Within the past week or so, Netflix has achieved an unusual feat — unusual, at least, to those of us who track the performance of the streamer’s neverending firehose of new shows and movies constantly debuting on the service. Two Netflix series, one completely new and the other a fan-favorite mainstay, have both released new episodes to such near-universal acclaim that they’ve each managed to achieve the following distinction:
Perfect 100% scores, at least as of the time of this writing, on Rotten Tomatoes.
Netflix series with perfect Rotten Tomatoes scores
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
One of the two is the video game anime adaptation Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, which debuted on Netflix on September 13. According to Netflix’s logline, this series tells a standalone, 10-episode story about a street kid trying to survive in Night City.
That’s the name of a futuristic metropolis where everyone is obsessed with technology and body modifications. The kid, meanwhile, stays alive by becoming a mercenary outlaw known as an “edgerunner.” It won’t be getting a season 2, much to the dismay of fans.
“We are so excited to finally reveal that we are working on an anime in the Cyberpunk world,” Adam Badowski, Cyberpunk 2077 Game Director and CD PROJEKT RED Head of Studio, said when this series was first announced back in 2020. “We’ve devoured just about all the cyberpunk fiction there is to watch, read, and play. It’s a genre that leaves so much room for creativity, and has had such a strong influence on us. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is our love letter to cyberpunk as a whole, and to stories told in animated form.”
If you’re a fan of anime, this one shouldn’t definitely be on your watchlist. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is gory, violent, staggeringly beautiful, poetic at times, and overall a completely escapist and wild small screen ride. Hopefully, the high score here also bodes well for the continued growth of this genre on the streamer.
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Cobra Kai: Season 5
The other Netflix series that just dropped a new batch of episodes to critical acclaim, meanwhile, is actually an existing title that’s now got five seasons, in total, under its belt.
The Karate Kid spinoff Cobra Kai, which debuted its fifth season on Netflix on September 9, also has a 100% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes at the moment. And it’s not just the critics who can’t get enough of this now long-running Netflix series, either. Fans love it, too, so much so that it’s actually the #1 Netflix series in the world right now.
For the 7-day period that ended on September 11, the series — starring William Zabka and Ralph Macchio, reprising their roles of Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso, respectively, from the Karate Kid movies — garnered 106.7 million hours of viewing time.
As far as the Season 5 story, here’s what you need to know. “Following the shocking results of the All Valley Tournament,” Netflix explains, “Season 5 finds Terry Silver expanding the Cobra Kai empire and trying to make his ‘No Mercy’ style of karate the only game in town. With Kreese behind bars and Johnny Lawrence setting karate aside to focus on repairing the damage he’s caused, Daniel LaRusso must call on an old friend for help.”
More Netflix coverage: The 35 best movies on Netflix right now (September 2022)
