October 09, 2024
Anime reassessed (pacing matters)
The result of this little experiment? Far and away, anime remains my preferred medium for scripted entertainment. So I dropped Jme TV and won't renew Viki. Netflix stays on hiatus until its anime catalog refreshes.
It's not just me.
As Miles Atherton reports on Anime News Network, according to recent data released by Netflix, in terms of total hours viewed, anime not only overperforms in its category overall but makes up almost 80 percent of all Japanese language content viewed.
Starting with deep wells of proven source material, the inherent constraints of anime production sufficiently discipline the process (no anime studio has the resources to crank out a $200 million CGI flop) so that when everything comes together, a watchable work of art is the result on a reasonably regular basis.
Good stories told well.
To start with, this isn't about production values. HD video technology has largely leveled the playing field in that regard. Rather, the underlying problems come down to how the stories are structured, paced, and told.
Many hour-long Jdrama episodes should be thirty minutes shorter. (So should most movies.) I usually skip anime compilation films but doing the opposite works better. Editing Demon Slayer: Mugen Train into seven episodes improved on the movie. When it comes to single arc stories, a runtime longer than that just drags everything out.
The extended Yor arc in the second season of Spy x Family could have been easily compiled into a two-hour movie. But it works better in a five-episode format. And, frankly, I would have rather seen Code White handled the same way, creating a complete second season instead of a single cour.
Incidentally, comparing Kamen Rider: Kuuga (2001) and Kamen Rider: Zero-One (2020) illustrates how extraordinarily far budget CGI has progressed in the past two decades.
Yet despite the superior production values of the latter, the acting and dialogue elevate the former, even with its near-fatal plot holes and running a full two seasons (that's one season too many).
When Hollywood is running on all cylinders, it gets episodic television exactly right, with standalone episodes loosely linked by season-long dramatic arcs running in the background. So Fuyuhiko Takahori has the cause and effect backwards. The common point of failure is stretching a single story over more episodes than are needed to tell it.
There are writers who have mastered the formula. 99.9 Criminal Lawyer and Unnatural both run standalone episodes against background narrative arcs that pay off reasonably well. Three Star Bar in Nishi Ogikubo tells a complete story in six half-hour standalone episodes and completes a satisfying series-long arc.
This is why I prefer the slice-of-life genre. Challenges are taken on episode by episode, with an emphasis on the character arcs. In Komi Can't Communicate, Komi struggling toward her goal and Tadano simply being a genuinely good person (harder to depict than it sounds) make the story compelling.
Likewise, in the plot-heavy My Happy Marriage (Cinderella in early 20th century Japan), I find myself more interested in Miyo's self-actualization (that tired term actually applies here) than the tangled web of political machinations.
Interesting characters create interesting stories, not the other way around. In Jdrama romances especially, the realization too often dawns that, aside from the sturm und drang of the romance itself, these are really boring people. That and a smattering of common sense would fix most of their issues.
Both the abstract nature of anime as an artistic medium and the physical constraints of the production process make it easier to align the story to the viewing time in ways that are both more concrete and rewarding to the viewer.
Related posts
Anime reassessed (pacing matters)
Anime reassessed (culture matters)
Anime reassessed (numbers matter)
Labels: anime, anime lists, japanese culture, japanese tv, japanese tv reviews, jdrama, jme, netflix, streaming, tubi, viki
August 14, 2024
Netflix in Japanese (2)
Aside from anime, which continues to see dramatic increases in supply and demand, I remain skeptical that we are "on the precipice of a [live-action] content boom" from Japanese production houses. Rakuten Viki is a good yardstick and it continues to rely heavily on South Korea, China, and Southeast Asia for content.
Not Japan (despite Viki being a Japanese company). However, I do agree that despite the plodding evolution of the market,
the live-action series space is the area of Japanese entertainment where the surging investment from big foreign streamers is changing production standards most and where insiders say there is the biggest potential for a reinvigorating shake-up.
"Big foreign streamers" pretty much means Netflix. And maybe Jme TV, if it ever gets its act together.
Netflix has a strong presence in Japan and has been increasing the number of licensed and in-house productions it is sending east across the Pacific. Among subscription services, Netflix has the third biggest anime catalog in the North American market after Crunchyroll and Hidive and is getting competitive in live-action as well.
Although the live-action Japanese language catalogs at Netflix and Viki are about the same (adding in anime doubles the size for Netflix), Netflix has a wider range of curated content and an equally affordable entry point. And for now, Netflix is acquiring Japanese content for its North American catalog at a decidedly faster pace than Viki.
So little new Japanese content is showing up on Viki that I wonder if it decided to focus on Kdrama rather than compete with Netflix and NHK Cosmomedia. NHK Cosmomedia dumped all its premium streaming eggs into the Jme TV basket and is very likely staking a claim on every live-action series produced domestically.
I'm not convinced that effort is going to pay off. To start with, unlike Viki and Netflix, NHK Cosmomedia localizes very little of its catalog. Which brings us back to Netflix and Samurai vs Ninja and Tubi (that licenses Samurai vs Ninja content) as the only sure bets for localized live-action Japanese television going forward.
Though as I have pointed out previously, I can't pretend this is a great loss, as live-action Japanese television melodrama is a genre that has slowly but surely lost much of my interest.
Related posts
Japan's phantom content boom
Netflix in Japanese (1)
Netflix in Japanese (2)
Netflix in Japanese (3)
Samurai vs Ninja
Japanese language links
Labels: anime, business, japanese tv, jdrama, jme, netflix, samurai vs ninja, streaming, television, tubi, viki
June 26, 2024
Samurai vs Ninja
The service launched in 2023 as a joint venture between international distributor Remow and Nihon Eiga Broadcasting, which also runs its own pay TV channel for historical dramas. Samurai vs Ninja is active in forty countries around the world.
The corporate vision statement on the Remow website sums up the underlying problems with Japanese content distribution that have been brought into stark relief by the soaring popularity of Kdrama. Well, somebody finally decided to do something about it.
We hear more and more about Japanese productions being viewed around the world. However, the number of platforms on which Japanese titles can be viewed is limited. The truth is that many users all around the world are viewing pirated copies rather than using legitimate platforms. Japanese entertainment is an expression of our culture and our identity, and we want to deliver this entertainment culture to the people of the world along with the identity of our thoughts and feelings.Remow has identified a chronically underserved market (while NHK Cosmomedia invests in a vanishing niche with Jme TV). Samurai vs Ninja is a work in progress though I have to wonder if its appeal might prove too narrow. Maybe add "Cops vs Yakuza" to the mix next. And lean harder into licensing.
I expect that Sony will end up being taught as a case study in business schools for wisely resisting the siren song to launch its own branded streaming channel. It already owned Aniplex, an anime production and distribution company, and then purchased two established anime streaming services.
Sony subsequently merged Funimation and Crunchyroll into a worldwide operation under the Crunchyroll brand. It didn't have to spend the time and resources building the whole thing from scratch with untested original content.
Owning a bunch of content doesn't matter much if nobody knows about it and can't access it. To its credit, the Samurai vs Ninja YouTube channel is jam-packed with sample episodes and promotional material. Although for now, aside from the website, the only streaming apps are for Android and Apple.
Related links
Samurai vs Ninja (official website)
Samurai vs Ninja (YouTube channel)
Labels: business, crunchyroll, history, japanese culture, japanese tv, jme, nhk cosmomedia, remow, samurai vs ninja, sony, streaming, technology, tubi
June 08, 2024
Anime reassessed (numbers matter)
In my previous post on the subject, as an explanation for why Jdrama trails so far behind anime in the international marketplace, I theorized that Jdrama has difficulty syncing the amount of story available with the amount of time available over the typical run of a television series.
I will now try applying Occam's razor to the question, which broadly holds that the simplest theory is usually the best.
Sturgeon's law states that 90 percent of everything is crap. Statisticians call this phenomenon the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. In this case, 20 percent of the entertainment produced represents the 80 percent of the entertainment that's worth watching. The obvious solution, it would seem, is to just produce that 20 percent to start with.
The problem, as screenwriter William Goldman famously described Hollywood, is that "Nobody knows anything."
The smartest people in the room can rarely predict what that 20 percent will be ahead of time.
Even when the majority of consumers of a product agree about what is objectively good, that consensus is not necessarily synonymous with what they all like or what they are all willing to pay for. Once you start dividing the entertainment pie into mediums, audiences, and genres, the slices that appeal to any one person are going to end up being pretty thin.
When it comes to anime, I generally avoid isekai and anything that involves people getting trapped inside video games. Battle shonen like Jujutsu Kaisen test my patience too. In other words, I steer clear of many of the most popular genres (though I did enjoy Reborn as a Vending Machine and Chainsaw Man, that flipped a bunch of worn out formulas on their heads).
And yet, even taking those genres off the table, there are enough titles left over every season that I still have to whittle down the list of new shows I want to watch. With distributors like Crunchyroll and Netflix buying everything that the anime industry puts out, the pie keeps growing and growing and those thin genre slices start getting pretty big all on their own.
As Miles Atherton points out, the anime pie is now so large that, with the exception of children's television, more anime series are produced every year than all of the animated television programs in the rest of the world combined.
The expanding audience encourages distributors to buy more content, and anime producers in Japan to make more content, and more talent to enter the field, which increases the odds that the audience will find something to keep them watching. It's the virtuous circle of art and commerce that rewards more with more. Also known as the Matthew effect.
Kdrama is now in the same place.
At this rate, unless a major player like Netflix begins buying content like crazy, I don't see Jdrama expanding outside a few streaming niches.
If Edo period dramas are your thing, Samurai vs Ninja has a whole website just for you. Rakuten Viki focuses on romance, but even Viki (a Japanese company) acquires ten times as much Kdrama as Jdrama. Jme TV is the only active player licensing content across the board. But it localizes almost nothing in its catalog, which places a hard cap on future growth.
In the meantime, anime keeps going from strength to strength if only on the strength of numbers alone.
I will now try applying Occam's razor to the question, which broadly holds that the simplest theory is usually the best.
Sturgeon's law states that 90 percent of everything is crap. Statisticians call this phenomenon the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. In this case, 20 percent of the entertainment produced represents the 80 percent of the entertainment that's worth watching. The obvious solution, it would seem, is to just produce that 20 percent to start with.
The problem, as screenwriter William Goldman famously described Hollywood, is that "Nobody knows anything."
Even when the majority of consumers of a product agree about what is objectively good, that consensus is not necessarily synonymous with what they all like or what they are all willing to pay for. Once you start dividing the entertainment pie into mediums, audiences, and genres, the slices that appeal to any one person are going to end up being pretty thin.
When it comes to anime, I generally avoid isekai and anything that involves people getting trapped inside video games. Battle shonen like Jujutsu Kaisen test my patience too. In other words, I steer clear of many of the most popular genres (though I did enjoy Reborn as a Vending Machine and Chainsaw Man, that flipped a bunch of worn out formulas on their heads).
And yet, even taking those genres off the table, there are enough titles left over every season that I still have to whittle down the list of new shows I want to watch. With distributors like Crunchyroll and Netflix buying everything that the anime industry puts out, the pie keeps growing and growing and those thin genre slices start getting pretty big all on their own.
As Miles Atherton points out, the anime pie is now so large that, with the exception of children's television, more anime series are produced every year than all of the animated television programs in the rest of the world combined.
The expanding audience encourages distributors to buy more content, and anime producers in Japan to make more content, and more talent to enter the field, which increases the odds that the audience will find something to keep them watching. It's the virtuous circle of art and commerce that rewards more with more. Also known as the Matthew effect.
Kdrama is now in the same place.
At this rate, unless a major player like Netflix begins buying content like crazy, I don't see Jdrama expanding outside a few streaming niches.
If Edo period dramas are your thing, Samurai vs Ninja has a whole website just for you. Rakuten Viki focuses on romance, but even Viki (a Japanese company) acquires ten times as much Kdrama as Jdrama. Jme TV is the only active player licensing content across the board. But it localizes almost nothing in its catalog, which places a hard cap on future growth.
In the meantime, anime keeps going from strength to strength if only on the strength of numbers alone.
Related posts
Anime reassessed (pacing matters)
Anime reassessed (culture matters)
Anime reassessed (numbers matter)
Labels: anime, business, japanese culture, japanese movie reviews, jdrama, jme, kdrama, samurai vs ninja, technology, viki
May 29, 2024
Live-action Japanese TV
In many cases, push the price point low enough and you can stop thinking about the sunk costs. Kocowa, for example, South Korea's equivalent of TV Japan, offers its basic plan for $7/month. But the Jme TV website and app are so poorly designed that I'd be unlikely to stick around at any price greater than zero.
Speaking of which, NHK really ought to host a version of the Jme Select channel on NHK World Japan, along with the Asadora. If nothing else, it'd be a great publicity move. TV Japan used to be the only game in town for live-action Japanese content. Used to be. That built-in audience is long gone by now.
NHK World Japan, TV Japan's public service sibling, has something worthwhile to offer most days (especially during the sumo tournaments). NHK posts its flagship domestic newscasts online. Japan's commercial news networks stream their television feeds on YouTube. NHK's hourly radio broadcasts are also online.
And it's all free.
Back in February (the offer has since expired), I couldn't resist Rakuten Viki's 30 percent off sale and got the annual basic plan for $3.50/month. Even with its emphasis on romance and Kdrama, Viki has a decent enough collection of contemporary Jdrama that there simply isn't a downside.
Though given the glacial pace at which Viki acquires new Japanese content, I'll probably subscribe every other year. That's one reason why I think Viki should do a deal with NHK to license more of their material. (It is very telling that Rakuten Viki, a Japanese company, is dominated by Korean and Chinese content.)
Tubi is probably the best FAST (free advertising supported streaming television) streaming service currently available.
As Jordan Minor puts it, "Tubi fearlessly gets down and dirty by adding whatever cheap, old, and just plain weird stuff it can find to make sure you can always look forward to a novel viewing experience." In other words, Tubi's Japanese content consists of everything from art house to grindhouse to anime, along with quirky travelogues and documentaries.
My only big gripe with Tubi is the absence of language and country filters that would make it easier to find live-action Japanese content. Tubi has three anime channels and two Kdrama channels but nothing specific to Jdrama.
Many of the Japanese historical dramas on Tubi are distributed by Samurai vs Ninja, which has an impressive collection of action-oriented television movies and series from the 1970s up to the present. Content can be viewed online and there are apps for Android and Apple (but not Roku). The cost of a streaming subscription is $7.99/month.
With its worldwide reach, Netflix is emerging as one of the best sources of modern Japanese movies and television outside Japan. Netflix also provides subtitles in English and Japanese for many of its Japanese and non-Japanese titles.
The focus here is on live-action television, but you could spend a good portion of your life working through the free anime catalogs at Tubi and Retrocrush alone. Then for under $20/month total, you could add to that Crunchyroll, HIDIVE, and Netflix, and you'd need another lifetime.
Related posts
Jme TV (NHK World Premium)
Jme TV (grumpy old man edition)
Tubi in Japanese
News from Japan (in Japanese)
Japanese language links
Labels: anime, hidive, japanese culture, japanese tv, jdrama, jme, netflix, nhk, samurai vs ninja, streaming, tubi, viki
May 11, 2024
Japanese language links
My main online dictionary is Weblio. I also reference Eijirou and Word Bank.
NHK World Japan is NHK's English language service. The live feed can be viewed online, along with an extensive VOD library and OTA in some areas (9.4 in Northern Utah). There are apps for most streaming platforms.
The previous 24 hours of NHK Radio newscasts can be streamed online.
For now, my primary sources for anime and Jdrama are Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Tubi. Many of the Japanese historical dramas on Tubi are distributed by Samurai vs Ninja. I purchase emanga at BookWalker.
A Japanese tutoring YouTube channel I watch on a regular basis is Kaname Naito.
Related links
Weblio
Eijirou
Word Bank
Word Hippo
NHK World (Japanese)
NHK World (English)
News from Japan
NHK Radio News
Crunchyroll
Tubi
Netflix
Samurai vs Ninja
BookWalker (Japanese)
BookWalker (English)
Kindle Store
Yes Asia
Labels: anime, bookwalker, crunchyroll, ebooks, hidive, japanese, japanese tv, jdrama, jme, kindle, language, netflix, nhk, nhk world, samurai vs ninja
May 04, 2024
Jme TV (a few suggestions)
Dish briefly picked up Family Gekijyo after getting dumped by TV Japan. DirecTV offers Nippon TV as a replacement for TV Japan. NHK World Japan aside, there's no Japanese programming left on Xfinity or Dish. By contrast, Korean live-action content is available everywhere and on all platforms. Even Tubi has two dedicated Kdrama channels.
Live-action television comprises a paltry 5.5 percent of Japan's media exports. Fuyuhiko Takahori points to the cour system, with small budgets and short run-times holding down audience size, which limits budgets and run-times. But as anime has proven, I don't think the cour system is the impediment Takahori makes it out to be.
The cour-length season became standard practice in North America back during the premium cable days, long before streaming took off.
There's nothing wrong with the episode counts of the typical Jdrama series. The push, rather, should be to increase audience size. NHK Cosmomedia's overpriced and poorly designed streaming service is the wrong approach. If NHK cannot reduce costs to the consumer, it should let somebody else handle the business.
Another part of the problem may be a sibling rivalry. NHK World Japan is a worldwide service with an international audience, available for free online and streaming, on cable and satellite, and OTA in nineteen North American markets.
NHK World Japan is on YouTube and even shows up in screensaver ads on my Roku. Compared to NHK World Japan, NHK World Premium (née TV Japan) has taken over a vanishing niche. Jme TV is not a long-term solution. Granted, if you're looking for a one-stop shop, now you don't have a choice, unless one of the choices is "None of the above."
Here are a few possible solutions. I was also going to suggest creating a VOD sumo channel but Jme has already done that. So kudos for that. However, I would mirror the sumo channel on NHK World Japan as well.
- Move Jme Select to the free NHK World Japan website and use the same templates for the program guide. Jme Select has the same format as NHK World Japan, meaning a six-hour block of programs repeated four times a day. NHK World Japan should also add the Asadora with subtitles. It'd be a great PR move.
Like NHK World Japan, the Select programming would be primarily news and infotainment. The premium drama and variety content would remain behind the paywall. Even NHK World Japan content could be reused by removing the dubbing and ADR. - Do a deal with Rakuten Viki similar to the deal Viki has with Kocowa. Kocowa is South Korea's far more affordable equivalent of NHK World Premium. The $10/month Viki Pass Plus plan gives subscribers access to Kocowa and the entire Viki catalog, that includes VOD content from across Asia, including Japan.
A hypothetical Viki Pass Japan Plus plan would provide subscribers with access to Viki's VOD catalog and all of the non-localized material that previously ended up on TV Japan. One big advantage here is that Rakuten Viki is a well-designed and well-known (in its niche) website with all of the streaming apps in place. - Okay, instead of doing a deal with Rakuten Viki, at least copy their website and app designs. Viki really does have one of the best streaming UIs in the business. And then only stream the newscasts live (simply copy the news section from NHK World Premium). Make the rest of the programming available as VOD.
- If nothing else, the core VOD streaming service should cost considerably less. HIDIVE and Viki charge $6/month. Kocowa and Netflix start at $7/month. You can bundle Viki and Kocowa for $10/month. Crunchyroll's basic tier is $8/month. HIDIVE, Viki, and Crunchyroll offer discounted annual subscriptions.
And for a non-hypothetical option, simply go elsewhere. If you're willing to forgo the latest and greatest from prime time Japanese TV and do a bit of spelunking through sites like Viki, Tubi, and Netflix, there is plenty of (legal) live-action content available at far more affordable prices and even for free.
Related posts
Jme TV
NHK World Japan
Live-action Japanese TV
Jme TV (grumpy old man edition)
Labels: business, japanese tv, jme, nhk, nhk cosmomedia, nhk world, streaming, technology, television
April 27, 2024
Jme My List management
If a show on Jme TV is in a series, the series can be removed from the queue ("My List"). But for movies and series listed as standalone episodes (like Shoten), I couldn't figure out how to remove them from the queue. Clicking the thumbnail simply replayed the show without providing any other options.
But it turns out there is a workaround.
After you've watched a show, the title URL defaults to the following format:
If you edit the URL as follows, then the My List checkmark icon will appear:
The hashmarks represent the five or six-digit code at the end of the URL unique to each program.
One of the best features of the Roku is its simple user interface. To make things even simpler, under
But it turns out there is a workaround.
After you've watched a show, the title URL defaults to the following format:
https://www.jme.tv/playback/item/######If you edit the URL as follows, then the My List checkmark icon will appear:
https://www.jme.tv/details/VIDEO/item/######The hashmarks represent the five or six-digit code at the end of the URL unique to each program.
One of the best features of the Roku is its simple user interface. To make things even simpler, under
Settings > Home Screen > Layout you can remove a lot of the clutter on the Roku home screen.Useful links
NHK World Premium program guide
NHK World News (in Japanese)
NHK Radio News (in Japanese)
News networks that stream on YouTube (in Japanese)
Labels: dlibjapan, japanese tv, jme, streaming, technology
March 23, 2024
Jme TV (NHK World Premium)
The big new feature is the addition of NHK World Premium as a replacement for TV Japan.
The rollout actually began on March 19. March 20 was the official start date for transitioning legacy TV Japan customers to the new service, with a 30-day free trial period tossed in for current Jme TV and TV Japan subscribers. So I'll stick around for at least another month.
The only noticeable change to Jme is the addition of the three (grossly oversized) buttons pictured above.
Jme Select
NHK World Premium
NHK World Japan
Jme Select uses the same format as NHK World Japan (a six-hour block repeated four times a day) but with content based on the domestic NHK feed. The NHK World Japan button simply mirrors the live stream that is also available at the NHK World Japan website (for free).
The NHK World Premium content is the live stream used in Europe since NHK shut down its European satellite service (JSTV) at the end of October 2023.
A Schedule link has been added to the Jme website and app, though the program guides at the NHK World Japan and NHK World Premium websites are easier to follow. For the latter, plug in your time zone at the top and you're good to go.
I am baffled why NHK Cosmomedia didn't repurpose the NHK World Premium website since the programming is the same. The NHK World Japan and NHK World Premium sites are better designed and far more functional. The Jme website and app have the same lousy user interface.
I have to hope that once everything is up and running, NHK Cosmomedia will rebuild the TV Japan website as the new home page. Though at the current prices, I won't be sticking around to use it in any case.
NHK Cosmomedia grandfathered in a two-tiered subscription plan for dLibrary Japan subscribers, with the VOD tier at $15/month. I might have been tempted at the original $9.99/month rate. That temptation evaporates at $15/month. At $25/month, I don't have to give it a second thought.
So I'm gone after the trial period ends. But I'll still give it a month and a half to see how the whole thing works. The video quality so far is certainly satisfactory.
Related posts
Jme TV
NHK World Japan program schedule
NHK World Premium program schedule
Whither TV Japan
The end of TV Japan
Jme TV (grumpy old man edition)
Labels: business, dlibjapan, japanese, japanese culture, japanese tv, jme, streaming, technology, television, tv japan
February 17, 2024
The end of TV Japan
Based on pretty good evidence, namely that TV Japan had disappeared from the international lineups of every single cable and satellite service in North America, I concluded that NHK Cosmomedia had pulled the plug on its TV Japan contracts. It also followed that the reason the TV Japan website hadn't been updated was because it was going away by April 2024.
Well, now it is official. TV Japan will expire in six weeks.
And what will replace it? Jme TV, of course.
I also speculated that the current Jme TV website may be a placeholder. After all, the TV Japan URL is going to be available pretty soon. A simple redirect would take care of that. But we'll find out in April. Morbid curiosity remains my main motivation now. If NHK Cosmomedia persists with the TV Japan pricing model, that's when my subscription ends as well.
Well, now it is official. TV Japan will expire in six weeks.
After more than three decades of broadcasting Japanese television programming to audiences across North America, we regret to inform you that TV JAPAN will cease its broadcast on March 31 [and] will no longer be accessible [as a cable or satellite service] as of April 1, 2024.
And what will replace it? Jme TV, of course.
With Jme, you'll have access to live NHK news, the latest dramas, popular movies, and much more—all conveniently accessible on internet-connected devices. With Jme, you’ll have the flexibility to enjoy your favorite Japanese programs from the comfort of your home or on the go.
I also speculated that the current Jme TV website may be a placeholder. After all, the TV Japan URL is going to be available pretty soon. A simple redirect would take care of that. But we'll find out in April. Morbid curiosity remains my main motivation now. If NHK Cosmomedia persists with the TV Japan pricing model, that's when my subscription ends as well.
Related posts
Jme TV
Whither TV Japan
Jme TV (grumpy old man edition)
Labels: business, jme, nhk, nhk cosmomedia, streaming, television, tv japan
February 14, 2024
Jme TV (grumpy old man edition)
To give credit where it is due, you can now bookmark shows in your browser and you don't get logged out every time you close the browser tab.
Still, it wouldn't hurt to fix the UI problems, such as a useless banner that takes up half of the home page. The oversized genre icons that belong in a menu. Get rid of horizontal scrolling. NHK World Japan has a list-based program guide. Viki has a grid-based program guide. Both are so much better. Pick one.
I really cannot overemphasize how badly designed the Jme TV website is and how difficult it would be to scale in its current configuration. Again, I have to hope it is only a placeholder and something better will emerge in April.
In Japan, everything starts in April, from the school year to the corporate fiscal year. Except for the NHK Taiga drama. It starts in January. Speaking of which, new episodes of the Taiga drama are being added every week. Along with other recent TV Japan content, the catalog no longer feels so threadbare.
Although it's akin to filling a swimming pool with a squirt gun.
My theory for the premature rollout is that NHK Cosmomedia went ahead and pulled the plug on its TV Japan cable contracts and has to fill that hole by April 2024 with something. They should have followed the herd and called the new site TV Japan Plus or NHK World Plus and reused what they had on hand.
As a previous dLibrary Japan subscriber, I signed up for $9.99/month. That $9.99/month price lasts three months and then skyrockets to $25/month, which makes this a three-month experiment. Nothing NHK Cosmomedia has put on the table so far is worth $9.99/month, let alone 2.5 times that.
Once upon a time, TV Japan had a monopoly on live-action Japanese content and could charge whatever the market could bear. That didn't mean we liked it. As one Reddit commenter puts it, "$25/month for mostly NHK through an already overpriced cable package was one of the larger ripoffs in my life."
Taken together, there is plenty of Japanese content on Viki ($5.99/month), Netflix ($6.99/month), and Crunchyroll ($7.99/month) I could be watching instead. All three don't add up to $25/month and I don't subscribe to all three at the same time. And that's not counting NHK World Japan (free) and Tubi (free).
The only criteria Tubi appears to follow when licensing Japanese content is that it's cheap and available. It's an approach that delivers a lot of dreck, but at the same time, often yields pleasant surprises, like the Edo period Detective Dobu television series from 1991. I just wish Tubi would make it easier to find.
If NHK Cosmomedia had any sense, it'd make the site free until it becomes fully functional and then copy Rakuten Viki's pricing plan, starting at $5.99/month.
It could offer a premium tier to those who want to watch live broadcasts and real-time news (though NHK's domestic news programs are free on the NHK World Premium website).
Anyway, we'll find out in April if there is any there there. I have to admit, morbid curiosity is my main motivation now. Like, you can't sign up for TV Japan using the information on the TV Japan website. It points you to providers who have removed TV Japan from their lineups. But that page hasn't been taken down.
This is the same page that states, "The price of TV Japan is about $15/month." That has never been true and yet it's been posted there for a year. One cynical explanation is that it doesn't matter because it's all going away in April. Another is that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
Oh, and to answer a previous question, the name "is derived from the hope that Jme can help bridge Japan (J) and (me)." At least the URL is easier to remember.
Related posts
Whither TV Japan
dLibrary Japan (big upgrade in the works)
Labels: business, dlibjapan, japanese tv, jme, nhk, nhk cosmomedia, nhk world, streaming, television, tv japan
February 10, 2024
Whither TV Japan
As a result, NHK Cosmomedia became the primary buyer and distributor of live-action content from Fuji TV, Nippon TV, TBS, TV Asahi, TV Tokyo, and Wowow, with NHK World Japan relying largely on JIB TV.
Unlike anime, few other platforms have demonstrated a great desire to compete in this space. Even Rakuten Viki and Netflix focus most of their programming efforts in Asian on Kdrama. Japanese content is more of a side gig.
Which is why TV Japan has been able to levy a $25/month premium for the past three decades. By contrast, Kokowa, the Korean equivalent of TV Japan, charges $6.99/month for its streaming service (also available on Xfinity X1).
Nevertheless, I grudgingly paid the price when TV Japan was on DISH and the grand total came to $42/month. When TV Japan left DISH and went to DirecTV and Xfinity, the overhead almost doubled the total into no way territory.
By then, more affordable options had become available. Crunchyroll offers a vast library of anime for $7.99/month. You can stream NHK's domestic newscasts and Japan's commercial news services post their live feeds to YouTube. NHK World Japan is free.
In the meantime, streaming has been eating away at traditional cable TV like a hungry great white shark. As Luke Bouma sums up the bad news,
In just the first half of 2023, cable TV companies lost over 2,748,000 TV subscribers. All together, cable TV companies are losing about 15,000 subscribers every single day in 2023. If this trend continues, cable TV companies will lose over 4 million subscribers in 2023.
As things turned out, in 2023, Comcast alone lost over 2,036,000 TV subscribers and another 38,676 Internet customers to 5G home Internet and fiber.
This demographic reality first struck home in Europe, where NHK's home satellite service (JSTV) shut down on October 31, 2023, citing a decline in subscribers. In its domestic market, NHK merged BS1 and BS Premium into NHK BS on December 1, 2023.
Things that can't go on forever won't. The question is how long forever is. In this case, it may have already happened. A commenter points out that TV Japan is no longer in the international channel lineups on the Xfinity and DirecTV websites.
Indeed, while the TV Japan website still lists Xfinity as a provider, if you navigate to the international channels on DISH, Xfinity, Optimum, and DirecTV, the Japanese option is gone. TV Japan is also not available on any of the live TV streaming services.
Spectrum will formally bid TV Japan goodbye at the end of March.
TV Japan and TV Japan HD on channels 1500 and 2587 will cease programming and will no longer be available on the Spectrum TV lineup after March 31.
The obvious conclusion is that, after over three decades on satellite and cable, NHK Cosmomedia is abandoning traditional linear TV as the content delivery vehicle for TV Japan in North America, with a target date of April 1, 2024.
If so, NHK World Japan likely has a lot to do with the decision. NHK Cosmomedia launched NHK World Japan in 1998 and has since transformed it into a free livestreaming, video-on-demand, and (in some areas) over-the-air service.
So it has been there and done that and should know the ropes. Although since TV Japan only broadcasts the news and some sporting events live, it may not need to livestream at all.
In any case, this would explain why Jme TV is charging $25/month for new sign-ups. Because that's been the cost of a TV Japan subscription since time immemorial. Then why not host TV Japan on the TV Japan website? We should find out in April.
But let me wildly speculate. The first Jme TV signup email that NHK Cosmomedia sent out by accident suggested a tiered subscription model. What we could be getting in April is a livestream link to TV Japan.
Related links
NHK World (Japanese)
NHK World (English)
TV Japan
News from Japan
Jme TV
Japan's phantom content boom
Labels: business, dlibjapan, japanese tv, jme, streaming, technology, tv japan
January 13, 2024
Jme TV (Oops!)
Having never heard of it before, my first reaction was to wonder how it got my email address. The obvious sources were TV Japan or dLibrary Japan. I did a trademark search and, yes, NHK Cosmomedia registered the JME logo. But despite touting Roku support in the email, there wasn't a JME app on the Roku website.
And the dLibrary Japan website placeholder hadn't changed. Was this the relaunch of dLibrary Japan? That question was answered by a totally not unexpected second email from NHK Cosmomedia three hours later that basically said, "Um, you know that email you just got? Please ignore it and don't click on any of the links."
In a few days, we will notify you via email about the launch of the new video streaming service "Jme," replacing dLibrary Japan. Please stay tuned for this email, as it will contain a special promotion code for exclusive viewing at a discounted rate.
And then three hours after that, dLibrary Japan sent the same email. Apology accepted!
Good to know that JME is a legit NHK Cosmomedia website and it is intended as the replacement for dLibrary Japan. In fact, NHK Cosmomedia registered the JME logo in June 2023 and announced the suspension of dLibrary Japan in September. It's sort of reassuring that the project has been on the back burner for that long.
I still have questions. To start with, what does JME even stand for?
Labels: dlibjapan, japanese tv, jme, nhk cosmomedia, nhk world, streaming, tv japan
February 06, 2020
Netflix in Japanese (1)
Although investors blanch at Netflix's content acquisition burn rate, as a subscriber, I certainly appreciate how often new Japanese content shows up in the catalog.
Crunchyroll in particular acquires so much content every season that you have to study the descriptions and early reviews to see which ones you want to follow. Netflix, on the other hand, adds a new Japanese title every week or so. Its curated approach makes me curious to see what caught its attention.
Though I'll still head over to ANN and Crunchyroll to check out the reviews. One unfortunate turn taken by Netflix was nixing user reviews, a prime factor in what makes Crunchyroll a stand-out site.
(User reviews on Crunchyroll were removed back in July 2024 in order to "reduce harmful content" and "prevent misinformation." But mostly, I suspect, because the moderating costs were a big resource sink. If you want anime reviews, you can always head over to ANN and MAL.)
While Netflix has fewer anime titles than Hidive, it is actively acquiring live-action content too. Jme has the most live-action titles, though very few of them are localized. Rakuten Viki is still the best source for localized Jdrama.
By establishing "comprehensive business alliances" with studios like Production I.G and BONES, Netflix avoids carriage and licensing disputes while giving its partners greater creative control than broadcasting regulations in Japan allow. Just as importantly, it can localize the content everywhere it does business.
Notes Kotaro Yoshikawa, VP of distribution and licensing at TMS Entertainment, another one of Netflix's Japanese production partners, "Netflix is producing dubbed versions in several languages and subtitles in more than 20 languages, with a release to around 200 countries in one go, which we couldn't do."
One of those countries is, of course, Japan, meaning that Japanese language titles on Netflix often include Japanese closed captions. It's a feature offered by no other similar service, not even TV Japan or NHK World. This unique language learning resource alone places Netflix in a category of its own.
Related posts
Japan's phantom content boom
Netflix in Japanese (1)
Netflix in Japanese (2)
Netflix in Japanese (3)
Samurai vs Ninja
Japanese language links
Labels: anime, business, dlibjapan, japanese tv, jdrama, jme, netflix, nhk world, samurai vs ninja, streaming, television, tv japan