Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is an original anime series made for Netflix based on the 2020 video game Cyberpunk 2077. While the video game initially released to endless drama and criticism and mixed reviews, the anime was extremely well-received and has since made the video game more successful than ever. Edgerunners was made by Japanese anime Studio Trigger, and was released with both its original Japanese audio, along with an English dub.
Whether to watch anime subbed or dubbed is one of the oldest arguments in the otaku world. More often than not, the winner of the argument is subbed - most anime fans want to watch shows in their original language. After all, that was how the anime was made, and how it was meant to be enjoyed. Sometimes, though, there are anime that are arguably better to watch dubbed, and Edgerunners is one of them.
Night City Streetslang
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The biggest reason to watch Edgerunners dubbed instead of subbed is all the streetslang that is used. Cyberpunk 2077 did a fantastic job when it comes to world building, making Night City a truly unique and interesting place. Part of that comes from its original slang that anyone who played the game for even just a few hours will have learned and encountered. Words like "choom" for friend, "preem" for good, and "flatlined" for dead all add flavor to the world.
These words and more are used in Edgerunners as well - if you watch the dub, that is! The subbed version does its best to replace them, using some original and known Japanese slang words to try to evoke the same feeling. But it does not use the same words, and that fun and important part of Cyberpunk 2077's lore is lost.
Even for people that have never played the game, it's fun to learn all the special slang words and jargon. And for fans of the game, Night City without these words just isn't the same! Some of them have even been around since the original tabletop game the video game is based on. The dub is totally preem, choomba, trust us.
Technical Jargon
On top of the street slang used in the Cyberpunk 2077 world, there is plenty of other technical jargon related to the lore in the story, too. Braindances, ripperdocs, cyberpsychosis, and chrome are some of the most common words used in Edgerunners that are unique to the world of Cyberpunk 2077, and in the dub they are the truest to the original game again.
Admittedly, most of these words do not translate into Japanese, so in the subbed version of the anime they are just inserted in katakana Japanese. After all, the words were created for this world, so they do not necessarily have a Japanese equivalent. They fit more naturally into the dub, though, especially as they are originally English words. And sometimes, they are replaced in the sub with something that has a similar meaning, and the original jargon is lost completely. That never happens in the dub!
A Diverse World
Night City is in modern day California, and parts of its culture are influenced by its real-life setting. While the citizens of Night City do speak English, there is also a huge percentage of the population with Mexican roots that also speak Spanish. Additionally, Night City has a lot of Japanese influence in its culture and design, so there are big Japanese population centers, too.
The dub of Edgerunners keeps this diversity alive. All the characters speak English, of course, but the main character David has a Latinx background. His mother speaks some Spanish to him, and even has a bit of an accent. That is completely lost in the subbed version of the anime, where everyone just speaks Japanese. The Spanish words are gone, so it loses its real-life California roots.
Even in the dub, the Japanese gang called the Tyger Claws still speak Japanese! They do in Cyberpunk 2077 as well, so the dub remains again true to the source material. Most of the characters are speaking English or a mix of English and Spanish, and the ones with a Japanese background still get to speak Japanese, too. The dub really has a lot of great diversity that is lost in the subbed version.
Cameo Characters
Finally, a small bonus point that the dub of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has over the sub is specifically for fans who enjoyed the game. Some of the characters from the game have cameo appearances in the anime, and the voice actors are the same! One of the most prominent is Wakako, an NPC in Cyberpunk 2077. While she is never seen in Edgerunners, she does call on the phone, and she has the original voice actor from the game.
That kind of feature in the dub is really special for fans of the game, tying the anime directly to its source material and helping viewers feel immersed in an all new Cyberpunk story that is directly related to the game they loved playing. The anime and the game are complementing one another, and the ties between the two are alive and well.
If you haven't already tried Cyberpunk: Edgerunners dubbed, we highly recommend you do now. It is much truer to its original source material, and makes you feel more immersed in Night City. It has all the slang that made Cyberpunk 2077 feel so alive, and stays true to its mixed world of English, Spanish, and Japanese. While the anime may have been made in Japanese, the English dub is definitely worth a watch!