As someone naïve to the Cyberpunk universe, I found the Edgerunners series to be a colourful and interesting pastiche of various anime influences, with some flaws [SPOILERS]...
David - the school age male central protagonist, generic fan demographic foil. Who finds that he's exceptionally gifted, through no effort of his own. Thus he's able to realise his daydream ambitions.
Lucy - Motoko Kusanagi (Ghost in the Shell) hacker chick in an outfit mixing together that from Stand Alone Complex and 2045 series. Her distinctive hair design has a (Serial Experiments) Lain lopsided bang on her left and is coloured white like Benten (pretty boy) in Cyber City Oedo 808. She also has a built-in version of the nanowire weapon he uses, which I believe originates from Gibson's Neuromancer (sci-fi novel).
Maine - Duke Nukem meets Prototype JACK (Tekken) substitute father figure. He comes complete with paternal physical abuse and a hard nosed (but soft on the inside) butch lady-friend second in command - Dorio.
Pilar - actual transhuman-looking non-normative body plan cyber punk with super-hands. He fashion a visor and mohawk like Gogou (Cyber City). The abrasive clown, he's naturally the first to go.
Rebecca - the fiery Lolli archetype, literally obligatory in all anime, now (studio refused to make the show without her). Predictably she's romantically interested in our generic protagonist, though we thankfully fall short of a full hareem. She's not particularly problematic, compared to some, and makes sense in this context. Actually she's a fairly fun character, although her Scooby Doo impression gets tiring towards the end.
Kiwi - chain smoking albino cyber-goth second fiddle hacker chick, with a more extruded frame. Like Lucy, she inexplicably *has* do her virtual reality ICE (Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics - again Neuromancer) breaking shenanigans with full frontal nudity, in a bath of icy water. Big "Hey, I don't make the rules!" feel, male gaze fanservice.
- Blade runner - city design, flying cars/billboards, chain smoking, etc.
- Akira - motorbike gangs, neon style, ultra-violence, etc.
- District 9 - mech's weapon grabbing magnets hands.
- Blues Brothers - style car pile-up super-orgy.
- Various games - including Cyberpunk (duh), with nonsense red circle impact warnings inexplicable appearing on the ground, with one fight.
Part of the reason I've not been possessed to jump into the Cyberpunk PC game (besides the price and brutal hardware spec requirements) is the dystopian setting. Which is a failure as escapism, given how many aspects of this genre are becoming increasingly, depressingly, relevant here in the UK.
Our Tory governments seem determined to break the public provision of healthcare, by any means, whatever the death toll and permanent damage. They even seem to be trying to privatise democracy and governance, itself, via sneaky charter city legislation (massively expanding freeport areas and such).
