Drama IRIS was an enormous success in Korea. The ratings were great and audiences showered it with love and affection. As for Japanese viewers…they’ve lost interest.

After 2 special nights of concerts featuring popular actor Lee Byung Hun and Big Bang, along with heavy promotions for the Kdrama, IRIS has failed to capture the large viewership it had been anticipating. Ratings went from a mere 10.1 percent to 8.8 percent, and plummeting to 7 percent after the fifth episode. IRIS is the lowest rated program in the Wednesday night time slot.

So, what happened?

One of the biggest mistakes TBS network made was hiring Tatsuya Fujiwara (Japanese actor) as the dubbed voice for Lee Byung Hun, who is usually dubbed by voice actor Kazuya Takahashi. Japanese audiences are used to Kazuya Takahashi dubbing Byung Hun’s voice, so that already made watching IRIS a tad uncomfortable.

Another big no-no was cutting the episodes down from 70 minutes down to 45 to suit the Japanese time slots. Korean and Japanese dramas run at different lengths and different pace, so the intention of cutting it down was reasonable, but in the end, Japanese viewers found IRIS to be choppy, uneven and just hard to keep up with.

Not the best of news for IRIS, and with more than half of the series to go (IRIS has 20 episodes) TBS will keep on, keepin’ on and try to reign in those ratings. As they say, desperate times call for desperate measures and TBS has actually started an episode to episode contest where viewers use their cell phones to decipher a code in a chance to win cash prizes worth up to 5 million yen.

Did any of you Ninginers watch IRIS? I tried to, but I have to admit, it dragged out just a tad. I have yet to finish watching it…

Source: omonatheydidnt