Morning has come to Night City again. Well, to be precise, daytime has. Netflix's Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 begins its exclusive worldwide streaming today, October 20, and on the same day Milan Records releases two soundtrack albums at once digitally. U.S. film music news site Film Music Reporter published the track lists on October 19. One is an 8-track songs album; the other, and our focus here, is a 39-track score album by Tsuneo Imahori.

The 2022 first season reached far beyond cyberpunk fans, and a big reason, alongside its quality as animation, was its music: Akira Yamaoka's score and the songs that kept returning throughout the show. Because those sounds are etched in fans' memories, a new name on the score for season two was big news.

Why Tsuneo Imahori Makes Strange, Perfect Sense

Say "Tsuneo Imahori" and most people think of 1998's Trigun: a man in a red coat walking the wasteland, with a guitar conjuring dust and melancholy at the same time. Add Fighting Spirit (Hajime no Ippo) and Gungrave, and a pattern appears. These are all works about violence and the human messiness underneath it. Imahori himself is one of Japan's top fusion guitarists, moving freely from jazz to prog, and he is also known as an original member of SEATBELTS.

The staff list from the production announcement: animation by TRIGGER, directed by Kai Ikarashi, written by TRIGGER president Masahiko Otsuka, and the opening storyboarded by Hiroyuki Imaishi. In a lineup that mixes returning and new faces, the music baton was handed to Imahori. His music was reportedly already featured in the first trailer, released on June 29.

What makes the choice especially interesting to me is the new season's structure. Season one followed a single boy, David. This time it is an ensemble story with four protagonists: D, a netrunner from the Snake clan who swears revenge on whoever wiped out her clan; Roman Krax, a film-loving boy chasing "true film" in a city hooked on braindance; Talia, a girl who belongs to Maelstrom; and Weak Kingsley, an aging edgerunner once called "the King," who lost his chrome to cyberpsychosis. The setting is reportedly Night City by day rather than by night. Rather than a composer who pushes one big theme, this needs someone who can give each character a different temperature, and a guitarist who has spent a career crossing genres fits that brief perfectly.

Reading the 39 Track Titles First

Since the album isn't out yet as of writing, let's start by reading the titles. The opener is "Welcome Back to Night City." That alone feels like cheating. It's a "welcome home" to viewers of season one, and at the same time a "welcome to hell" for the four newcomers.

In the middle, "Samba de Santo Domingo" stands out. Santo Domingo is a Night City district, and pairing it with "samba" suggests Imahori is opening his Latin and fusion toolbox, which is exciting. Meanwhile, titles like "Analog Solitude," "Digital Ghost," and "Digital Parasite" hint at an analog-versus-digital contrast, as if the music aims to separate flesh from chrome through tone color too, which is exactly the tension this show lives in.

  • Opening stretch: "Welcome Back to Night City," "Zero Warning," "Street Psycho": a homecoming, then instant unease
  • Middle stretch: "Samba de Santo Domingo," "When We Met," "Dusk Over the Neon," "Rusty Smile": the colors of the city and people meeting
  • Closing stretch: "Vengeance," "Bittersweet Neon," "No Future, No Past," "Leaving the City": revenge, and what it means to leave the city

Ending on "Leaving the City" is suggestive. Remembering how season one ended, the phrase carries enormous weight. Of course, titles alone don't tell the story, and I'm not here to guess at spoilers. But the fact that the 39 tracks seem to trace an arc of beginning, meeting, loss, and departure is a very promising sign for a score album.

A Multinational Songs Album, a Single Guitarist's Score

The 8-track songs album is fun too. Starting with Rico Nasty's "You Can't Run From Me," released early on July 1, it features Petite Meller, Piernikowski singing a Polish-titled track, Biji, Doudou, and Corbin, spanning many countries and languages. A game from a Polish studio, adapted by a Japanese studio, released worldwide by a U.S. label: it is a literally multinational sound, fitting for this franchise.

That makes the single line running through the score album stand out even more. A city full of clashing voices, stitched together across 39 tracks by one guitarist. Will he carry over the memory of Yamaoka's sound, or repaint Night City with a completely different texture? From today, you can find out in both the show and the album. Watch episode one first, then play "Welcome Back to Night City" again. It will probably sound different.