Marvel’s Avengers Anime Is Now Free On Streaming
More powerful than Thanos and Kang combined, the recent writer’s strike (now resolved) and actor’s strike (still ongoing) have put a damper on how much Marvel content is coming out in theaters. Those who want more of a fix don’t have to wait very long, though; you could say that some kickass Marvel content is just a click away. Below, you can view the first episode of Marvel’s Future Avengers via Marvel HQ’s YouTube page.
Future Avengers, originally an anime made for DLife in Japan, is now available on YouTube.
While many studios have previously released the first episode of a show for free to entice excited fans to sign up for a service (such as Disney+), that’s not going to be the release model for Future Avengers. Instead, the show will drop subsequent episodes on the Marvel HQ channel every Tuesday for nearly a year. The goal is to release all 39 episodes of this new show via YouTube until the last episode drops on July 18, 2024.
What, though, is Future Avengers actually about? As the name implies, this anime focuses on the next generation of Earth’s mightiest heroes: it features three teens (Makoto, Adi, and Chloe) transformed by the deadly terrorist group Hydra into living weapons. Hydra wants these terrifying teens to take on the Avengers, but they never counted on the kids rebelling and instead joining up with the Avengers.
Speaking of the Avengers, don’t worry: if that description makes you worry that you won’t see your favorite heroes, you should know it’s the more familiar Avengers that train these teenagers. While the young heroes in training are obvious audience surrogates for younger viewers, the heroes in Future Avengers have a pragmatic reason for training their young charges. These kids were trained by one of the most evil groups on the planet, and helping them learn how to use their powers for good (kind of like the X-Men do with mutants) is one way of stopping the potential next generation of evil.
Future Avengers introduces a new generation of heroes trained by Marvel’s best (and Iron Fist.)
Incidentally, if all of these sounds damn familiar, you’re not crazy: simply put, Future Avengers is not a new show. Instead, it came out in 2017 and originally streamed episodes across Dlife in Japan and Disney XD in Southeast Asia before eventually coming to Disney+ for Western audiences. If you already subscribe to Disney+ and aren’t feeling very patient, you can stream every one of these Future Avengers episodes without waiting for new episodes to drop on the YouTube channel.
While that’s great news for current Disney+ subscribers looking for new Avengers content to consume, it’s still worth appreciating Marvel’s relatively unique approach to marketing its heroes and generally keeping the brand fresh and exciting. Instead of housing cool shows like Future Avengers solely behind a streaming paywall, Marvel has embraced the wisdom of making some of its impressive library of content free.
Future Avengers gives an interesting take on the MCU versions of Marvel’s classic characters wrapped up in a slick-looking package.
Only time will tell if this ends up helping Marvel and Disney overcome superhero fatigue or if audiences who watched the awful Avengers setup film Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania are now over these colorful tights, flights, and fights altogether.
