ITVX and others: anime available for free (/with ads) on UK streaming sites&platforms

[PondaBaba]

Hi

I only started watching anime again this year (after watching it in my teens 15+ years ago) and given the understandable skew to US release/distribution when it comes to chat online in general and having just discovered what's available on itvx (itv's streaming site) i thought i'd start this thread to a) notify people in blighty and NI of what's available on there and b) ask if anyone's aware of anime being streamed from other UK platforms/channels/sites for free (including BBC iplayer assuming licence fee paid).

I had thought there was already a dedicated UK anime thread to post this in but I can't see it so think I was probably thinking of the Anime Unlimited/All the Anime thread which I assume would be an inappropriate place to post.

I had a quick search and only saw mention of itvx on here in passing re: gunbuster apparently being part of the shows that are due to be made available on it posted earlier in the year (its not available yet). I thought maybe individual shows might have had their respective threads updated with a post notifying people that a show is now or is due to be available to stream on itv x but if the search on here didn't bring up anything then i'm assuming they haven't been.

itvx doesn't have an 'anime' category, with all the ones i've found so far either being listed under 'drama and soaps' or 'films' (i did check 'children', 'comedy' and 'entertainment' but there aren't any listed under those).

I've just started watching inuyasha on there and i don't know if it's because i've got an ad block extension installed in my browser but i've not had the show preceded or interrupted by ads (i don't get them on youtube due to the extension so assume it's doing its job), because apparently you can pay to watch stuff on itvx ad free but yeah i've not encountered any yet.

So the shows I've found so far (i believe this is extent of it until more are added) streaming on itv x are:

lupin III series 5 & 6

tokyo goul series 1 - 3

the tatami galaxy (1 series)

planetes (1 series)

persona 5 (1 series)

nadia: secret of the blue water (1 series)

inuyasha (1 series)

gankutsuou (1 series)

full metal panic (1 series)

escaflowne (1 series)

erased (1 series)

emma: a victorian romance (1 series)

cowboy bebop (1 series)

cardcaptor sakura (series 1 - 3)

bartender (1 series)

edit to add: gurren lagann is on there too


there's a handful of films too:

vampire hunder D: bloodlust

sword of the stranger

patlabor

ghost in the shell 2.0

Honestly, as someone who's generally only interested in oldschool anime i'm really pleasantly surprised that some of what's on here is on here (bebop is of course a fav, and i've got patlabor and vampire hunter D on BD but would totally be jumping on them if i didn't). And gunbuster!? I've never seen it but have been looking forward to the discotek release which i'll definitely get so again doesn't actually make any difference to me that it is (going to be) on there, but still i just never would have expected it! Props to whoever's responsible for acquiring shows and giving those of us who like oldschool anime stuff to watch alongside newer stuff.

One thing to be aware of - if you click on a show it will often have the 'play episode' button available with the last episode of the season queued, i started inuyasha from episode 24 or whatever the last one is (never having watched it before) and got a fair few mins in til i realised surely this isn't the opening episode!? And thank goodness i realised, as this exact same thing happened a few weeks ago with my watching of tokyo vice on iplayer - accidentally started it from the last episode (ep 8) and got all the way through it thinking 'i've no idea what's going on but i assume all will be revealed in coming eps...' and it wasn't until i went back the next day to watch the next episode that i realised i'd accidentally watched the finale first and hadn't started from episode 1!!! Which was frustrating but yeah, glad i caught it quick enough with inuyasha haha

Speaking of iplayer, this brings me onto the next question, i've not checked iplayer yet but, after reading the comment in the linked post which links to the animenewsnetwork thread which mentions anime on 4OD, i had a quick look on 4OD to check what anime is available to stream on there, but i couldn't find anything.

If you search 'anime' there are no results (there are a handful of results if you search the same on itvx) and there doesn't seem to be any tags for the shows on there that would reliably bring up anime separate from all the other shows (there's nearly 2000 of them) so it would seem unless you know a certain show is streaming on there (as the ANN thread implies there might be or once were) then there's no way of finding them? Is this the case? Does anyone have experience of finding shows on there? Or know what's avaialble/what's due to be available?

And similarly, does anyone know if there's anime (especially old school) anime being streamed on iplayer or My5 (i think the channel 5 streaming thing is called)? I've not checked it yet but intend to. I don't know if there are any other legit free streaming sites that host anime available in the UK (i just came across retrocrush the other day, thinking for ages it's just a youtube channel but now realising it's a streaming site for oldschool anime for the US and Canadian market, not sure if it's free though).

I guess if anyone's inclined we can update this thread with shows that we know have been added to a platform's offering and that have started streaming on them as and when.

Appreciate none of this relates to BDs and their releases but assume this thread is still permissible? If not (would seem a bit of a bummer as could be a helpful resource, i don't hang anywhere else online where i might be made aware of shows being streamed on these platforms, i just joined the r/retroanime subreddit today but again will be overwhelmingly US/international so not the place you'd expect to find this sort of resource) would understand if it had to be removed

cheers!

[Mangaranga]

The fact that any and all anime streamed on BBC iPlayer or ITV is PAL sped up and without pitch correction is an immediate deal breaker...

[PondaBaba]

why would it be? If they're using the remastered/HD versions of the shows which are the streaming equivalent to what's released on BD (as you'd assume for e.g. gunbuster is/will be) [eta: notwithstanding a BD or stream using a PAL DVD or SD broadcast master as a source, which like i imply i had assumed would be an exception and wouldn't have expected it to actually happen if we're no longer required to adhere to the PAL standard and instead due to the TV technology we have these days can play the shows exactly as they're released for broadcast/BD/stream in US/Japan regions..] i was of the understanding that PAL speed up was only a thing when we were back using CRT display technology and that since switching to HD flat panels etc, PAL/NTSC is irrelevant/redundant (in terms of quality, i'm no expert but inuyasha is looking gorgeous on the stream as far as i could tell, and in huge huge contrast to the opening ep of Avatar the last airbender on prime which i sampled/watched the first half of this week too, which even again despite not being an expert i could tell is for some reason genuinely atrocious quality)

[Mangaranga]

Originally Posted by PondaBaba

why would it be? If they're using the remastered/HD versions of the shows which are the streaming equivalent to what's released on BD (as you'd assume for e.g. gunbuster is/will be) [eta: notwithstanding a BD or stream using a PAL DVD or SD broadcast master as a source, which like i imply i had assumed would be an exception and wouldn't have expected it to actually happen if we're no longer required to adhere to the PAL standard and instead due to the TV technology we have these days can play the shows exactly as they're released for broadcast/BD/stream in US/Japan regions..] i was of the understanding that PAL speed up was only a thing when we were back using CRT display technology and that since switching to HD flat panels etc, PAL/NTSC is irrelevant/redundant (in terms of quality, i'm no expert but inuyasha is looking gorgeous on the stream as far as i could tell, and in huge huge contrast to the opening ep of Avatar the last airbender on prime which i sampled/watched the first half of this week too, which even again despite not being an expert i could tell is for some reason genuinely atrocious quality)

They're UK TV channels that encode anything and everything for PAL. Watch or grab literally anything from iPlayer, ITV or 4oD and you'll find it's encoded the exact same way. I checked stuff on ITV recently and they're all 25fps.

[PondaBaba]

Originally Posted by Mangaranga

They're UK TV channels that encode anything and everything for PAL.

Interesting thanks for the info, i'm surprised because yeah i had no idea PAL was still a thing. thinking about it maybe i guess it has to be if they need to allow for their linear broadcast programming to be available to display for people that still use crt's hooked up to a separate freeview box or something? (most new tv's used to come with some sort of inbuilt freeview receiver as fair as i'm aware and now i assume by default internet capability with streaming apps but i've never bought a new tv so am out the loop but yeah i guess it's for this reason?) otherwise i don't understand why, but i'm not clued up re: encodes etc. - i associate that term with modern computer-terminology and (now clearly mistakenly) in opposition to a term like 'PAL' which yeah i'd previously only associated and thought was relevant to CRT-era broadcast/display tech. I'm clearly a bit clueless!

In other news, checking re: 4OD, it seems a lot of the shows that are now on itvx were actually on 4OD for the past couple of years (bebop, escaflowne, cardcaptor sakura, lagann, persona, inuyasha, tokyo ghoul) and have now been made aware that these shows are all apparently ATA/Anime Ltd. shows, so maybe this has been/was discussed in that thread before to some degree and it was a mistake to make this thread. So i don't think there is any anime on 4OD now its all transferred over to itvx.

In addition to mentioning a couple of other shows that i didn't spot in itvx's listings (i'll update the OP if this thread doesn't get deleted/people think it might still be worth keeping) that article does also mention in passing 3 shows that are apparently on iplayer also (pokemon, dragon ball super and ronja the robber's daughter) though, so a lot more limited than itvx but again can link these if the thread stays up.