TV Asahi’s dele Wins J-Drama MIPCOM Buyers’ Award

dele, an eight-part series produced and aired by TV Asahi, has received the 2019 J-Drama MIPCOM Buyers’ Award at the J-Creative Party.

Every year, the award distinguishes a recent Japanese drama with the highest potential in the international market. The winner is picked by a jury of a dozen industry buyers and professionals attending MIPCOM. dele follows dele.LIFE, an unusual company run by wheelchair-bound computer programmer Keiji Sakagami.

Clients sign up to the company and after they die, dele.LIFE deletes all their digital records on their computers and smartphones. Sakagami works with a freelance jack-of-all-trades, Yutaro Mashiba, whose job is to verify the clients’ deaths. They are not supposed to look at their clients’ files, but when they feel something strange in the death of a client, they cannot help but get involved.

Other nominees for the award include Natsuzora—Natsu’s Sky from Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), Your Turn to Kill from Nippon TV, Stepmom and Daughter Blues from Tokyo Broadcasting System Television, What Did You Eat Yesterday? from TV Tokyo Corporation, Daughter of Lupin from Fuji Television Network, Behind the door from Wowow, Perfect Crime from Asahi Television Broadcasting Corporation, Perfect World from Kansai TV and My Husband’s Wives from Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation.

Last year, Nippon TV’s Anone won the grand prix award and Kansai TV’s My Beautiful Neighbor won the remake award.

“We are very proud to bring Japanese series to MIPCOM and to give them exposure to international buyers,” said Shingo Saito, secretary general of the Bureau of the International Drama Festival in Tokyo. “We want to convince producers that if you make a drama that is popular abroad, then you can do more business and sell more Japanese content.”

“We are honored to receive the J-Drama MIPCOM Buyers’ Award,” said Yumi Shimizu, head of content sales at TV Asahi. “The theme of digital property left after death is more relevant than ever. dele was born out of the collaboration between TV Asahi and writer Takayoshi Honda. We are thrilled that the story has appealed to international buyers and we hope that it will reach more audiences around the world.”