Vivant becomes first Japanese drama to top Asia streaming chart
A TBS drama called Vivant is the first Japanese show to finish No. 1 on ampd Analytics' monthly streaming ranking for Asia.
The result covers August and excludes China and India. It comes from an ampd Vision report titled "Vivant: A TV Broadcast Hit, Streamed," as reported by Variety. ampd Analytics is the streaming measurement arm of Media Partners Asia (MPA).
Vivant drew 15.6 million unique viewers, meaning individual accounts counted once, regionwide in August. Of that total, 15.1 million watched in Japan. That Japanese audience alone equals a quarter of the 61.4 million viewers ampd tracks across Japanese video on demand, meaning streaming services where viewers choose what to watch and when.
The second season launched in July in TBS's Sunday Theater slot. The slot airs every Sunday at 9 p.m. and is the network's long-running home for big event dramas, according to TBS.
Free viewing did the heavy lifting. TVer, a free platform operated by Japan's broadcast networks, drew 10.2 million of Vivant's viewers. TBS put each new episode on TVer at no cost within an hour of its Sunday broadcast. Paid streaming was reserved exclusively for U-Next.
That window shaped viewing habits. An estimated one in eight Prime Video subscribers and one in 10 Netflix subscribers in Japan chose to watch Vivant on TVer rather than on services they already pay for. Catch-up was tight. About 92% of viewers who returned for a new episode had already watched the previous one by the time it aired.
Paid platforms still grew. Netflix's audience for Vivant rose from 300,000 viewers in May to 2.5 million in August. U-Next rose from 100,000 to 2 million over the same period. Season 2 was shot partly on location in Azerbaijan.
The audience spilled beyond the main episodes. Related Vivant content on YouTube drew 13.2 million viewers across more than 1,600 videos from 450 channels. That viewing totalled 8.8 million hours watched, at an average of almost 40 minutes per viewer. TBS companion show "Villains' Meeting Room" averaged more than 1.3 million viewers per episode.
What makes this stand out is how domestic the hit remains. About 97% of all Vivant viewing came from audiences in Japan. Japanese dramas enter Netflix's global top 10 outside Japan 0.3 times per month on average, compared with 4.1 times for Korean dramas and 1.4 times for Japanese anime.
Vivant stars Masato Sakai and is directed by Katsuo Fukuzawa. The original series aired in summer 2023, with TBS organising the follow-up for its Sunday Theater line-up in 2026. The production is known as an expensive network bet, reported at well over $1 million per episode back in 2023.
TBS is keeping the story in the same family. A spinoff titled Chinggis – VIVANT THE ORIGIN STORY – will stream exclusively on U-NEXT, with Bokuzo Masana and Rena Matsui announced as cast members.
The win sits inside a large home market. Japan's premium streaming sector was worth $7.2 billion, according to an MPA report published in February. In that sector, Japanese drama reached 73% of viewers and accounted for 37% of hours viewed.
