One-Punch Man is going free with its dub for the first time, and Pluto TV is adding 1,300 hours of anime
Pluto TV is adding more than 1,300 hours of anime and launching two new channels in September. The headline for most people: One-Punch Man and Kenichi arrive free with English dubs for the first time anywhere.
The free ad-supported service is adding It's Anime, a dub-led channel spanning current series, catalogue and simulcasts from Japan, and Big A Anime, a curated channel built around Vinland Saga, Dororo and the Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress franchise, plus fan programming including "Anime Showdown." Both launch in September.
Getting both dub and sub
- Vampire Knight — Studio Deen, 2008, 26 episodes across two cours.
- Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress — Wit Studio, Tetsuro Araki, 2016, 12 episodes. Steampunk Japan, armoured trains, the undead Kabane.
- Terror in Resonance — MAPPA, Shinichiro Watanabe, score by Yoko Kanno, 2014, 11 episodes.
- Mononoke — Toei, Kenji Nakamura, 2007, 12 episodes.
- Hikaru no Go — Studio Pierrot, 2001–2003, 75 episodes.
- Inuyashiki: Last Hero — MAPPA, 2017, 11 episodes.
Broader dub access is also coming to NARUTO, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Inuyasha, Zom 100 and Captain Tsubasa.
Which of these is actually new, and which is not
Worth knowing before you clear your evening. One-Punch Man and Hikaru no Go currently have no free ad-supported option in the US at all — it is Hulu or buy it. Those two are the genuinely new free availability, and the "first time on free streaming with an English dub" framing holds up.
Mononoke, Terror in Resonance, Kabaneri and Inuyashiki are already free somewhere — RetroCrush, Tubi, Plex, Rakuten Viki, Prime Video's ad tier — and all four are also on Crunchyroll. Kabaneri and Mononoke are on Netflix too. For those, Pluto is incremental reach, not a rescue from obscurity.
A note for Mononoke people
The 2007 series is a spin-off of the horror anthology Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, continuing the Medicine Seller from its "Bakeneko" arc. It has since become a film trilogy: Phantom in the Rain (July 2024), The Ashes of Rage (March 2025) and Chapter 3, Hebigami, which opened in Japan on May 29, 2026, with Tomoaki Koshida directing and Nakamura as general director.
Why free services keep doing this
This is Pluto's second major anime push in sixteen months — "Ani-May" in 2025 added 800+ hours and launched Anime x HIDIVE, Pluto TV Anime Comedy and Pluto TV Anime Movies. The 2026 drop is 60% larger and the emphasis has shifted from raw catalogue volume to dubs and simulcasts.
The market explains the shift. US free ad-supported viewers reach 131.4 million in 2026, up 5.8%; FAST hours watched jumped 43% year over year to 1.8 billion in August 2025; and adults 18–49 now give 63.8% of their TV time to ad-supported content. Pluto, owned by Paramount Skydance and running around 425 channels, is at 68.6 million US viewers.
The dub emphasis is the real signal. Subs are for people already in; dubs are how a free channel converts someone who has never watched anime and is not going to read for twenty-two minutes. Pluto's own executive said as much.
Note also that Crunchyroll and HIDIVE both run free branded channels on Pluto — a rival's platform used as a funnel into their own subscriptions.
What has not been said
- No exact go-live date for individual titles — only "September" for the two channels.
- Which channel most titles land on is unspecified.
- No word on whether this is US-only or wider.
- No performance data exists publicly for Pluto's anime channels specifically.
Related: My Happy Marriage drops all three special episodes on October 25.