar with William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)? Were you inspired by it for Edgerunners?
A: Yes. I read Neuromancer in my early high-school days, but I didn’t review it before Edgerunners.
Q: It’s interesting that the novel never got a proper adaptation. Do you think that the Cyberpunk franchise could be considered a spiritual successor of Neuromancer?
A: Well, in fact there’s going to be a Neuromancer TV show soon produced by Apple TV. The Cyberpunk franchise is very different from Neuromancer and Blade Runner; there are a lot of things that made it distinct. But I would say all cyberpunk works are similar in a way.
Returning to your previous question, while writing Edgerunners I was also rewatching Blade Runner, Akira, Ghost in the Shell. It’s interesting how they are super close to each other to a certain degree, but at the same time different in many details.
Q: Why do you think Japan is linked with many early cyberpunk works?
A: It’s all about technology. In the 80s it was a “technological” fight between Japan and the US. Japanese pop culture was very cyberpunk from the start too, full of technology and robots. It’s very organic and natural that Japan is part of cyberpunk.
Now the new cyberpunk stories are leaning towards China, which became this new technology model; the genre is slowly changing. But culturally, Japan and the US are the “cyberpunk countries,” which have these huge technocratic cities.
Q: Why did CD PROJEKT RED decide to work with Studio Trigger? Was it solely because of their previous sci-fi anime?
A: There were two main reasons. One was that their style was a great fit for Cyberpunk. We knew that the story will be very CD PROJEKT RED-like, which meant that it would be very sad, tragic, and deep, with many moral shades of gray. We needed a counterpart: visually compelling and unique.
I’d also say that Cyberpunk 2077 is the first cyberpunk work that is this colorful and sunny. Studio Trigger and their color palette matched that. We could work with other amazing studios like Production I.G., but Studio Trigger had this light and some sort of “happiness” that would make a great contrast with a sad story.
The second reason was Studio Trigger’s approach. It’s not a big studio that creates ten anime per year. They focus on unique projects every two or three years, so they pull very hard on the project they are currently doing. They are committed to what they are doing.
We knew they would be a very difficult partner too, with huge ego, as we have as well. We knew it would be a risk that could end in total disaster or in something amazing. Luckily, it happened the second way.
Q: For Edgerunners you worked alongside famous Studio Trigger screenwriters Yoshiki Usa and Masahiko Otsuka (who visited Spain for the San Diego Comic Con Malaga last year). How was your experience working with them?
A: Working on Season 1 was hard because it was during Covid. The original plan was that I would go to Japan for a few weeks and work together. But since it couldn’t happen, we ended up having never-ending calls everyday through our team’s translators, making the conversations take forever.
The process was like this: I prepared a first draft and storyline, then Usa-san and Otsuka-san rewrote it and sent it back to me. We constantly talked about the reasons behind my proposals and their changes.
I learned two things from this experience. First, there are cultural differences that you need to accept. Some things I wrote were understood in a different way by Usa-san and Otsuka-san. For example, there was a scene that I considered joyful and that a character was praised by the others. But for Usa-san and Otsuka-san, the same scene was a disgrace for that character. We ended up making the emotions conveyed in that scene more universal.
Secondly, I learned that Western writers think through logic, while Japanese writers don’t always need logic. If the scene works on the emotional level, it doesn’t need to be logical. I’m a person who needs everything to be logical. They told me that even a whole episode doesn’t need to be logical from A, to B, to C. It can be just emotional.
Q: I also had the chance to interview Kazuki Nakashima during Manga Barcelona last year, who is the screenwriter for many Trigger shows directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi. How was your experience working with director Imaishi? Did you have any specific requirements for the director?
A: The way we worked was that I received the final scripts approved by him. But when I told him that we didn’t have a scene where David falls in love with Lucy, he just told me “I agree. Write something.” I prepared something, and that’s how we included the ambulance scene just before Episode 2 entered production. It was not in the final script, but now the audience can say “this is the moment they fall in love with each other.” I think that is one of the best scenes of Edgerunners.
Even if he’ll never admit it, Imaishi-san is a huge fan of Michael Bay. The way he directs action sequences is amazing. He has amazing visuals. Imaishi-san trusted his writers, maybe because he’s older and he doesn’t need to prove anything. He just delivers the story in the best way possible using visual metaphors. Meanwhile, working with Kai Ikarashi for the second season is different. He writes it himself; he wants to add more meaning, and tends to play with the scene differently.
Q: Was the ending planned from the start, or did you ever consider a happy ending for David and Lucy?
A: There was never a happy ending. There were even worse endings. There was one ending in which David doesn’t die entirely. Arasaka gets him and ends up fighting in Africa or South America in corporate wars as a robot.
Q: Since the ending was so definitive, if you had known how massive the show would become, would you have let anyone else survive for a potential sequel?
A: No, no. The plan was always to make a standalone story that ends with ten episodes. I think that’s a CD PROJEKT RED trait. Of course, we already thought we wanted to tell more stories about Edgerunners in general, but this one should be a standalone one. Killing people in a good way is always fun, right?
Q: Who was the character you had the most fun writing about? And which one was the hardest?
A: Maine, because he’s me. A lot of my emotions, fears, and concerns about reality are put into him. I like him. Edgerunners had around twelve versions of the storyline. There were versions in which he was even more relevant.
The hardest to write was Lucy. She’s a complex character to portray. She’s lonely and wants to run away from everybody but falls in love with David. She has a lot of internal conflicts. People think that she’s a simple character but in my opinion it’s not true. From the writer’s perspective it was very hard.
Q: What do you want audiences to expect or feel from the new Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime project?
A: After Season 1, I had a lot of DM’s and messages, and I saw a lot of comments on the Internet saying, “bring David back!”, “why did you kill him?”, “Season 2 should be about David,” “he should be resurrected.” But no, it won’t happen. It’s a legacy.
I’m super proud of our fans. When we released the last trailer and they confirmed that David is dead, the reception was super positive. They accepted the new characters, and they don’t want to ruin the legacy either. That made me a little bit calmer. We don’t want to do the same thing.
I would like them to like it as much as they liked Season 1.
Q: People say that they want resurrections, but I don’t think they really want them.
A: Yeah, I think it would be disappointing. If David is resurrected, finds Lucy and has seven babies, people would be like “you destroyed those feelings.”
We want to extend our thanks to DoKomi and CD PROJEKT RED for the support in arranging the interview, and to writer Bartosz Sztybor for being open to answering every one of our questions. We eagerly look forward to Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners announcements.
And if you are also interested in the convention, DoKomi’s next edition will take place from July 9 to July 11, 2027.
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