Nippon TV, Dentsu and Yoshimoto Kogyo Team Up on Joost

On the heels of the announcement of TV Tokyo’s partnership with Crunchyroll to stream episodes of Naruto, Gintama, and three other shows only one hour after airing on Japanese television, Nippon Television announced (Japanese only) that they have partnered with Dentsu and Yoshimoto Kogyo to air anime on Joost, the popular VOD internet site started by former developers of Skype.

Yoshimoto Kogyo is one of the largest entertainment companies in Japan that focuses on comedy talent, headquartered in the heart of Japanese comedy, Osaka. Dentsu is the parent company of media producer and distributor Geneon Entertainment, however they have recently announced that they are selling Geneon to NBC-Universal this February.

Starting in December, they are planning to make Tobaku Mokushiroku Kaiji and Buzzer Beater available on Joost, as well as establishing a channel “Japanese Humor ~Owarai~” which will have variety shows from Yoshimoto Kogyo’s comedy properties available for viewing. All of these will be subtitled in english, and free of charge. Kaiji is a unique anime series about the underworld of high-stakes gambling based on a very popular manga, and Buzzer Beater is a futuristic take on a basketball sports anime. Both originally aired on the Japanese pay satellite network WOWOW.

No further information is available about future properties that may be made available at this time, although according to the press release a total of 6 titles and 105 episodes of content are planned to be made available. This service will be available in the US only.