The Ramparts of Ice returns October 1, and 61 free runs here start mid-story

A second season of The Ramparts of Ice has a trailer and a first key visual, and a start date of October 1, 2026. That is the whole of what our source establishes. It raises an ordinary question: can a reader who missed the first run catch up here? Not with us. Our index holds The Ramparts of Ice as a 2026 television series with 14 episodes recorded, and its page on animesphere.app states no free episode count at all.

What our shelf looks like when you ask it to start at episode one

We had not measured this before. Today we requested 1,432 live pages, one per entry, and every one came back. Of those, 799 state a free episode count, and those counts add to 8,470 episodes. Of the 799, 361 carry at least one recorded relation to another entry we hold; the other 438 carry none.

Of the 799, 139 carry a prequel relation, meaning our records file them as continuing something earlier, and their free counts add to 3,303 episodes. For 77, every recorded earlier entry also states a free count. For 61, not one does.

A prequel relation is a loose thing: it can point at a prologue short, an original video release, or a film. Narrowing to television series that continue a previous television season leaves 38. For 29 the earlier season states a free count too. For 9 it does not, and two of those state exactly one free episode of their own while the earlier season states none: Overlord IV, and Date A Live IV.

One caveat on that group of 38. The largest single free count in it belongs to Chibi Maruko-chan, and it is not a count of distinct episodes: the same uploads sit under more than one episode number in our records, so the figure counts re-uploads. It is not a starting point we would offer, and it is being corrected.

One pair that starts at its first episode

The largest of the 29 pairs is Pokémon. Our index records 276 episodes for the 1997 television series and a 24-minute episode length; the live page states 269 free. For Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire, which our records file as continuing it, the index records 192 episodes and the live page states 182 free. Neither run covers every episode our index records.

Both sit on the Pokémon TV channel, which carries a YouTube verified badge. Every one of those 451 uploads is its own distinct video, none filed under two episode numbers or under another series, and every title contains the words FULL EPISODE. The country list on every row is unrestricted, and the uploads sampled today play from the United States. Four were opened in full, the first and last of each run, at 1,343, 1,273, 1,273 and 1,271 seconds, so they are whole episodes. Each reports an authored English subtitle track alongside an automatic English caption track, so the audio is English.

Each run does begin at its own first episode. The first is titled "Pokémon - I Choose You! | FULL EPISODE 1 | Season 1".

The season announcement was reported by Anime Corner.