Four Persona 3 films go free on YouTube, and 16 titles in our index now have nothing
A limited window on four films, a census of the 972 entries that have ever carried an official free upload, and the two long runs still standing.
By June Maravilla · AnimeSphere staff · August 25, 2026
All four Persona 3 films have gone up on the Aniplex USA channel on YouTube, and the window is limited. The same four films were released earlier on home video by Aniplex of America.
Our index holds each of the four as a separate entry, from #1 Spring of Birth in 2013 to #4 Winter of Rebirth in 2016. All four live pages were rendered today and none states a free episode count, so we hold no free episode for any of the four.
What our records hold
972 entries in our index carry at least one official YouTube episode row, live and retired alike. All 972 rendered on animesphere.app today, all returning HTTP 200. Production states a free episode count for 798, totalling 8,455 episodes, and no count at all for the other 174. That total counts stated free episodes, not a language.
Why rows get retired
We retire rows rather than delete them, so the reason stays on record. The ledger holds 1,041 retired YouTube rows.
530 went because the video stopped being watchable: 240 behind a YouTube age or login wall, 233 confirmed gone in a browser check on 2026-08-01, 40 returning "video unavailable", and 17 gone, private or unembeddable.
The other 511 went because our own filing was wrong: 249 duplicated a video filed against another episode, 233 were clips rather than full episodes, 26 were filed against the wrong series, and 3 were a film mislabelled as an episode.
21 entries have no live row left at all. Production agrees there is nothing free for 17, one of which sits behind our adult-content gate and is left out here. That leaves 16 titles where our records and the live site agree there is nothing free: Naruto, ONE PIECE, Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon, Sailor Moon R: The Movie, Sailor Moon S Movie: Hearts in Ice, Sailor Moon SuperS the Movie: Black Dream Hole, Alderamin on the Sky, BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War, RE-MAIN, YOUR FORMA, You and Idol Precure, Hands off: Sawaranaide Kotesashi-kun!, DIGIMON BEATBREAK, Strike World: Deadverse Reloaded the Anime, and Star Detective Precure!.
Two that are still standing
God Mars, a 1981 series with 64 episodes recorded, states 64 free episodes, its complete run, every row on "Anime! on TMS Official Channel" with the United States in the country allow-list. Episodes 1, 32 and 64 were checked today: the upload titles match the numbers we store, each about 1,464 seconds against a recorded 24 minutes. Each reports an automatic Japanese caption track and no English track, and frames from all three show English subtitles burned into the picture. So this is Japanese audio with English subtitles that are part of the picture, not an English dub and not a track a reader can switch off.
Chibi Maruko-chan, a 1995 series recorded at 23 minutes an episode, states 1,247 free episodes, the largest free count in our index. Six uploads across the run were opened today, each titled "Chibi Maruko Chan Eng Dub" and each reporting an automatic English caption track, so the audio is English. One caution: the upload numbering does not line up with ours, and 108 of our episode slots hold more than one video. Treat it as a shelf to browse, not a run to follow in order.
Source: Anime News Network