A fun, fast-paced, and action-heavy manga set in Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk universe, Madness dives into the backstory of Rebecca and Pilar, two characters many fans already know and love from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. The energy is high, the violence is unapologetic, and Night City feels just as brutal and alive as it should.
I’ll be honest: this might be an unpopular opinion, but I never particularly liked Pilar and I didn’t care that much about Rebecca either. Because of that, I went into this manga fairly skeptical, unsure whether a story centered on the two of them would really work for me.
Surprisingly, it absolutely did.
What makes this volume work so well is how unapologetic it is about their story. It doesn’t try to soften them or retroactively justify everything, instead, it shows how their upbringing shaped them, especially the influence of their father, and how survival in Night City leaves very little room for innocence. Seeing how both siblings learned to navigate violence, loyalty, and desperation gave them a depth I hadn’t fully appreciated before.
In the end, Madness managed to make me care about characters I previously felt indifferent toward and that alone says a lot. It’s stylish, brutal, emotionally sharp where it needs to be, and a great expansion of the Edgerunners world.
Actual Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ (4.5)