Tubi has anime and Kdrama channels but nothing specific to Jdrama. Tubi doesn't have language filters either, so the only way to sift through Tubi's catalog, aside from third-party sites like Reelgood, is to look up specific titles, actors, and directors, or do global searches for "Japan" and "Japanese."

Even there, the Tubi search engine is fuzzy, so the hits will be all over the map and may have nothing to do with Japan. And because Tubi licenses just about anything as long as it's cheap and available, everything from art house to grindhouse to documentaries and travelogues will show up in the results.

I've curated a list of Japanese language titles on Tubi I thought were worth a second glance. I will update this list on a semi-regular basis.

• Bakuman (2013) presents an unflinching account about what it takes to become a manga artist. The process has largely gone digital in the last decade and emanga outsell paperbacks but the merciless challenges of the creative process haven't changed. Check out Sleeper Hit (2016) on Viki for a more modern take from the publisher's perspective. Also see my longer review.
• Daughter of Lupin (2019) is a live-action spin-off of the popular anime action comedy. Like Marilyn Munster on The Munsters, Hana is the only normal person in her odd family. She's a librarian engaged to a police officer from a family of police officers, which causes no end of comedic problems when her crime family gets framed for a series of crimes they didn't actually commit.
• Lupin the Third (1971–2023) Along with six television series, there are at least fifty Lupin the Third movies at the latest count. Tubi has about three dozen of them.
• Pinwheel Hamakichi's Spell (1992) A disgraced Edo period police officer, banished from the capital for accepting a bribe, returns five years later to search for his daughter. Still respected as a detective, he is prevailed upon to solve crimes in an unofficial capacity, and makes ends meet by selling pinwheel toys from a roadside stand.
• Shadow Warriors (1980) Sonny Chiba reassembled the cast and crew from Shogun's Samurai (1978) to play ninja leader Hattori Hanzo (like Yagyu Jubei, a documented historical figure). By day, he's the layabout owner of an Edo bathhouse (if you're looking for gratuitous nudity, look no further). By night, he and his ninjas fix the nasty problems the shogunate wants swept under the rug.
• Steamboy (2004) is about a boy named Edward Steam. Yes, the whole thing is that obvious. This steampunk adventure takes place in Victorian England and includes a big nod to George Stephenson, the "Father of the British Steam Railways." If nothing else, the constant whirring, hissing, clanking, and grinding of gears will be a visual delight for any gearhead. Also see my longer review.
• Summer Days With Coo (2007) Coo is a kappa, a mythological water-dwelling reptile with a penchant for cucumbers and sumo wrestling. The story asks what happens when a fairy tale character ends up in modern suburban Japan and meets a boy named Koichi. Based on the novels by Masao Kogure.
• Toradora (2008) As both a plot device and a well-used anime trope, perhaps no anime series exemplifies the tsundere character type better than Ryuji Takasu and Taiga Aisaka in Toradora. This high school romantic comedy works on every level and ends on exactly the right note. Tubi has English dubbed and Spanish subtitled versions as well. Also see my longer review.
• Uzumasa Limelight (2014) looks at the samurai action genre through the eyes of an aging stuntman who has difficulty getting cast in new productions after spending his entire career on a weekly historical drama like Abarenbo Shogun, that was on air from 1978 to 2008.

Related posts

Tubi in Japanese (1)
Tubi in Japanese (2)
Tubi in Japanese (3)
Samurai vs Ninja
Japanese language links

Labels: anime lists, anime reviews, jdrama, streaming, television reviews, tubi