Kaiji Finds a Home on Joost
In another case of Japanese companies working directly with an Internet distributor in the States (after, y’know, that major CrunchyRoll coup), Nippon TV and Dentsu have just announced that along with entertainment company Yoshimoto Kogyo, they’ll be providing some Japanese entertainment to Joost, a VOD service created by former Skype creators.
The anime titles are Kaiji and Buzzer Beater, but wait– there’s more! There will also be a channel called Japanese Humor ~Owarai~ which will feature Japanese variety shows, such as Downtown no Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende!! and Susunu! Denpa Shounen (at least, I’m pretty sure that’s the right show, assuming that the press release’s Susume! Denpa Shounen isn’t a different show). These shows start in December and will stream for free with commercials, in Japanese with English subtitles, and it’s only going to be available in the US (sorry, Canada).
What I’m not entirely sure of is what this deal means (if anything) in the wake of Dentsu’s intent to sell control of Geneon to Universal. As far as I can tell, neither title is distributed by Geneon, but I’m not quite sure what Dentsu’s specific connection to them (or to NTV) is– they own or invest in a LOT of companies. It could even be that one of their American arms simply brokered the deal; speculation on my part of course.
That all aside, I think it’s good to see some different types of Japanese media make it across the ocean. Hey NTV, we can has jdrama now?
(Via AnimeNews.biz and reader Sam– thanks!)
Tags: dentsu, joost, kaiji, nippon tv
November 19th, 2008 at 10:30 am
According to further reports, Dentsu is the company in charge of selling the advertising for the streams, which means that the NBC-Universal deal and Geneon have nothing to do with it.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
This is exciting!
December 10th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
I wish it was available in Canada too.