I want the Trigger ending to Cyperpunk Edgerunners where it's revealed that cyberpsychosis is a corpo plot to keep the workers/humanity down and you can defeat it by going beyond the impossible and kicking reason to the curb.
I want the Trigger ending to Cyperpunk Edgerunners where it's revealed that cyberpsychosis is a corpo plot to keep the workers/humanity down and you can defeat it by going beyond the impossible and kicking reason to the curb.
I don't think that's the story depicted in Edgerunners at all.
I think what's depicted and what actually happens are very different things. Everyone THINKS that simply the act of changing your body brings on the psychosis, but that's not what does it. What causes it is the slow deterioration of mental health due to all the horrible things that happen in these people's lives. The reason they all believe it's the changing your body that causes it comes down to the fact that the people who go so far with changing their bodies are also the people that see the most horrible things. On top of that they can not afford the basic drug upkeeps necessary for not having their bodies reject their various surgeries, they have to do increasingly more dangerous shit to pay for those drugs, and they have to see increasingly horrible things along with that. They get even more surgeries to do make more money by doing more dangerous stuff and pipeline themselves into the inevitable breakdown.
It's not a simple "this makes you psycho". It's a combination of a variety of factors. This isn't a magical "anti cyberpsychosis" drug they're getting, it's just straight up drugs to keep their bodies from rejecting all the implants, which would result in their body destroying itself anyway.
In short, really the implants are a catalyst rather than a cause. The cause is just the usual, a mental breakdown brought on by a person's mental state being pushed over the edge. This is true in Edgerunners, the game, and the tabletop.
I think my issue with how Edgerunners did it was how it showed it both stylistically and in effect as like a separate, discrete thing taking over while the person inside got locked into a dream world. It's not someone just reacting violently to a stressful situation and then spiraling from that into a standoff or rampage, it's shown like something alien and mechanical is invading their minds/bodies. Like it literally gets portrayed as replacing their eyes in a way that's stylish but at the same time othering in a way that's a bit off. And yes, one could metaphorically describe a violent outburst like that as something inhuman taking control, but that's obviously problematic for a number of reasons from obviating agency and responsibility to fundamentally othering anger and pain.
Like some guy who's suffering constant, chronic pain because of his boss one day lashing out and killing his boss hasn't been possessed by some sort of mechanical demon, even if he keeps fighting after that because his life is now over and he's going to be killed or put in a cage forever over that outburst.
I guess my point is mainly that cyberpsychosis isn't "real" because the cyberware is tangential to the actual pathology: problems with malfunctioning cyberware can be part of someone's problems, but it's more about the casual horror and hopelessness of the world where violence is everywhere and is just the "normal" way of solving problems intersecting with how cyberware makes individuals much more dangerous if they reach the point where they start lashing out in pain and desperation, believing themselves to have nothing left to lose.
I think this is culturally japanese clashing with culturally western. It's extremely common in anime to use imagery to depict a mental state of being in a metaphorical way rather than a real way. For example a nuclear explosion happening when someone stubs their toe. I think you should chalk these up to artistry.
I think you're right that they could spell it out clearer, but again this is something that the japanese just seem to regularly do. Like, not treating audiences like idiots that won't get it. Or just accepting that some won't get it and being ok with it. From our perspective wanting it to be more influential on people that's annoying but from their artistic perspective I suspect they consider it a win to have all the layers that you could discuss and analyse about it, or debate, as we're doing now.