Lorenzo di Bonaventura is attached to produce alongside CD Projekt Red

I see two potential outcomes here. Either this movie never gets made or we’ll wish it had never been made. Lorenzo di Bonaventura has previously produced movies such as Madame Web, Transformers: The Last Knight, the GI Joe movie Snake Eyes, and Doom: Annihilation (did you know they made a second Doom movie??). That isn’t a good sign.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m always excited for any new cyberpunk movie and I will watch it if it comes out. I just know to set my expectations low.

I’ll admit I’m not a fan of life sim games so I won’t be playing this one but if you enjoy life sims, this game looks really impressive.

I’ve posted about it before so I don’t know how much I need to explain again but it’s from the makers of Cloudpunk, which was a cozy cyberpunk game where you just drove a flying taxi around a cyberpunk city. Now you can run a ramen shop in that same cyberpunk city in Nivalis Nights!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1488490/Nivalis_Nights/

GLITCH WITCH shares both the world and timeline of THE GHOST IN THE SHELL. On April 10, 2029, while Motoko Kusanagi and Aramaki are preparing to establish Public Security Section 9 (commonly known as “Ghost in the Shell”), a series of incidents erupt across the United States. As the FBI, AI researchers, and the military investigate, they witness a fateful clash: the battle between Project 2501, the “Puppet Master”—with whom Motoko Kusanagi merges at the end of THE GHOST IN THE SHELL—and a Solomon-class AI holding the fate of humanity in its hands!

https://theghostintheshell.jp/en/news/glitch-witch

New issues posted online (in Japanese) every Wednesday.
https://yanmaga.jp/comics/GLITCH_WITCH

This meme is over a year old but I don’t think I’ve posted it here before.

8 months ago, this guy made an amazing cyberdeck and posted a 47-minute video explaining how he built it. And the comments were flooded with “that’s not a real cyberdeck!” So he made this video to address the trolls.

For those of you who enjoy reading long-form essays.

I posted a trailer for Demon Lord 2099 a couple years ago when it was first announced but I wasn’t convinced I’d like it. In general, I don’t like comedy in my cyberpunk and this seemed too light-hearted for me so I ignored it when it came out. Now that a couple years have passed, I happened to see it was available on Crunchyroll and only had 12 episodes. So even though Crunchyroll classifies it as a Comedy first and Sci-Fi second, I decided to give it a try. In the end, I don’t recommend this anime but it’s not for the reasons I was expecting.

The show is about a demon lord who gets defeated and dies. 500 years later, one of his worshipers resurrects him. But since 500 years have passed, his medieval fantasy world has now turned into a cyberpunk world. So while he still wants to conquer the world, he’s now a fish out of water in a world he doesn’t understand. His strength is based on how many people have strong emotions towards him (love/hate) so when he initially wakes and no one knows who he is, he’s very weak. In an attempt to gain people’s attention and raise his power… he becomes a Twitch streamer playing Dark Souls.

The premise is so ridiculous, I initially thought it’d be like The Devil is a Part-Timer where Satan gets a job at a McDonald’s and wacky hijinks ensue. Fortunately, this demon lord playing Dark Souls isn’t a main part of the story. It’s just a means to an end for regaining his power and very little of the show is spent on this.

Here’s what I liked about this anime. First of all, it’s cyberpunk. It takes place in a very cyberpunk city and everyone has an augmented reality device implanted in the back of their necks to access the internet and communicate with their personal AIs. Also, one of the main characters is a hacker. So far so good, and I’m interested. Then the main villain is introduced and it’s the CEO of the company that makes these AR devices. Again, I’m here for it. And the comedy isn’t that distracting. Most of the jokes come from the demon lord taking himself too seriously; there aren’t any slapstick jokes or characters overreacting and falling over for laughs.

If that’s all the show was, I’d have a fairly high opinion of it. It’s not perfect by any means and it’s more light-hearted than I want, but the show isn’t obnoxious. Unfortunately, they defeat the evil CEO half-way through this 12 episode season. And that’s where they lose me. The second half of the season is spent with them infiltrating a high school and pretending to be students. At this point in the show, it stops being cyberpunk. The AR devices are never mentioned again, the personal AI assistants never show up, they rarely leave the school, and now the show is about the demon lord trying to acquire three magical items. So there are still quite a few fantasy elements involved, but nothing cyberpunk anymore. And there’s plenty of other anime that have done “high school drama with fantasy elements” better than this.

It’s a shame that if the first story arc had lasted all 12 episodes, I would’ve really enjoyed this show. They introduced some interesting concepts in the first half, like the evil company working on merging magic with technology to make magitech battle suits. And their AR devices were actually a shortcut for casting spells. There was even some hand-wavy talk about how the fantasy realm merged with Earth so there were lots of random elves and orcs walking around in the background. It was all very Shadowrun yet they did nothing with it. I would’ve liked to see a second season expand on this world. I could easily put up with a self-important main character if it meant getting a borderline Shadowrun anime. But instead, it ends on a high school drama storyline and no hope for a second season. Oh well.

If you want to see what I’m talking about, you can watch all 12 episodes on Crunchyroll.

I’ve posted about this game before. It’s been in development for over 2 years. They even had an announcement where they claimed the game was going to get a Film and TV adaptation. I have my doubts. But, here’s a new trailer.

I’ll still give the game a chance (I always want cyberpunk games to succeed) but I have low expectations. I think they’re trying to go for a cyberpunk version of the Arkham Batman style of combat but I’m suspicious of their ability to pull it off.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1731290/SPINE__This_is_Gun_Fu/

In my last post a couple people mentioned that the Neuromancer novel is a pretty dense read and tough to follow. If you agree, I recommend listening to the BBC radio drama from 2002. It’s only 2 hours long but it follows the plot of the story really well and has great production.

Definitely check it out if you’ve got 2 hours and struggled with the novel, or if it’s just been awhile since you read it. This is a great adaptation.

There isn’t much in this article, other than a reminder that Neuromancer is currently filming in Tokyo. Also, I don’t think it’s been announced what role Emma Laird has so I don’t know if it really hurts things for her to not have read the book. We’ll see how well this quote ages though:

It’s a very confusing book, but I think somehow bringing that onto the screen helps tell that story maybe a bit more clearly.

The cyberpunk metropolis Shinjuku—a massive city-state bedecked with neon signs, towering skyscrapers, and the latest cutting-edge technology. It is here, in year 2099 of the Fused Era, where the legendary Demon Lord Veltol has his second coming five centuries in the making. But this landscape is nothing like the one he conquered all those years ago, for the fusion of magic and engineering has elevated civilization to dazzling, unprecedented heights. Veltol may have been reduced to a historical footnote, but make no mistake…this brave new world will be his for the taking!

While it’s possible this SPINE game could be good, there’s no way it’ll get film and TV adaptations. That seems a bit optimistic for game that isn’t released yet, has no release date, and no one has heard of.

For what it’s worth, here’s a gameplay trailer and a cinematic trailer. And it has a Steam page. Like I said, this game could turn out great. And since it’s cyberpunk, I’m rooting for it. I’d love a great cyberpunk game. But what little I’ve seen so far reminds me of Wanted: Dead and that game ended up with Mixed reviews at best.