In the sci-fi enthusiasts group chat, the one that used to be called "Metropolis Sci-Fi Fans #1", a new message pinged in.
{ForceKing: "@EngineerBro your recommendation was actually solid."}
Shuu Fumiya had just bought the latest issue of Manga World GoGo from the news stand when his phone buzzed. He pulled out his flip phone, saw that ForceKing had tagged him in the group, and grinned.
Getting someone to check out something you recommended and actually hear back that they liked it; there wasn't a better feeling.
He typed back in the group: {EngineerBro: "Right? Though you're only just reading it now?"}
{ForceKing: "Yeah, only found it at the stand this week. Read the newest chapter and it's pretty good."}
{ForceKing: "Especially since this issue had a written interview with the author. Had no idea a sci-fi comic could pack this much depth."}
{ForceKing: "Then I went back and read every chapter from the beginning in one go. The worldbuilding is genuinely great."}
Shuu Fumiya stared at the messages. A written interview? This issue had an interview with the Edgerunners creator?
And according to ForceKing, the depth was the impressive part.
He knew ForceKing. The guy never paid attention to manga. At all. And he'd gone back and read the entire run after one glance at a magazine column?
{NetromancerBeetrayed: "I read it. The worldbuilding is solid, the story's been a little frustrating though."}
{ManTired: "Opening chapter hits hard -- kid loses his dad, then his mom. Had me floored."}
{ManTired: "But honestly, it felt kind of real? No protagonist plot armor, just life being brutal."}
{BlackholeGravity: "Personally I'm obsessed with the female lead Lucy. She's my wife, end of discussion."}
{ForceKing: "Get in line. That's MY wife."}
...
Shuu Fumiya smiled at the banter, tucked his phone away, and headed home. He cracked a soda from the fridge, dropped into his desk chair, and opened the magazine.
He read the newest chapter of Edgerunners first. The issue title was "Joining In."
Picking up right where the last chapter left off: Lucy had, in fact, sold David out, and Maine, Dorio, Pilar, and the crew had grabbed him. Their real target was the military-grade implant installed in David's body, the Sandevistan, which, it turned out, his mother Gloria had quietly arranged to sell to Maine all along.
Gloria had stolen it from the scene and handed it over as part of a deal. But Gloria was dead. David didn't know any of that. He'd installed the Sandevistan in a moment of fury, provoked by the classmate who'd tormented him.
Maine's crew was skeptical a kid could actually handle the Sandevistan. David showed them.
In the end, with some lingering debt owed to Gloria weighing on him, Maine offered David a chance: join the crew, earn money, pay back what Gloria promised.
Meanwhile, Arasaka Corp had taken notice of David. The Arasaka Academy principal, Tanaka, reached out with an invitation to return -- a trap dressed as an opportunity. David turned it down flat. And right as he did, Maine handed him his first real assignment.
And then, end of chapter.
The story cut off right where anticipation peaked, which was standard operating procedure by now, but this chapter's direction had felt set well before the final page. Shuu Fumiya still groaned.
"This can't be a bi-weekly serial. Come on, come ON."
He flopped back in exasperation. The wait was the worst part about Edgerunners. Weekly would be better. Or he could just wait for the collected volumes. But the setting had him too hooked to hold out.
"ForceKing mentioned a written interview. Let me find it."
He flipped through until he reached the Q&A page. There it was: the Manga World Publishers mascot at the top of the column, with a speech bubble:
"This issue, we had the chance to sit down with the creator of Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners, Aoyama-sensei, to answer the three questions readers most want answered."
"First question: Sensei, what does 'cyberpunk' actually mean?"
Below that, a half-portrait of David stood in for Aoyama, with his response in a speech bubble.
"Cyberpunk is actually an English word, 'Cyberpunk', built from 'Cyber' and 'Punk.'"
Cyberpunk. Cyber and Punk.
As a science and engineering student, Shuu Fumiya already knew "cyber" meant networks and computing. The phonetic sourcing clicked immediately. But punk?
"'Cyber' typically refers to networking and computers, though in my usage here it leans more toward 'cybernetics', meaning systems of control and governance. 'Punk,' in the Western tradition, is a music and cultural movement rooted in the working class. It's rebellious, anti-establishment, sharp-edged, built on ideas of ideological freedom and refusing to play by the mainstream's rules."
"So in my reading, cyberpunk means 'high tech, low life.'"
"More specifically, cyberpunk imagines a world of extreme technological development and concentrated capital, where human beings have become utterly insignificant. The line between flesh and machine has dissolved. AI has produced synthetic beings with actual inner lives. And conflict has erupted between the AIs, the hackers, and the megacorporations that control the world's wealth. Caught in the middle, the fringe characters use that same technology to carve out individual freedom against the weight of collective control."
"Ah," Shuu Fumiya murmured aloud. That cleared it up.
From this point on, cyberpunk wasn't some mysterious term, just a phonetic import from English, and apparently a word the author coined for his own specific purpose.
He turned the page to the next question.
"Sensei, what was your creative philosophy behind Edgerunners?"
That one mattered. Shuu Fumiya leaned forward to read Aoyama's response.
"Mostly it came from noticing that most sci-fi out there only ever highlights the upside of future technology: the thrill of space exploration, the wonders of invention. But nobody stops to consider what happens to the people at the bottom when technology accelerates that fast."
"The cyberpunk world I draw is my answer to that: the worst-case outcome. Technology, wealth, and knowledge fully concentrated in the hands of the elite and the megacorporations. They orchestrate the Third and Fourth World Wars. They divide the planet between themselves. And the rest of humanity is left disposable."
"The poor become raw material, consumable and replaceable. And all that technological and material abundance, paradoxically, starves the human spirit. There's no room left for the inner life."
"Cyber psychosis, at its root, isn't just augmentation overload breaking down the nervous system. It's the cumulative pressure of an entire society bearing down on the individual, the inner world worn thin, and the augmentation just finally cracks it open."
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]
T/N: "Arasaka", one of the dominant megacorporations in the Edgerunners setting. An international security and weapons conglomerate.