Keigo Higashino Has Died — the One Adaptation We Index, and Nothing to Play
The novelist behind The Camphorwood Custodian died on 23 July. We index the 2026 film made from that novel and hold zero rows for it; the Drama and Mystery band it sits in is the thinnest part of our free catalogue.
By Theo Grange · AnimeSphere staff · July 28, 2026
An adaptation we index, and nothing to play
Anime News Network reported on 27 July 2026 that the novelist Keigo Higashino died on 23 July of colon cancer. The report identifies him as the author of the novels The Camphorwood Custodian and The Miracles of the Namiya General Store.
Our catalogue touches his work at exactly one point. We index Kusunoki no Bannin, a film filed under Winter 2026, tagged Drama, Mystery and Supernatural, which our entry describes as an adaptation of Higashino's novel of the same name — the novel Anime News Network's headline calls The Camphorwood Custodian.
We hold nothing playable for it. Re-queried today: zero rows. Not a free source, not a region-locked one, not a demoted one. There is no version of that film a reader can reach from here, and we are not going to guess at why or at where it might turn up. For The Miracles of the Namiya General Store we index no entry at all.
The thinnest shelf we have
That gap is worth setting against our own numbers. Measured today across our whole free catalogue, 206 series carry at least five free episodes a US reader can reach. Of those, 141 are tagged Action. Twenty-seven are tagged Drama. Only 13 carry Drama without also carrying Action. Mystery appears on 8. Slice of Life appears on 17.
Those are our own tags on our own free set, and the shape they describe is consistent: what survives into a free legal catalogue is overwhelmingly action. Our one Higashino entry is tagged Drama, Mystery and Supernatural, which is to say it sits in the narrowest band we hold — 13 series out of 206 carry drama with no action attached to it, and Mystery appears on 8.
What is actually free right now
Two verified things sit in that thin band, both checked today.
- Akane-banashi: 12 episodes, all free, on the series' own official channel, with the US in the permitted-country list. Every one of the 12 uploads was checked — the channel numbers them 1 to 12 as we do, and no two episodes point at the same video. English subtitles are burned into the picture rather than supplied as a caption track, confirmed by pulling still frames from episodes 1 and 10 and reading the subtitle lines. Filed under Drama; animation by ZEXCS.
- Sherlock Hound: 26 episodes, complete and free, from the Anime! on TMS official channel, which carries a verified badge. The US is in the permitted-country list. All 26 uploads were checked individually: each title reads "English Dub" and "Full Episode", and the channel's numbering matches ours on every one. Filed under Adventure, Comedy and Mystery.
Neither is a substitute for the film we cannot offer. They are what the shelf holds.