October 02, 2024
Tonbo!
International media distributor Remow teamed up with Nihon Eiga Broadcasting to bring historical dramas to overseas audiences with its Samurai vs Ninja website and YouTube channel. Remow has also gotten into anime licensing and continues to refrain from exclusives, sharing content on Tubi and YouTube.
Tonbo! (2024) is the best title in their anime portfolio so far. The manga by Ken Kawasaki and Yu Furusawa has been serialized in Weekly Golf Digest since 2014 and currently totals 52 volumes. So the viewer would do well to keep in mind that this isn't your usual shonen sports drama. It is written for golfers.
In other words, if you don't find Tonbo's inventive use of a 3 iron inherently fascinating, then the series probably isn't for you.
The plot merges the premises of Barakamon (2014), in which a professional calligrapher with a troubled past exiles himself to a tiny island and meets a bunch of quirky kids, and Rising Impact (2024), in which an eight-year-old golfing prodigy from the sticks is recruited to the elite Camelot Academy.
For idiosyncratic reasons I never divined, the names of several characters in Rising Impact are derived from the aforementioned Camelot, like Gawain and Lancelot. And speaking of Gawain (Misaki Kuno), a good part of the fun is listening to him (her) speak in a Tohoku accent you could cut with a knife.
In Tonbo! a professional golfer with a troubled past exiles himself to a tiny island in the Tokara archipelago and there encounters a quirky island girl named Tonbo, who turns out to be a golfing prodigy. He sees in her great potential, potential that will remain dormant and untested if she remains an island girl.
Along with smoothing out her more eccentric golfing habits (while not interfering with her unique approach to the game), he nudges her to leave the island when she graduates from junior high. The island has no high school. Students continuing their education live with relatives or attend boarding schools.
The Tokara archipelago is collectively governed as a village of Kagoshima Prefecture, so the favored destination for transfer students is the port city of Kagoshima and the surrounding areas.
While thoroughly entertaining, Birdie Wing (2022) and Rising Impact are so over the top that they more resemble superhero franchises that have to constantly invent new comically overpowered villains (and golf courses designed by M.C. Escher) to challenge the skills of the comically overpowered protagonists.
Tonbo! is far more realistic and treats the subject with the most technical accuracy. The main characters have actual character arcs, so there's no need for vaudevillian villains to create dramatic conflict. Instead, we focus our attention on how Tonbo evolves as an already gifted golfer and grows as a human being.
It's been an entertaining journey so far and I hope we can follow her all the way to a professional career.
The second cour is a continuation of season 1 starting with episode 14.
Tonbo! (2024) is the best title in their anime portfolio so far. The manga by Ken Kawasaki and Yu Furusawa has been serialized in Weekly Golf Digest since 2014 and currently totals 52 volumes. So the viewer would do well to keep in mind that this isn't your usual shonen sports drama. It is written for golfers.
The plot merges the premises of Barakamon (2014), in which a professional calligrapher with a troubled past exiles himself to a tiny island and meets a bunch of quirky kids, and Rising Impact (2024), in which an eight-year-old golfing prodigy from the sticks is recruited to the elite Camelot Academy.
For idiosyncratic reasons I never divined, the names of several characters in Rising Impact are derived from the aforementioned Camelot, like Gawain and Lancelot. And speaking of Gawain (Misaki Kuno), a good part of the fun is listening to him (her) speak in a Tohoku accent you could cut with a knife.
In Tonbo! a professional golfer with a troubled past exiles himself to a tiny island in the Tokara archipelago and there encounters a quirky island girl named Tonbo, who turns out to be a golfing prodigy. He sees in her great potential, potential that will remain dormant and untested if she remains an island girl.
Along with smoothing out her more eccentric golfing habits (while not interfering with her unique approach to the game), he nudges her to leave the island when she graduates from junior high. The island has no high school. Students continuing their education live with relatives or attend boarding schools.
The Tokara archipelago is collectively governed as a village of Kagoshima Prefecture, so the favored destination for transfer students is the port city of Kagoshima and the surrounding areas.
While thoroughly entertaining, Birdie Wing (2022) and Rising Impact are so over the top that they more resemble superhero franchises that have to constantly invent new comically overpowered villains (and golf courses designed by M.C. Escher) to challenge the skills of the comically overpowered protagonists.
Tonbo! is far more realistic and treats the subject with the most technical accuracy. The main characters have actual character arcs, so there's no need for vaudevillian villains to create dramatic conflict. Instead, we focus our attention on how Tonbo evolves as an already gifted golfer and grows as a human being.
It's been an entertaining journey so far and I hope we can follow her all the way to a professional career.
The second cour is a continuation of season 1 starting with episode 14.
Related videos
Tonbo! (Tubi YouTube Prime)
Barakamon
Birdie Wing
Rising Impact
Labels: anime lists, anime reviews, geography, japanese culture, manga, remow, samurai vs ninja, sports, tubi
September 04, 2024
Tubi in Japanese (3)
Even there, the Tubi search engine is fuzzy, so the hits will be all over the map and may have nothing to do with Japan. And because Tubi licenses just about anything as long as it's cheap and available, everything from art house to grindhouse to documentaries and travelogues will show up in the results.
I've curated a list of Japanese language titles on Tubi I thought were worth a second glance. I will update this list on a semi-regular basis.
- Kamen Rider: Kuuga (2001) A young Joe Odagiri sets this entry in the long-running franchise apart from the rest. Alas, it suffers from the monster-of-the-week formula and is further hurt by the bad guys having no clear-cut motivation, which turns it into serial-killer-of-the-week. The body count is astronomical. But you can watch it to enjoy Joe Odagiri and a talented supporting cast.
- By contrast, Kamen Rider: Zero-One (2020) follows the George of the Jungle (1997) rule: "Nobody dies in this story. They just get really big boo-boos." Zero-One also illustrates how far budget CGI has evolved in twenty years. Alas, good CGI can't compensate for bad scripts. The series might have worked as a smarter Terminator prequel than the usual but instead gets painfully repetitious.
- Liz and the Blue Bird (2018) is a side story from Kyoto Animation's Sound Euphonium franchise. The movie revisits the first season from the perspective of two members of the high school brass band (supporting characters in the main series) as they rehearse a duet to be featured in the prefectural band competition.
- Onihei (2017) is based on the crime novels by Shotaro Ikenami. Heizo Hasegawa is police superintendent with an intimidating reputation (oni means devil). He and his men specifically investigate crimes of theft, armed robbery, and arson. This action-heavy Edo period police procedural doesn't flinch from depicting the complete lack of due process rights afforded to suspects at the time.
- Priest of Darkness (1975) shares a similar premise with Zankuro (2001). Like Ken Watanabe's Zankuro, Shintaro Katsu (of Zatoichi fame) plays a tea master with a high social rank but a meager stipend. Constantly hustling to pay the rent, he and his little gang settle disputes, investigate crimes, and dispense unofficial justice around the neighborhood.
- Sonny Chiba again plays the historical figure Yagyu Jubei in Shogun's Mission. Jubei's brother is an inspector on the famed Tokai Highway. Yagyu Jubei and his band of ninjas tag along as his bodyguards. This is classic road movie material with at least one big fight scene per episode. The Japanese title translates as "Yagyu's Unruly Journey."
- Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan (2017) is a live-action spin-off from Hirohiko Araki's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series. I never got into the latter but quite like the former. Kishibe Rohan is a mangaka who investigates paranormal mysteries for inspiration when he gets writer's block. Basically he and his editor are Mulder and Scully. Issei Takahashi does well in the lead role.
- Speaking of road movies, from 1962 to 1989, Shintaro Katsu made twenty-six Zatoichi films, along with four seasons of the Zatoichi television series. Each episode has the itinerant blind masseur running into a bunch of bad guys who will get sliced and diced in his inimitable style by the time the end credits roll.
Related posts
Tubi in Japanese (1)
Tubi in Japanese (2)
Tubi in Japanese (3)
Samurai vs Ninja
Japanese language links
Labels: anime, anime lists, anime reviews, crunchyroll, kyoani, samurai vs ninja, streaming, television reviews, tubi
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
September 16, 2023
Classic Toei samurai shows
Abarenbo Shogun ("The Unfettered Shogun") ran for 831 episodes between 1978 and 2008, placing it third behind Zenigata Heiji and Mito Komon. Over a four-decade long run, Mito Komon reached a staggering 1,227 episodes, the record for a Japanese period drama.
Abarenbo Shogun and Mito Komon share the same premise: a high Tokugawa official dons a disguise and mingles among the commoners to deliver rough justice to the bad guys. As the title makes clear, in Abarenbo Shogun, the official is the shogun himself.
Ken Matsudaira played Tokugawa Yoshimune for the entire series while five actors took on the lead role as Tokugawa Mitsukuni on Mito Komon.
As governor of Mito, the maverick Mitsukuni laid the groundwork that eventually led to the domain playing a key role in the Meiji Restoration a hundred and fifty years later. The equally impressive Yoshimune is ranked among the best of the Tokugawa shoguns.
The first episode of Abarenbo Shogun introduces another historical character, the respected Ooka Tadasuke, who was appointed by Yoshimune. As an Edo period magistrate, he functioned as both the chief of police and the presiding judge.
The series has Yoshimune using the residence of an old firefighter friend as his base of operations. It's a perfect setup for an action-oriented police procedural. With decent scripts, acting, and directing, it's easy to see why it lasted so long.
The Toei Jidaigeki channel has the first two subtitled episodes of Abarenbo Shogun. The channel includes sample shows from other classic samurai series, including Sonny Chiba's Yagyu Abaretabi and Shadow Warriors.
In Shadow Warriors, Chiba is the laid-back owner of a bathhouse in Edo. But that's a cover for his real job as a secret agent for the shogunate. In each of the five seasons, he returns as a different descendent of the Iga ninja Hattori Hanzo, a role he reprised for Kill Bill.
Yagyu Abaretabi, by contrast, is a road movie. Chiba again plays a historical figure, Yagyu Jubei. His brother is an inspector on the famed Tokai Highway. Chiba and his band of ninjas tag along as his bodyguards. It's another great premise for an ongoing series.
The Toei Jidaigeki channel includes the 1972 remake of the acclaimed Kutsukake Tokijiro, an Edo period yakuza redemption drama. But also in the mix are several martial arts and tokusatsu series that put the low in low budget. Production quality is all over the place.
The first season of Shadow Warriors is on Tubi. The movie Uzumasa Limelight looks at the genre from the perspective of a sword stuntman who has difficulty finding work after spending his entire career on a period drama like Mito Komon.
Samurai dramas were once as dominate on Japanese television as Westerns were on American television. Incidentally, Rawhide (1959–1965), the series that made Clint Eastwood a star, was a big hit in Japan at the time.
Especially with Shadow Warriors, be forewarned that broadcast standards during the 1970s and 1980s in Japan were not as stringent as those in North America. On the other hand, "golden time" shows like Abarenbo Shogun and Mito Komon remained more family friendly.
Ken Matsudaira played Tokugawa Yoshimune for the entire series while five actors took on the lead role as Tokugawa Mitsukuni on Mito Komon.
As governor of Mito, the maverick Mitsukuni laid the groundwork that eventually led to the domain playing a key role in the Meiji Restoration a hundred and fifty years later. The equally impressive Yoshimune is ranked among the best of the Tokugawa shoguns.
The series has Yoshimune using the residence of an old firefighter friend as his base of operations. It's a perfect setup for an action-oriented police procedural. With decent scripts, acting, and directing, it's easy to see why it lasted so long.
The Toei Jidaigeki channel has the first two subtitled episodes of Abarenbo Shogun. The channel includes sample shows from other classic samurai series, including Sonny Chiba's Yagyu Abaretabi and Shadow Warriors.
In Shadow Warriors, Chiba is the laid-back owner of a bathhouse in Edo. But that's a cover for his real job as a secret agent for the shogunate. In each of the five seasons, he returns as a different descendent of the Iga ninja Hattori Hanzo, a role he reprised for Kill Bill.
Yagyu Abaretabi, by contrast, is a road movie. Chiba again plays a historical figure, Yagyu Jubei. His brother is an inspector on the famed Tokai Highway. Chiba and his band of ninjas tag along as his bodyguards. It's another great premise for an ongoing series.
The Toei Jidaigeki channel includes the 1972 remake of the acclaimed Kutsukake Tokijiro, an Edo period yakuza redemption drama. But also in the mix are several martial arts and tokusatsu series that put the low in low budget. Production quality is all over the place.
The first season of Shadow Warriors is on Tubi. The movie Uzumasa Limelight looks at the genre from the perspective of a sword stuntman who has difficulty finding work after spending his entire career on a period drama like Mito Komon.
Samurai dramas were once as dominate on Japanese television as Westerns were on American television. Incidentally, Rawhide (1959–1965), the series that made Clint Eastwood a star, was a big hit in Japan at the time.
Especially with Shadow Warriors, be forewarned that broadcast standards during the 1970s and 1980s in Japan were not as stringent as those in North America. On the other hand, "golden time" shows like Abarenbo Shogun and Mito Komon remained more family friendly.
Related links
Toei Jidaigeki channel
Uzumasa Limelight
Shadow Warriors
Labels: history, japanese, japanese culture, japanese tv, samurai vs ninja, streaming
December 31, 2022
Netflix with ads (content)
In the meantime, Netflix made an important update to its search tools. "Browse by Languages" is now featured in the top menu. Previously, the only way to bring up the language menu was to search for the language content first (you had to search for Japanese content in order to search for Japanese content).
This is one feature that Tubi really needs to implement. Just steal the whole UI from Netflix. Though one oddity is that if you select the A-Z filter, you only get the first half of the alphabet. You have to select Z-A to get the other half. Hey, it's a feature, not a bug! (Don't steal that part.)
Netflix has about as many Japanese live-action series and features as Viki and Tubi, though Netflix covers a wider variety of genres and Tubi features older rerun material. Of course, Crunchyroll and HIDIVE have many more anime titles. Another big difference is that Netflix closely curates its catalog.
That curation does make a difference. Compared to Crunchyroll, HIDIVE, and Tubi, I have seen or am interesting in watching a higher percentage of Netflix anime titles (though there seems to be a polarizing effect too, as the ones I'm not interested in I usually have zero interest in).
At the top of my current list are the latest seasons of Ghost in the Shell, Ultraman, Midnight Diner, and The Way of the Househusband, along with Kotaru Lives Alone, Romantic Killer, I'm Old Enough, and The Makanai, the live-action version of Kiyo in Kyoto.
Though along with its Lupin the Third and Tokusatsu flicks, Tubi's kitchen sink approach occasionally produces some golden oldies.
For example, Tubi has Sonny Chiba's Shadow Warriors ninja series from 1980. Japanese broadcast television was more permissive back then, so along with the slicing and dicing, most episodes feature at least one scene of totally gratuitous nudity. Sonny Chiba's charisma shines through regardless.
As did Hollywood at the time, Japanese television studios back then mastered everything on videotape. It'd be nice if Netflix could grab some old samurai action classics (like the more family friendly Abarenbo Shogun) and run the SD masters through the best upscaling technology available.
On a separate note, I observed last summer that Eleven Arts had pulled its excellent slate of anime movies from Tubi, including Liz and the Blue Bird, Maquia, Penguin Highway, Sound Euphonium, and The Wonderland. They've since all shown up on Crunchyroll.
Related posts
Kiyo in Kyoto
I'm Old Enough
Netflix with ads
Netflix with ads (first impressions)
Labels: anime, business, crunchyroll, hidive, japanese, netflix, samurai vs ninja, streaming, television, tubi
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.
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Labels: anime, business, dlibjapan, japanese tv, jdrama, jme, netflix, nhk world, samurai vs ninja, streaming, television, tv japan