General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Meta Runner

Meta Runner is an Australian computer-animated science-fiction web series created by Kevin and Luke Lerdwichagul and produced by their studio Glitch Productions. Set in a cyberpunk future where competitive gaming and e-sports are the center of culture, business, and technology, it follows Tari, a cybernetically enhanced gamer who must uncover her past while evading the gaming megacorporation TAS Corp. The series ran on YouTube from July 25, 2019 to September 9, 2022, spanning three seasons and 28 episodes, and was the first fully animated series produced by Glitch Productions.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Australian computer-animated web series, 3 seasons and 28 episodes, released on YouTube between July 25, 2019 and September 9, 2022¹^•²
Creators	Kevin and Luke Lerdwichagul, founders of Glitch Productions; the studio grew out of Luke's earlier YouTube series SMG4¹^•³
Setting	Silica City, a cyberpunk society built around video games; "Meta Runners" are gamers who replace limbs with cybernetic arms to boost gaming performance¹^•⁴
Main character	Tari, a Meta Runner with amnesia and the ability to warp into video games, the subject of the experiment Project Blue led by Dr. Sheridan and commissioned by TASCorp⁴^•⁵
Funding and sponsorship	Funded by Screen Australia and Epic Games; sponsored by Crunchyroll and AMD; over 25 million views on YouTube¹
Production tools	Maya and Unreal Engine 4, with Season 3 using a mix of motion capture and hand animation⁶^•⁷
Music	Soundtrack composed by AJ DiSpirito⁸

Spoilers

Premise

The series is set in Silica City, where all media and entertainment are built around video games, serving not just as entertainment but as jobs in live streaming and as a lifestyle. Among members of society are Meta Runners, individuals who have replaced their limbs with cybernetic arms that boost their gaming performance.⁴ Beneath the neon lights and cheering crowds, megacorporations and criminal gangs vie for control of everything.¹

The story follows Tari, a Meta Runner who wakes up in an abandoned lab with amnesia after an explosion and finds herself in Silica City. She was the subject of Project Blue, an experiment led by Dr. Sheridan, a scientist commissioned by TASCorp. Tari can warp inside the video games she plays, and the series follows her journey as TASCorp tries to get its hands on her to understand her abilities and use them on its own competitive gamers.⁴^•⁹ She teams up with a group of underground gamers to take on TAS Corp, a large gaming company with a sinister connection to her past.⁵

Release history

Development began in late 2017, when Luke Lerdwichagul started working on the series alongside his brother Kevin while studying media arts.¹⁰ The character Tari was introduced to the SMG4 series in August 2018, several months before Meta Runner was announced in December 2018.¹¹ Animated shorts promoting the series, including "Tari's First Game Warp" (March 14, 2019) and "Tari's Live Stream" (May 30, 2019), preceded the premiere.¹²

Season runs. Season 1 premiered on July 25, 2019 with the episode "Wrong Warp" and ran for ten episodes to "Shutdown" on October 10, 2019. Because the dedicated GLITCH channel did not yet exist, the entire first season was uploaded to the SMG4 channel; it was later compiled into a movie-format cut when the GLITCH channel launched.²^•¹³ Season 2, announced in August 2020, premiered on October 16, 2020 with updated graphics and ran for ten episodes to "Fatal Error" on December 18, 2020.¹³^•² Season 3, announced on November 29, 2021 as the final season, premiered on July 22, 2022 and concluded with the eighth episode, "The End", on September 9, 2022.¹⁴^•²

The finale announcement stated that although Tari's story had ended, content around the character would continue, and a first-issue Meta Runner comic book telling the canonical story of how Tari came into existence was released alongside it.¹⁵ A spin-off pilot, Ultra Jump Mania, based on the in-universe game starring Theo, was released on the GLITCH channel on September 4, 2020.¹³

Production

Glitch Productions was founded by the Thai-Australian brothers Kevin and Luke Lerdwichagul and grew out of Luke's early YouTube series SuperMarioGlitchy4, later known as SMG4.³ Meta Runner was the studio's first original series and its first fully animated production, establishing Glitch as more than a small arm of the Machinima network that had hosted SMG4.¹^•¹⁶

The brothers described the animation process as using Maya and Unreal Engine 4, and answered the question of how long an episode takes to make with "too long".⁶ Season 3 used a mixture of motion capture and hand animation.⁷ A behind-the-scenes video described the production as costing over $1,000,000.¹⁷ The COVID-19 pandemic did not seriously disrupt Season 2, according to the brothers, who said the team worked from home efficiently.⁶

The show was funded by the Australian government's art funding body Screen Australia and by Epic Games, and was sponsored by Crunchyroll and AMD; it was also featured on the front page of Crunchyroll.¹ The voice cast was drawn from the YouTube, gaming, and machinima communities the show is steeped in, with Celeste Notley-Smith as Tari, Robyn Barry-Cotter as Theo, and Jessica Fallico as Belle Fontiere.¹⁸^•¹⁹

Reception and influence on Glitch Productions

The series garnered a dedicated cult fanbase and accumulated over 25 million views on YouTube.¹ Reviewers responded positively to its writing and its varied art direction: a Bubbleblabber review of Season 3 scored it 9 out of 10, praising how each in-universe game took visual inspiration from real games while the "real world" look stayed angular and sleek.²⁰

Kevin Lerdwichagul said the studio learned a great deal from Meta Runner, developing its artists' skills and production pipeline, and that the show's tone became darker and more mature over its seasons, a direction that carried into later series such as Murder Drones.²¹ The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, which holds the first episode in its collection, describes Meta Runner as a boundary-pushing series that helped open the door to independent animation built directly with online audiences; Glitch later became known worldwide for Murder Drones and The Amazing Digital Circus.³^•²²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Genre web series: horror, thriller, science fiction, and mystery

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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