Those familiar with our regional Top Ranking Charts covering Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Southeast Asia would expect to see titles in the genres with a certain level of “travelability”, those with fans across multiple markets. Historically, those genres have been headlined by two key content types: Korean dramas and Japanese anime.

August 2026, however, paints a different picture, as it is the first time that a Japanese drama, Vivant, leads that list since ampd measurement has started. And what makes it even more interesting is that the fourth spot is held by another TBS Japanese drama: Until the T-shirt Dries. August is a milestone month for Japanese dramas, and TBS in particular.

Before Vivant, the top title across the region on our charts shared a recognizable pattern: either well-traveled Korean dramas or Japanese anime that focused on sci-fi, fantasy or action themes. It was either a Netflix hit or a non-exclusive Japanese anime available on multiple platforms including Netflix. And most importantly, their home market (where the title was created) usually represented only about one-third of total viewers, meaning it had true regional reach.

Vivant defies all those trends: it is a Japanese crime thriller drama whose home market represents 97% of its total viewers. And 66% of that viewership happened on one platform, TVer, which released the new season two episodes directly after terrestrial broadcast for free and nearly exclusive (U-NEXT had the paid VOD rights for season two).

While some form of Vivant was available across all five major VOD platforms, its content distribution was divided: season one available across major streaming platforms, and season two exclusive to TVer for free distribution and U-NEXT for exclusive paid VOD. Both TVer and U-NEXT received the season two content directly after broadcast TBS Sunday Theater on TV at 21:00 JST on Sunday evenings, meaning the show would be available on streaming at around 22:00 JST.

While demand for season two of Vivant was the focus of audiences’ attention, with the title ranking #1 on both TVer and U-NEXT, the buzz of the title drove significant demand for season one. New audiences of the show or those that wanted a season one “recap” also engaged deeply with the show. Vivant was ranked #3 on Netflix and #6 on Prime Video, both only holding season one. This performance for a 2023 season one is quite the accomplishment and out of the ordinary.

Looking at the platform viewership, the datapoint raises the question: is Vivant a broadcast title built for a terrestrial TV audience, whose tastes differ from what paid VOD users are actually watching? The show seemed to capture the broad audience across the terrestrial TV fans as well as the paid VOD aficionados. In fact, the majority of the viewership (9.6 million) came from paid VOD users, choosing TVer to watch the most recent episodes of a TV drama. Only 37% of Vivant's viewers (5.6 million) were free-only viewers, using no paid VOD service in August 2026.

For the paid platform users on Prime Video and Netflix, their users had access to watch season one. However, if they wanted to follow the story and watch episodes of season two, they would have to continue either go on TVer or U-NEXT. And that is exactly what 52% of the Netflix and Prime Video audiences did. 82% of those users engaged with season two on TVer, and 18% on U-NEXT. Not having the show available to them on Netflix or Prime Video boosted viewership on platforms like TVer and U-NEXT.

And that is what the chart below shows. Of the 5.03MM Netflix users that also watched Vivant, 50% (2.54MM) watched it on Netflix, but the other half had to go elsewhere to continue the Vivant journey for season two. A similar trend takes place with Prime Video users: of the 5.03MM Prime Video users that also watched Vivant, only 31% did it on Prime Video.

Anticipation to find out what happened on the next episode was obvious. From its release on streaming at around 22:00 JST, directly after its TV broadcast, roughly a third of returning fans watched the episode on TVer within the first 24 hours. That number jumps to 57% when you look at the first 48 hours. To state those metrics in another way: nearly 60% of fans had already seen the latest episode two days after launch. Before the next episode arrived on Sunday night, 92% of the audience had seen the prior one, ready for the latest chapter in the story.

One interesting habit shift occurred with Vivant when compared to its terrestrial broadcast. While many of the key tentpoles are usually viewed on prime time slots like TBS Sunday Theater at 21:00 JST, viewers of Vivant created their new prime time: Monday at 22:00 JST. They shifted their viewership by one day, catching up with the show 24 hours after its release to streaming.

The day is only half of the habit. The other half is the season they are watching. Season one viewers binged more than two episodes per day, a trend consistent across all the platforms. That number drops to 1.3 with season two viewing. This shift reflects content supply dynamics: season one audiences leverage full backlog availability to binge, whereas season two consumption is capped by real-time release schedules.

Fans not only engaged with Vivant on premium VOD; YouTube was a parallel source of entertainment and information for Vivant audiences. Vivant content reached more than 13.2 million unique YouTube users, with the average viewer watching 40 minutes of Vivant content in August.

YouTube was not an echo of the broadcast, it had a personality of its own. The traffic came from 450 channels and three kinds of source: independent commentary creators, official TBS and partner channels, and a long tail of small accounts harvesting clips.

YouTube viewers had a selection of content and formats to choose from, with more than 1,600 different Vivant related videos across Shorts, long form and live. While Shorts drove the most reach, long form absorbed the most total watch time, 4.18 million hours.

TBS Radio ran a companion talk show on YouTube called the Villains’ Meeting Room, in which the drama’s antagonists watched each new episode and reacted to it. Six episodes, roughly 34 minutes each, published through the season. Five of the six passed one million viewers.

While Vivant was clearly a tentpole hit in Japan, its exposure and viewership outside of Japan didn’t seem to have the same impact, which is clearly observed with the 97% home viewership share. Is this just the case for Vivant, or is it an underlying trend for Japanese dramas overall?

To produce a comparative baseline, we looked into Netflix across our eight measured markets to see how well Japanese dramas traveled in 2026. We chose Netflix for two key reasons: 1) it provides us with one platform with a similar content offering across the eight markets and 2) their user base, while not exactly the same, might have similarities across the different markets.

The case of Vivant is very much in line with the general trend of Japanese dramas: they tend to perform very well in Japan, but only represent 0.3 of the Top Ten Chart on Netflix outside of Japan. In other words, you can expect a Japanese drama to appear in the Top Ten once every three months on average, though it varies by market (with Taiwan having the highest affinity). This data also supports our initial introduction: the regional Top Ten Chart is usually occupied by titles with high travelability like JP anime (1.4 per month) and Korean dramas (4.1). And that is why Vivant is such a unique case: its remarkable popularity in Japan.