9 Shows and Movies Like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 to Watch Next
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 landed on Netflix on October 20, 2026, and if you finished all 10 episodes in a weekend, you're probably staring at the Netflix home screen wondering what could possibly follow it. Studio Trigger animated it again with CD Projekt Red, Kai Ikarashi directed it, and Bartosz Sztybor ran the show, so it keeps the speed and the heartbreak of the first season while telling a new, standalone story. The picks below follow the threads people are talking about most, from the revenge plot to the digital passenger at its center, and every streaming spot was checked against US listings this week.
Why Edgerunners 2 leaves you wanting more
The new season follows D., a netrunner from a nomad clan who goes after the people responsible for wiping out his tribe, alongside a crew that includes Talia, Roman and the veteran Weak Kingsley. Most of the conversation centers on Capri, whom GamesRadar describes as a "mysterious, impossibly powerful digital construct" that D. lets into his own system. That idea of a mind living inside the network, and a person sharing his head with it, is the thread that ties most of the picks below together, since cyberpunk at its best has always asked what's left of a person once the machines get in.
If you like thinking about those questions outside of anime too, our list of sci-fi movies that predicted today's AI technology goes through the films that got the closest.
Anime to watch after Edgerunners 2
1. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022)
Going back to the first season makes sense, because Edgerunners 2 is set after it and nods to it, and it hits harder once you remember what Night City did to David Martinez and Lucy. Trigger and director Hiroyuki Imaishi made it in 2022, it runs 10 episodes, and it's still on Netflix in the US, so a rewatch takes about as long as the new season did.
2. Pluto (Netflix)
Pluto is the most thoughtful show on this list and the best pick if Capri's storyline is what you kept thinking about. It's an 8-episode Netflix series from 2023, animated by Studio M2 and based on Naoki Urasawa's manga retelling of an Osamu Tezuka Astro Boy arc. A robot detective named Gesicht investigates a string of murders that seem to target the 7 most advanced robots in the world, in a society where robots have equal rights under the law, and the episodes run close to an hour each, so it feels more like a prestige drama than a typical anime.
3. Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 (Netflix)
SAC_2045 picks up the Ghost in the Shell story in a world worn down by economic collapse and what the show calls "Sustainable War," with Section 9 pulled back together to deal with a new threat called the Post Humans. It was co-directed by Kenji Kamiyama and Shinji Aramaki for Production I.G and Sola Digital Arts, and both seasons, 24 episodes in all, are on Netflix. The 3D animation style takes an episode or 2 to settle into, but the hacking and cyber-brain plots are as close to Edgerunners' netrunning as anything else out there.
4. Terminator Zero (Netflix)
Terminator Zero moves the franchise to Tokyo in 1997, where a scientist named Malcolm Lee builds an AI called Kokoro to stand against Skynet while a soldier from 2022 is sent back to protect his family. Production I.G animated it, Mattson Tomlin created it, and the 8 episodes are on Netflix. Go in knowing it ends after 1 season, since Netflix didn't bring it back and Tomlin confirmed in February 2026 that he passed on a short wrap-up.
5. Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song (Netflix and Crunchyroll)
Vivy is about an AI singer who gets pulled into a mission across 100 years to stop a future war between AIs and humans. It's lighter on gore than Edgerunners, but it has the same mix of big action and real sadness, and it spends its whole run asking whether an AI can want something for itself. You can stream it on Netflix or Crunchyroll in the US.
6. Arcane (Netflix)
Arcane is a different kind of story, since it's about 2 sisters on opposite sides of a war between a rich city and its undercity over a powerful new technology. If what you loved about Edgerunners was the class anger, the doomed found family and the way the animation turns every fight into something you want to rewatch, Fortiche's 2 seasons (18 episodes) on Netflix deliver all of it, and the story is finished, so there's no cliffhanger waiting for you.
Movies to watch after Edgerunners 2
7. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Mamoru Oshii's original film is the root of so much of what Edgerunners draws on, and its plot fits Capri's storyline almost too well. Major Motoko Kusanagi hunts the Puppet Master, a self-aware AI, and the 2 of them end up merging into something new. It runs about 82 minutes and is missing from the big subscription services right now, but in the US it streams free with ads on Tubi and Plex, and Hoopla has it free with a library card.
8. Akira (1988)
Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira has no AI in it, since it's about a biker whose friend develops terrifying psychic powers in Neo-Tokyo, but it's the film every cyberpunk anime since has been answering, and the motorcycle chases and body horror will look familiar to anyone who watched Edgerunners. It runs 124 minutes and streams on Crunchyroll in the US.
9. Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Denis Villeneuve's sequel is the live-action pick, a slow, gorgeous film about a replicant detective and the question of what makes a memory or a person real. It's streaming on Prime Video and Paramount+ in the US. We keep a running list of the best sci-fi movies on Prime Video if you want more after it, and our guide to the best sci-fi movies to stream in 2026 covers every major service.
Where to start
If Capri's storyline stayed with you, start with Pluto and the 1995 Ghost in the Shell, then read our breakdown of what Ex Machina gets right and wrong about AI consciousness, since it's the same question in a quieter setting. If you came for the fights and the music, Arcane and Terminator Zero are the quickest fix, and if you want the full picture of where AI stories on screen stand right now, our list of the best movies about artificial intelligence is a good next stop.
Talk about the ending with people who watched it
Edgerunners 2 is the kind of show you want to argue about the minute the last episode ends, especially that final stretch with D. and Capri. Tribe has communities for movie lovers and for people who follow AI closely, where folks trade watchlists, play trivia and talk through endings with people who care about the same stories. If you're looking for somewhere to have that conversation, come find the group that watches what you watch.
