Gintama's Yoshiwara arc is a film on Netflix, and none of our 27 Gintama entries is free

The reanimated Gintama film covering the Yoshiwara in Flames arc has begun streaming on Netflix, in every territory. That is the whole of what the report establishes.

Our own index holds 27 separate Gintama entries, including the 2006 television series, the later seasons, the films and the specials. We requested every one of those pages today, and not one states a free episode count. So the honest answer to whether any of it is free here is no.

We do hold an entry for the new film, filed in our records as an alternative version of the 2006 television series. That is how our catalogue records one entry retelling another's story.

How often a film retells a series, and how little of it is free

Our catalogue records 198 films filed as an alternative version of a television series, and between them they retell 160 distinct television series. We requested every one of those 358 pages live on animesphere.app today, and every request returned.

Of the 198 films, the live pages state a free episode count for exactly one. That one is a mistake on our side, and we are saying so. The entry is Akira, which our index records as a 125-minute film. The single video behind that count runs 40 seconds, is titled "AKIRA 4K | In Cinemas October 22", and sits on a channel called Crunchyroll Store Australia with no verified badge. It is a cinema promotion filed where an episode should be, and it has been logged for correction.

So the number of these 198 films a reader can actually watch here is zero. Of the 160 television series those films retell, the live pages state a free episode count for 5, and those counts add to 333 episodes.

What is watchable: 14 episodes of Space Adventure Cobra

One of the 5 is Space Adventure Cobra, which our index records as a 1982 television series with 31 episodes and a recorded 24-minute episode length. Its page states 14 free episodes, and all 14 sit on the "Anime! on TMS Official Channel", which carries a YouTube verified badge.

• Each of the 14 has its own distinct video, none filed under two episode numbers or under another series.
• The upload titles run EP01 through EP14 and each matches the episode number we store.
• Every upload runs between 1,487 and 1,489 seconds, so these are whole episodes.
• The country list on all 14 rows includes the United States, and the uploads sampled today play from there.

The titles call themselves English Sub, and the watch pages report only an automatic Japanese caption track, so there is no English caption file to switch on. Frames taken from partway through episodes 1 and 14 show English lines burned into the picture, one reading "And just who might you be?". The English is part of the video, and it is not a dub. It stops at 14 of the 31 episodes we record.

A much smaller second option is ODDTAXI, a 2021 television series we record at 13 episodes, with exactly 1 free episode. That one is a dub, on the verified "Crunchyroll" channel, running 1,440 seconds, and unrestricted by country. One episode is a sample, not a season.

Reported by Anime Corner.