South Korea and Japan Emerge as Key Battlegrounds in the Streaming Wars Patrick Brzeski Composition of characters from The Silent Sea, Kingdom: Ashin of the North, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.
Netflix is so famously data-driven that understanding its growth strategy tends to be ruthlessly straightforward: “Follow the money.” Recently, a growing share of the streamer’s cash pile has been pouring into two key content categories in East Asia: South Korean drama and Japanese anime.
In February, Netflix held a star-studded event in Seoul, where it pledged to spend $500 million on South Korean film and series in 2021 alone. A month later, at an event in Tokyo, the company said it would premiere upward of 40 new original Japanese anime titles this year double the number it released in 2020.
South Korea and Japan Emerge as Key Battlegrounds in the Streaming Wars hollywoodreporter.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hollywoodreporter.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In the early 2000s,
Dragon Ball Z would play all day on a now defunct channel called Toonami, and I would lie on the sofa from 9am to 5pm with a mixing bowl of cornflakes, watching Goku scream and bulge for that latest power level.
I probably took in just as much advertising as I did anime: there would be at least four five-minute ads per 20 minute show, mostly accident insurance scams for employees who had been crushed by paint cans. That was the first and last anime I watched until I discovered illegal streaming, where I had to contend with fuzzy videos surrounded by frightening pornography – karmic justice for stealing.
Netflix lanzará hasta 40 nuevos animes durante el 2021 larepublica.pe - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from larepublica.pe Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Making local content for a global audience
Anime is very popular in Japan. Netflix says half of its Japanese subscribers watch an average of five hours per month of its anime content. But it has a global reach as well. Half of Netflix s 200 million global subscribers watched at least one anime title in recent months, Taiki Sakurai, Netflix s chief anime producer, said.
Still, the interest in anime is heavily concentrated in Japan. Last year s
Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train was the fourth-highest grossing film release in the global box office, but nearly all of its $375 million in ticket sales were in Japan.