5 Best Dark Sci-Fi Anime Like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Ranked

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (IMDb rating as of August 23, 2026: 8.3/10) hit different because it wasn’t just cool robot arms and neon lights. It made you feel something. A good cyberpunk world always does two things at once: it looks insanely stylish, and it makes you sad about what humans give up to get that style.

Think mega-cities, corporations running everything, people trading pieces of themselves (literally or not) just to survive, and a constant question of what’s even “human” anymore. The best anime in this genre don’t just show off tech; they use it to mess with your head. If you’ve found yourself searching for more anime like Edgerunners, you’ve come to the right place. Here are the 5 best anime like it.

5 Akudama Drive Is Full of Criminal Chaos

Akudama Drive is one of those names that is often overlooked despite its quality. This anime throws a bunch of criminals, along with an innocent girl who got roped in, into one of the wildest heists. If we are talking about the aesthetic and vibes, this anime feels like a direct sibling of Edgerunners.

It’s not as emotionally heavy as Edgerunners, but the chaos and style scratch a very similar itch. Unfortunately, this anime can’t rank any higher because the story feels crunched into a small package. If this anime told the same story in more than twelve episodes, we might have gotten to see more of each character.

Streaming: Crunchyroll

4 NieR:Automata Ver1.1a – Existential Crisis With Machines

Swap out David’s cybernetics for androids fighting a war they don’t fully understand, and you get NieR:Automata. Just like Edgerunners, this anime is also an adaptation of a video game. It follows 2B, who is one of the soldiers fighting a war to reclaim the planet Earth. Honestly, in terms of lore depth, this anime does a far better job.

Both anime ask what it even means to be alive when your body (or existence) isn’t fully your own. It’s slower and more philosophical than Edgerunners, but the identity-crisis core is exactly the same. The only reason this anime doesn’t rank any higher is that, unlike Edgerunners, it tells the exact same story from the video game. Many argue that the best way to experience the story is to play the game itself.

Streaming: Crunchyroll

3 Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song Is One of the Best Time Travel Sci-Fi Anime

Vivy trades street-level fights for time travel, but the emotions hit just as hard. The story follows an AI singer who is trying to change the future to save humanity. It sounds nothing like Edgerunners at first, but both these anime use sci-fi to ask what it costs to actually care about something. This anime ranks in the top three because it nails that emotional payoff on a bigger, more ambitious scale.

Streaming: Netflix, Crunchyroll

2 Psycho-Pass – When a Utopia Gets Horrifying

Psycho-Pass swaps Edgerunners’ lawless streets for a “perfect” society that’s secretly way scarier. Instead of chrome and implants, it’s a system that judges your soul with a number and decides if you get to live free or get hunted down. Furthermore, even your life decisions are directly influenced by this very system.

These themes also make it one of the best Seinen anime of all time. It’s the same warning underneath the shiny surface, just told from the side of the people enforcing the nightmare instead of surviving it. That flip in perspective is what earns it the second spot.

Streaming: Crunchyroll, Netflix, Prime Video

1 Akira Is the Cyberpunk Anime That Started It All

Every single anime on this list, including Edgerunners, owes something to Akira. Neo-Tokyo, biker gangs, government experiments gone horribly wrong, kids turning into monsters they can’t control – this anime is basically the blueprint.

Decades later, it still looks and feels ahead of its time. If you liked Edgerunners even a little, you have to watch the anime that made it possible in the first place. Unlike others on this ranking, it’s a movie. In fact, even if we ignore the sci-fi aspects, Akira can be considered one of the best R-rated movies as well.

Streaming: Crunchyroll, Netflix

Is there any anime you think should’ve been in this ranking? Let us know in the comments.