A New Galaxy Express 999 Film Is Coming. Here's the Free Space Opera You Can Actually Watch.

Rintarō, who directed the 1979 Galaxy Express 999 film and has worked on other entries in the franchise, is credited with the story for a new theatrical anime in the series. That is the whole of the announcement as it stands.

No title, no release window, no studio, no director, no cast, and we are not going to fill those blanks with guesses. The report is at Anime News Network.

The shelf this belongs to is empty here

Now the uncomfortable part, which we would rather state than dress up. AnimeSphere indexes 12 Galaxy Express 999 entries, including the 1978 TV series at 113 episodes, the 1979 film, Adieu Galaxy Express 999, and several specials and ONAs. Free episodes a US viewer can watch through this site: zero.

Widening the net does not help. Across the 42 classic space-opera entries indexed here, Galaxy Express 999, Captain Harlock (including its 1978 TV series at 42 episodes), Space Battleship Yamato, the Star Blazers TV series from 1974, 1978 and 1980, Queen Emeraldas, Dangard Ace and The Galaxy Railways, the free, US-viewable episode count is also zero. Forty-two entries, nothing free. If you came to this news wanting to catch up on the older material first, we have nothing on that shelf to hand you.

The space opera you can actually finish

What we do have sits in a different corner of the genre. Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (1995) runs 49 episodes, and all 49 are free on AnimeSphere with no region restriction, from the GUNDAM CHANNEL INTL channel. They are Japanese audio with an authored English subtitle track, subtitled, not dubbed, and worth saying plainly, because the two get blurred constantly in free catalogues.

Its sequel, Endless Waltz, is free in full as well: 3 episodes, same channel, same terms. Together that is 52 episodes you can start and finish without paying anything, a complete series plus a complete follow-up, which is rarer in free listings than it ought to be.

And the one that stops halfway

Space Adventure Cobra (1982) is the closer match in spirit, pulp adventure, deep space, unmistakably early-eighties, and it comes with a caveat we would rather give you up front. Fourteen episodes are free and US-viewable, English subtitled, from the Anime! on TMS Official Channel. The series is 31 episodes in total.

So the free run is 14 of 31. It stops partway through, and there is no way to soften that: you can watch a solid stretch of Cobra for nothing, and then the free path ends mid-story. Better to know that going in than to find out fourteen episodes later.

Today none of that older Galaxy Express 999 catalogue is reachable here, and telling you otherwise would only waste your evening.