Walpurgisnacht: Rising passed a billion yen, and none of Madoka is free here

A new promo video and a new visual have been released for the film Madoka Magica -Walpurgisnacht: Rising-, which reached Japanese cinemas on 28 August. It took first place at the Japanese box office in its opening weekend, with the Chiikawa film moving down to second, and its takings passed one billion yen within four days of release. Maaya Sakamoto voices an upperclassman whose name has not been given, and Ume Aoki drew the third key visual. The reports are from Anime News Network.

Nothing from this franchise is free here

We fetched nine pages across the franchise today: the new film, the 2011 television series, three more films, a concept movie, and the three Magia Record series. Every one of the nine is titled "Watch ... Online" rather than "Watch ... Free Online", and not one of them states a free episode count. So a reader hoping to start somewhere on our shelf will not find a free entry point into this franchise.

The free magical-girl corner is nine titles deep

Our index tags 463 entries with the magical-girl genre. All 463 pages were fetched from the live site today and none failed to load. Nine of them state a free episode count, and those nine state 81 free episodes between them.

• Four of the nine state exactly one free episode, and all four of those first aired between 1971 and 1991.
• Five of the nine state a free count that reaches the series' recorded total.
• The newest first aired in 2025 and the oldest in 1971, with five predating the year 2000.

Where the free count reaches the total

Magic Knight Rayearth is the strongest of them. Its live page is titled "Watch Magic Knight Rayearth Free Online" and states 20 episodes free against a recorded total of 20, so the whole first series. Our index records it as a 1994 television series with a recorded episode length of 24 minutes. The channel is Anime! on TMS Official Channel, which carries a YouTube verified badge. The episode 1 upload has a title ending "| English Dub" and its watch page reports an automatic English caption track, so the audio is English. This is a dub, not subtitled Japanese. The upload runs 1,475 seconds against that recorded 24 minutes, so it is a whole episode, and the country allow-list on those rows includes the United States.

Magic User's Club is the second, and it sits on our site as two entries. The 1999 television series states 13 episodes free against a recorded total of 13, and the 1996 six-part original states 6 against a recorded 6. Both are complete. The channel is Nozomi Entertainment for both, and it posts two numbered sets per entry, one whose titles end "(Dub)" and one whose titles end "(Sub)". The television series episode 1 upload runs 1,494 seconds against a recorded 24 minutes.

One more is worth naming for what it is not. Fushigi na Melmo states 1 episode free against a recorded total of 26. The channel is Tezuka Productions Official. The upload's own title marks the upload as official and says English sub, and it runs 1,497 seconds against a recorded episode length of 20 minutes. One episode of a 1971 series, and no more.