Hideo Kojima returns as braindance director Hideyoshi Oshima in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, reprising his Cyberpunk 2077 cameo

Anyone who looked around the Konpeki Plaza hotel bar during Cyberpunk 2077's The Heist mission may spot a familiar face in Night City's new anime. Hideo Kojima, the game director behind Metal Gear and Death Stranding, is back as Hideyoshi Oshima in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2. The official Edgerunners account on X revealed the cameo on October 19, the day before the new season's Netflix launch.

In the game, Oshima is a visiting braindance producer. Braindance is the setting's technology for recording an experience and playing it back, covering everything from sight, sound and touch to emotions and thoughts. Oshima sits at a table toward the back of the bar, talking with other guests about his work while the player scouts the hotel. He has Kojima's likeness, and Kojima voices him again for the anime. The X post called him "the renowned braindance director," and its attached still shows Oshima at a restaurant table, now drawn in the anime's style. A profile card for the character lists both his birthday and his blood type as confidential. Kotaku reported that CD Projekt Red confirmed the cameo the same morning the season's review embargo lifted.

This isn't Kojima's first trip into cyberpunk. In 1988 he made Snatcher, a visual novel in the genre that first came out in Japan on the PC-8801 and MSX2. Later ports reached the Sega CD/Mega CD, PC Engine, PlayStation and Saturn, but only the Sega CD version was ever released in English.

The season itself arrives on Netflix on Tuesday, October 20, with all 10 episodes available at once. Kai Ikarashi directs, and Studio TRIGGER is animating it with CD PROJEKT RED. The first Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, also a 10-episode Netflix original, came out in September 2022.