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
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