TBS summer 2013 drama "Hanzawa Naoki" which has been a ratings winner this season, finished on a high note with a rating of 42.2% in the Kanto region for its finale shown on 22 Sep. It got an even higher figure of 45.5% in the Kansai region as announced by Video Research on 24 Sep. With this result, "Hanzawa Naoki" is No.4 in terms of top average ratings for dramas in the Kanto region since ratings monitoring began in September 1977 and has grabbed the No.1 spot in Kansai, beating "Mito Komon" which had held the title since 1981. Amid low ratings plaguing Japanese dramas in recent years, "Hanzawa Naoki" has managed to buck the trend thus making it a rare ratings winner.
As for the highest single moment rating, "Hanzawa Naoki" scored 46.7% in Kanto and 50.4% in Kansai at the point right after the episode ended.
Source: Sanspo
2 comments:
"Amid low ratings plaguing Japanese dramas in recent years, "Hanzawa Naoki" has managed to buck the trend thus making it a rare ratings winner."
this statement is not entirely true...although it's true in recent years that most Jdoramas have been suffering only mediocre to low ratings, but even now during every season, there's still at least a couple of Jdoramas which manage to attract very high ratings from 15-20+%. So 'Hanzawa Naoki' being a ratings winner is not rare at all.
Unless this statement is referring to the absurdly high ratings like 30-40+%, then yes, that would be considered 'rare' these days.
As much as I love Sakai Masato, I personally have not watched 'Hanzawa Naoki' yet because both the synopsis & previews didn't interest me at all...but now seeing such high ratings, it certainly has sparked my curiousity, I might check it out sooner than I initially planned.
Hi Crystal,
Due to the generally low ratings of drama offerings in recent years, anything above 15% is considered a hit unlike the old days when those above 20% would have made the cut. On a per season basis, we tend to see an average of less than 5 dramas making it into this category of above 15%. Expectations have been lowered so much that those which get above 10% are already counting their lucky stars. And it is certainly common to see more than half of each season's offerings go below 10%. It's a sad thing to see this trend but I feel that the over-used excuses of people having more sources of alternative entertainment now or not tuning in realtime to watch the dramas have been thrown out of the window following the success of "Hanzawa Naoki". People can make themselves sit in front of the TV to catch the drama during the broadcast, provided it is appealing to them.
As such, I believe why the media is getting so hyped up over "Hanzawa Naoki" has a lot to do with the fact that it not only crossed the 15% mark, it more than doubled it and successfully became a common topic in social situations. Kaseifu no Mita had been held up as an example in recent years to be compared to for potential record breakers since it got 40% in its finale but now that "Hanzawa Naoki" has overtaken it, the new benchmark will now be this drama. It is said that if you don't watch "Hanzawa Naoki", you can't take part in the conversations in the office or school on the following Monday because everyone will be talking about it.
I've only watched half of "Hanzawa Naoki" actually i.e. the Osaka arc and found it to be quite interesting and well-crafted. However, there are some parts which are a bit exaggerated but I get the point that this forms part of the entertainment factor so I'm OK with it. To be honest, I stopped watching "Kaseifu no Mita" after just three episodes and simply didn't understand the hype over it. Fans of Mita will probably whack me for this comment but it all boils down to personal preferences so no malice intended. At the very least, "Hanzawa Naoki" does make the cut in terms of being an engaging drama of keeping me interested.
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