Mr. Tanaka in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners: The Arasaka Executive Everyone Is Chasing
The short version
Tanaka is a high-ranking Arasaka executive on the Arasaka Academy board and Katsuo Tanaka's father, and the target of Maine's crew through the middle of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. He is voiced by Tetsuo Komura in Japanese and Paul Nakauchi in English.
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The man in the glasses#
Tanaka is a middle-aged corpo with parted black hair, narrow stern eyes behind sleek translucent glasses, and a little EMP threading around the face. He is a minor antagonist who never needs to raise his voice, because he works for Arasaka and does not expect to be refused.
He is Katsuo's father. The bully David beats in episode 2 is the son of the man who sits on the board of the school David is thrown out of.
Spoilers What he wants with David
After David and Katsuo's second fight, a recording reaches Tanaka. He sees what David's Sandevistan does to a body that should be breaking down, and decides it is an opportunity for the company. His plan is to bring David back to the academy, so Arasaka can test a piece of cyberware on him.
That is why the academy calls David in episode 3 with an offer to come back. Lucy only learns what the offer is for when she dives into his mind.
Why the crew goes after him#
Fixer Faraday wants Tanaka's navigation data, so the crew steals it from his driver Maxim Kuznetsov, and the job goes sideways. Later the crew learns Tanaka secretly watches the snuff braindances of Jimmy Kurosaki, and baits him with them. They catch him. Our read: it is a good heist chain, because every step is a worse plan than the last.
Spoilers What happens to him
Tanaka wakes up in the crew's custody, recognizes David by name and tells him he is the reason David's expulsion was revoked. He tries to negotiate and says he suspects Militech is behind the crew. Then Lucy dives into his mind, finds out he planned to use David as a test subject for the Cyberskeleton and fries his cyberware.
Tanaka flatlines, which fries the jammer hiding the crew's location. Trauma Team and NCPD close in, and Maine drags Tanaka's body into the fight as a shield. Jimmy Kurosaki died in the crossfire when the crew took him. Before that, Tanaka tells David that no matter how high he rises, he will never escape their shadow.
Spoilers Edgerunners 2
Tanaka is mentioned again in Edgerunners 2. An Arasaka intelligence officer, Kate Miller, tells D that the man who ordered the mission to take him from his Snake Nation camp was Tanaka, and that David Martinez's crew had already killed him. In other words, the massacre that drives D's whole series traces back to one executive from the first one.
Our read: it is neat bookkeeping. David died after a plan Tanaka started, and D's whole series is the bill for the same plan.
Fixer's notes#
At the table: Tanaka is the corpo who never meets the PCs until the last act. Everything they do, someone else does for him. See David Martinez, Lucy and the Edgerunners 2 episode guide for the ripples.
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