Rakuten Viki Takes the Crown

It’s a Friday evening. You have shut down the work computer for the weekend, taken that much needed walk with the dog outside, planned your house cleaning and stocking schedule for the weekend and even managed to fit in 15 extra minutes of mindfulness with some meditation. Champ! With the load of the week behind you and tomorrow’s troubles to be taken care of tomorrow only, it’s right about time to unwind with some drama, specifically a K-Drama or C-Drama. Of course, there are tons of sites to watch your preferred drama from, paid and unpaid, which can also be a headache if you are uncertain what to do when spoilt for choice. Depending on how important picture quality, sound, subtitle and translation quality and the possibility of picking up a bug are to you, you can find a site to quench the thirst for a thrilling or ‘normal’ feelgood C-Drama or K-Drama. Of these sites, I have found Netflix, which was my first and original source of K-Drama, and Rakuten Viki to be the least problematic and most helpful. Bothe have strengths and weaknesses that set them apart and at the end of the day, with all these considered, here are reasons why I pick Rakuten Viki over Netflix many times over for an enjoyable Asian drama viewing experience. The third reasons tops them all.

1. The Variety

While Netflix is known for its wide variety of series and shows from all over the world, I have found it to fall quite short in this space. A search for Chinese or Korean drama in my region — I have intentionally left out Japanese and Thai dramas because I haven’t ventured into those ponds as yet — on Netflix will present not more than a handful of selected drama, especially in the Chinese drama domain and a good choice of Korean dramas. It was also where I first peeked into the keyhole that would lead me down this rabbit hole and frankly has been a source of many a fresh and often high budget K-Drama. Rakuten Viki has the upper hand in this case as it is itself of Asian — Japanese — Origin. Their range is endless and so many excellent, good and sometimes not-so-good dramas can be found on there.

2. The Subtitles and Translation

If it is about a drama series that can only be found on only one of the platforms, of course one has no choice but to watch it one the platform on which they find it. However, especially when the same drama is on both platforms at the same time, another reason why I very easily pick Rakuten Viki is for the translations (subtitles). Contrary to Netflix where it often show’s one person, probably specifically contracted for this, as the ‘subtitler’/translator for an episode /series, the subtitles and translations are handled by a team of volunteers.

The episodes are provided in the original language and the team does the sectioning, original transcription and further translation.

I find the translations here to be less paraphrased or cleaned and not exactly attempting to be politically right but giving it as the screenwriter meant for the viewer to take it.

The subtitles often provide context in addition. For example, when a proverb is spoken by a character, the proverb is written as said and then the meaning added as a subtext. References to made to places are also clarified for the viewer who may be hearing it the 1st or 10th time and unable to relate or connect it to the story.

3. The Comment Section (Timed comments)

To start off, Netflix does not have this feature. The timed comments on Viki is one of its strongest features and probably what sets it apart from many other viewing platforms. Dramas are fun to watch, whether alone or with other people. Sometimes you just want to lay back and catch up on that episode without answering a thousand questions from your cousin who is yet to see it, but you still want to discuss you frustration at the ML (male lead) or your predictions for tomorrow’s episode with someone who is also watching or has seen it as well and this is where this feature steps in. With timed comments, a viewer is able to comment on a scene or something spoken by the characters at any point in the drama. In reality, these are not live comments, someone else may have left a comment yesterday when they got to the point you’re at right now and your comment will be seen by someone else who is seconds or minutes or even years behind you. It gives the sense of watching together with other people, time-travel or not. Of course, comment sections are known for the chaos and peace they can concurrently elicit on a whim and the comment section on Viki’s platform is not different. While it can be so much fun to read comments by others who have similar or different suspicions as you as to what is happening and what will happen next, there can also very easily be a ton of mean, childish and uncouth people who just want to spread hate or toxicity. The great thing is that you don’t have to indulge them, the comments can be switched on and off at will especially when you absolutely do not want to entertain any spoilers. I’ll go into more detail about the comment section in another post. o

In conclusion

In defense of Netflix, it also has a wide selection of several other show which are not on any other platform apart from bootleg ones of course, however for these points and a few other minor ones, I will pick Rakuten Viki any day to watch my Chinese and Korean dramas. And I still have my Netflix subscription running.

What are your preferred viewing platforms and how does it compare to these points?

Thank you for reading! Hope you have a great time unwinding on your Friday.