Li-Mei Foong

Disney+ and Disney+Hotstar have hit 4.6 million subs in the region in no time, toppling #2 freemium streaming giant Viu. Netflix will need to watch the House of Mouse to avoid turning into a house of cards.

Southeast Asia is a lucrative stage for K-pop, but the industry’s precise manoeuvres deployed for economic and diplomatic gains is a ball and chain around its legs.

Malaysia shines as one of the top producers of original cartoon content with local flair in Southeast Asia. When three animation titans stomped out of the region to fulfil their global ambitions, they found their dreams colliding with costly reality.

Southeast Asia is a key market for digital comic platforms vying for the global readership pie. Mega corporations like South Korea’s Kakao and small startups like Singapore’s INKR, which just raised US$3 million, are in the mix. Localisation troubles and the attack of pirates offer several plot twists.

In Malaysia, police violence and deaths in custody are much-overlooked concerns, despite calls for investigation from human rights watchdogs. The numbers, and detainees and advocates behind them, show a grim, complicated picture.

[Twitter thread] Like any superhero, we must ensure that our armour is sufficient to protect us from our enemies In the case of #COVID19, the type of mask you wear plays an important role in protecting you and others around you from the virus.

Power up: From hits like Sara is Missing to Gigabash, Malaysian indie studios are grabbing global eyeballs. And PlayStation Studios has also arrived. But with government grants in limbo and the sector getting saturated, there's a lot still at stake.

Viu sneaking ahead of global major Netflix in paid users—5.2 million vs 4.5 million—in Southeast Asia is a big deal. But stiff competitors with similar playbooks and bigger war chests, namely Baidu’s iQIYI and Tencent’s WeTV, are closing in on Viu’s freemium dominance.

Southeast Asia’s shoppers seem to prefer the organised chaos of conversational commerce over the speed and convenience of e-commerce. But retailers are struggling to cope.

Coup d'et-art: NFT and digital art have combined to explosive effect for both artists and art investors. In Southeast Asia, digital artists are jumping onboard the cryptoart train, but the ticket to ride is getting heftier.

KUALA LUMPUR: The mother was frantic. Just a moment before, her young child – wearing a swim ring float – was happily playing in the pool, but a blink was all it took for the boy to topple over.
The woman could only scream for help as she could not swim. Other adults around the pool screamed along.
Fortunately, tragedy was averted. Tan Jian Yong’s father, a former swimming instructor who happened to be passing by, jumped into the pool and saved the kid.
The incident happened in 2018 in a cond...

Big winners of the video subscription battle in Southeast Asia may see their dominance challenged.

The pride, might, and fight of a fandom that made a global phenomenon.

While the world tries to move away from the stuffy labels of race, there are still places in Southeast Asia where people are judged by their skin colour.