Every time a new fall anime lineup drops, I get excited scrolling through the list. This fall's field was unusually stacked, so when I heard Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 came out on top as the most-anticipated title, I got curious myself.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run, The Apothecary Diaries Season 3, Blue Box Season 2 — with contenders like that in the mix, why did this one take the crown?
Let's break it down.
In case you're not familiar with it, the original Cyberpunk: Edgerunners premiered on Netflix back in 2022 and became a massive hit.
It followed David Martinez and hacker Lucy trying to survive in a merciless Night City, and between the brutal action and tragic ending, it's still talked about as a modern classic.
(Honestly I expected some cliché last-minute awakening where David saves the day — I did not expect that ending. Caught me off guard.)
✦ Fall 2026's Top 3
Out of 7,601 votes cast
Let's look at the numbers. In a poll run by Anime Corner, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 took first place with 16.42% of the vote.
The Apothecary Diaries Season 3 followed closely at 15.16%, with Blue Box Season 2 in third at 6.29%.
The poll ran from September 9 to 24 and drew 7,601 votes total — with only a 1.26-point gap between first and second place, it really was a nail-biter.
✦ Edgerunners 2 at a glance
The basics, in four cards
The series drops on Netflix on October 20. It's produced by Polish game studio CD Projekt Red together with Japanese animation studio Trigger, continuing to share a world with the Cyberpunk 2077 game.
One thing worth flagging, though: this isn't a direct continuation of David and Lucy's story — it's a standalone anthology entry with an entirely new cast, set in the same Night City.
(David and Lucy were genuinely great characters, so that's a little bittersweet.)
✦ Meet the new leads
No David, no Lucy — new faces instead
Weak — a fallen cyberpunk legend, searching for his own reason to exist without a single chrome implant left in his body
Roman Carax — a die-hard film lover chasing real stories in a city where everyone else has traded movies for braindance
The new leads are interesting in their own right. One is Weak, a character who was once a celebrated cyberpunk legend but is now stripped of every chrome implant, forced to find his own reason to exist all over again.
It's framed as a journey between a glorious past and a diminished present.
The other lead, Roman Carax, is introduced as a die-hard film lover chasing real stories in a city where braindance — content that lets you live someone else's memories and sensations firsthand — has all but replaced actual movies.
The cast has also been announced. Weak Kingsley is voiced by Clancy Brown in English and Kentaro Tone in Japanese,
while Roman Carax is voiced by Valeria Rodriguez in English and Momoka Terasawa in Japanese.
This season runs the same 10 episodes as the original, so the runtime shouldn't feel unfamiliar.
✦ Then vs. now
From spectacle to character
Original — Michael Bay energy: flashy action, spectacle-driven
Edgerunners 2 — Martin Scorsese energy: character-driven, grounded in shadow
The tone seems to be shifting too. Where the original leaned into Michael Bay-style spectacle and action, this one is aiming for something closer to Martin Scorsese — more character-driven, more shadows.
The official synopsis was striking: "In a city that thrives in the spotlight of violence, one question remains: when the world is blinded by spectacle, what extremes do you have to go to make your story matter?"
Director Kai Ikarashi, who storyboarded episode 6 of the original, is making his directorial debut with this project, which is also worth noting.
So why is this getting such overwhelming hype? I think the legacy of the original is doing most of the heavy lifting.
The 2022 Cyberpunk: Edgerunners won Anime of the Year at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards, and its success is credited with driving a real wave of new players into the Cyberpunk 2077 game.
It's one of the rare cases where an anime adaptation meaningfully moved a game's sales numbers.
There's also something appealing about staying in the same universe while betting everything on a brand-new cast and story.
Returning fans get to stay in Night City's familiar atmosphere without being tied down to David and Lucy's arc — a genuinely new story to sink into.
And the fact that it edged out The Apothecary Diaries Season 3, a show with a rock-solid built-in fanbase, by such a narrow margin says a lot about how much fresh anticipation this show has generated on its own.
The fan reaction wasn't uniformly positive from the start, either.
Because David and Lucy's story landed so hard, some fans initially wondered aloud whether a new cast was even necessary.
But once the trailer dropped and Weak and Roman Carax's arcs started coming into focus, the mood clearly shifted toward anticipation.
I'll admit I'm still cautiously waiting to see whether this can match the impact of the original. An anthology format that swaps out the entire cast comes with real risk — you have to rebuild emotional investment from scratch.
Still, just knowing that Trigger's distinctive direction and CD Projekt Red's world are teaming up again is enough to put this at the top of my fall watchlist.
October 20 — I'm already curious what story Night City has for us this time.♡
Well then, shall we begin today's adventure?
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