During today’s Series Mania Forum, the «Coming Next from Japan» session outlined a strategic ambition to scale up co-productions between the Japanese audiovisual industry and international partners, specifically in Europe. Organized by the Broadcast Program Export Association of Japan (BEAJ) and Empire of Arkadia, with support from Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the presentation focused on transitioning Japan’s domestic content strength into a framework for global reach.
Presenters provided an economic context for this push, noting that Japan’s streaming sector is currently valued at approximately $7.2 billion, with a projected 15% year-on-year growth for 2025. This digital expansion sits alongside a $25.8 billion broadcasting market, which remains one of the most stable domestic ecosystems globally. The session emphasized that the current industry challenge is no longer proving that Japanese stories can travel, but rather building the creative, commercial, and regulatory structures required to support global expansion at scale for a highly engaged, platform-agnostic audience.
The discussion highlighted a clear evolution in international collaboration, shifting away from simple licensing agreements toward fully integrated co-development models where multiple territories contribute editorially from the outset. While previous titles like «Miss Sherlock,» «The Head,» and «Tokyo Vice» illustrated early stages of this trajectory, the session presented four upcoming series that reflect different approaches to cross-border storytelling. Among them is «Drops of God,» an adaptation of a Japanese manga produced by Les Productions Dynamic. The project reimagined its source material for an international audience by splitting its central characters between Japan and Europe, using wine as a narrative bridge to facilitate a cross-cultural dialogue supported by a multinational cast.
Other highlighted models of collaboration included «Lost & Found,» produced by Empire of Arkadia, Mocha Chai Laboratories, TV Man Union, and NHK. The series follows a young gamer, played by Shawn Thia, who travels to Japan to search for his mysteriously vanished online girlfriend. Also presented was «Blood & Sweat,» a thriller co-produced by Japan’s Wowow and Finland’s Nelonen Media, which tracks a Tokyo detective investigating a homicide linked to a recent murder in Tampere, Finland. Rounding out the slate is «How to Be a Sensei,» a British and Japanese co-production currently in development by Nippon TV and Anyway Content.
