Netflix’s APAC content head, Minyoung Kim, has described Japan as “a paradise of imagination” with a natural crossover in the creative community between film and television that enables the streamer to focus on the story rather than the format.

Speaking about the future of Japanese entertainment during Media Partners Asia’s (MPA) APOS conference in Bali last week, Kim also emphasised the trust-based relationship Netflix was building with its audience.

“Trust is really imporant... It doesn’t only apply to Japanese content, but also to Hollywood content,” she said.

“Consumers want to make sure that they are investing their time with someone who will deliver what they want,” she added.

While this made it more difficult for new or up-and-coming talent, once that trust with the consumer was built, “the loyalty runs very deep,” Kim said.

“We’re looking at that as an opportunity for us to provide something that is differentiated.”

Kim also spoke about balancing investment with audience size.

“We will never compromise the pleasing our members in Japan, even with a bigger scale show like Alice in Bordeland. At the same time, with that level of scale, it’s is really important for us to make sure that we find audiences outside of Japan,” she said.

Netflix has greenlit a third season of Alice in Borderland with Kento Yamazaki and Tao Tsuchiya reprising their roles as Arisu and Usagi, and Shinsuke Sato returning as director.

The series, based on Haro Aso’s manga, became Netflix Japan’s most-watched title ever, including anime, after season two in Dec 2022 with about 200 million viewing hours worldwide.

Season three has been created from scratch after the end of the manga story.

Kim said commissions were less about fulfilling genre quotas than about realising creator vision and surfacing stories that weren’t possibly in the traditional system.

“It’s about art and science and good balance,” she said.

Netflix's global anime strategy is built on pleasing Japanese anime fans first. 

"If we are able to make something that our Japanese anime fans love, that's what our global anime fan will want," she said, speaking about the streamer's biggest learnings in building an anime fanbase.

"There's already an industry that exists in the anime creative community. They  know what the audience wants, and they are so great at already building audiences," she said. 

It was therefore "really important to bring shows like Demon Slayer and others on our service to provide something that they already love, but also to make sure that we leave enough space for something that is different".

Speaking about the English-language adaptation of One Piece, which was initiated in the U.S., Kim says teams from Japan and Korea and the U.S. partnered to deliver a live-action adaptation that was true to the essence of the original IP and would satisfy the One Piece fan and at the same time to deliver a show that would appeal to broader audiences.

The nature of future live action adaptations – including language and style – depended on the project, and "every project is going to be different". 

"I think we've gotten more confident in how to make sure we deliver the best version of that IP," Kim said. 

While Netflix is in experimentation mode for developing its unscripted slate in Japan, audience tastes for dating reality and comedy shows are already clear. 

Domestic audiences took priority over potential travelability, she said. 

"As a content executive, if a show travels outside it's always great. But that is not our primary goal," she said.  

Of all Netflix's markets in Asia, Japan is "at the far end of spectrum" in choosing local versus international content.

"We're seeing the demand for local content in Japan between 50% to 70% of the viewing that happens on Netflix. So our Japanese audiences really want  local content... It's really the Japanese content that will drive the business, help us grow  the market". 

 

An edited version of this feature was published in ContentAsia's eNewsletter, 2 October 2023