Chiikawa tops Japan’s box office. What our short-form free shelf holds

The film at number one in Japan shares its name with a television short our index records at two minutes an episode. Anime News Network reports that the Chiikawa anime film is unchanged at number one, the 2026 Crayon Shin-chan film sits still at number six, the fifth live-action Kingdom film has moved up to number five, and the live-action Blue Lock film has slipped to number ten.

That short first aired in 2022. The film is a separate 2026 entry in our index at 99 minutes. Nothing of the series is free here, and the film's page states no free episode count either.

Two complete series, each shorter than one film

Here is the arithmetic first.

JOCHUM Season 2 is free here in full. Production states 24 free episodes with Japanese audio, and our index records 24 episodes for the season, so the free run is the whole thing. All 24 uploads sit on the channel "JOCHUM (official)". Every one is recorded at 111 seconds. Multiply that out and the complete season totals 2,664 seconds, or 44 minutes. The episode 1 watch page reports an authored English subtitle track alongside an automatic Japanese caption track, so this is Japanese audio with real English subtitles rather than a dub. The country list on these rows is unrestricted.

Milky Subway: The Galactic Limited Express is the same case. Production states 12 free episodes with Japanese audio, our index records 12, and the run is complete. All 12 sit on the series' own official channel. The recorded lengths run from 211 to 285 seconds and total 2,606 seconds, or 43 minutes. Episode 1 reports an authored English subtitle track among twelve language tracks, plus an automatic Japanese caption track. Unrestricted by country.

Two complete series, 44 minutes and 43 minutes. The Chiikawa film alone is 99.

The wider short-form shelf

Our index holds 1,349 entries in the television-short format. We fetched every one of those pages today and none failed to load. Of them, 47 state a free episode count, and those 47 state 555 episodes between them. Our database and production agree exactly on which 47 they are. Thirty-five of the 47 have a recorded episode length of five minutes or less; the median is four minutes, and the range runs from one to fifteen.

At the long end sits Galaxy Angel, which first aired in 1999 and carries a recorded episode length of 13 minutes. Production states 25 free episodes, matching our index, so the run is complete. The rows sit on the channel "Nozomi Entertainment" and number 48 in total across 25 episode slots, because most episodes carry two uploads: 23 of the 25 slots hold both, with titles reading "Galaxy Angel Episode 1 (Dub)" and "Galaxy Angel Episode 3 (Sub)". Those uploads expose no caption tracks. A frame from the episode 3 subtitled upload shows an English subtitle line burned into the picture, so the subtitles live in the image. The 25 distinct episodes total 20,498 seconds, or 5 hours and 42 minutes. These rows are limited to Canada and the United States.