Drama outstripped demand for every other genre – including anime – among viewers in Japan in Q4 2019. But it’s in anime that SVOD players are underserving domestic audiences, the latest data from Parrot Analytics shows.

Drama is outstripping demand for every other genre among viewers in Japan, racing ahead with 35.7% demand share in the last three months of 2019. This is well ahead of the 19.3% share commanded by the country’s famed anime/animation for the last quarter of the year. But even in second place, Japan’s taste for animation puts it way ahead of other markets, with 12.9% above average global demand for the genre, according to data science company Parrot Analytics.  

The top drama for the three months was long-running cult food drama The Solitary Gourment (aka The Lonely Gourmet, Kodoku No Gurume), a TV Tokyo show about fictional European furnishing importer Goro Inogashira whose life is dominated by food. The top animation title was another long-running series, My Hero Academia. Comedy placed third, with 11.7% of demand, putting Japan 4.2% lower than the global average. 

Demand for all series (including anime series) is led by Japanese animation, which has about double the demand for crime drama. The high preference for domestic anime series accounts for 16.4% demand share, leaving less than 1% of demand for other animation subgenres. 

Parrot says Japan’s taste for animation is not yet being fully supplied by SVOD platforms, where animation only has an 8.6% demand share. Original reality and variety are also underserved on SVOD platforms in Japan.