Streaming is great but sometimes, if your trying to get into a franchise with multiple entries, it can be frustrating, especially if different distributors owns certain parts of the franchise.
Back in the day, we had Netflix disk rentals and it was very helpful and help me watch most of the franchise. Nowdays, disk rentals has fallen in popularity due to the rise of streaming. It's still around but not used as much as it used to. It's even hard binge watch a series this way because Netflix will suddenly stop in the midway in the series or having missing parts in it's section.
I remember back in the day, it was hard to watch the entire Godzilla series. I grew up with them over the years and caught marathons on TNT and Sci-fi(now SYFY). After I looked it up on the net, I discover a dozen more films I haven't seen, as well as an entire expanded universe to explain all those 5 second cameos that was seen in Destroy All Monsters. One problem was trying to was watch The Return of Godzilla, AKA Godzilla 1984(or 85 going by the US release), and Godzilla vs. Biollante. At the time, they were only available for VHS and I had had to dig out my old VHS to watch these after buying them off of amazon.
Godzilla's box office rival, Gamera was also tricky to watch. Sometimes, I had to use my barely used VUDU account to watch some of his movies. Some were only available with Mystery Science Theater mocking the movie. Do you want to watch it with them or not? If not, your stuck with them because there was no other way. Of course, if you want to watch it in the original Japanese, it's far far more harder to do so.
The final movie of the Showa Timeline called Gamera: Super Monster, I had to watch on Hulu. I don't know what worse, that I had to use a 3 to 5 different services to watch the entire Gamera series, or I saw that horrible excuse of a movie that ended the Showa Timeline. I have notice in stores in recent years there is DVD boxsets of the entire Showa era and honestly, it's better to do that than to use multiple separate services.
Now you can easily see almost the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe on Disney+. I repeat, almost because certain Spider-Man movies is unavailable due to Sony having Spidey's film rights. Heck, trying to watch Sony's Spider-Man's Universe is hard to watch. I had to use a Redbox to finally see the 2nd Venom movie since I was unable to find a streaming service unless it wanted to buy the movie or rent it at a very big price at Amazon.
I notice Doctor Who is complicated to watch. I know the BBC in the UK is promoting it's iPlayer that will hold the entire franchise library but only in the UK. Here in the US and other regions, not so much. To watch Classic Doctor Who, you have to have use the lesser known service Britbox. To watch Modern version with Doctors 9-13, you have to have Max. To watch the upcoming 60th anniversary and anything after, it's on Disney+. What the heck.
There also the spinoffs of Doctor Who. The one-off K9 episode from the 80s is on Britbox. Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures is on Max. Back then, you could watch Sarah Jane on Amazon while Torchwood was on Netflix. Times have changed. I can't find a place to watch Class unless you plan to buy the series on Amazon or VUDU. Shout Factory has the streaming rights the newer K-9 show. However, that is considered non-canon, so you may not have to worry too much on watching this show.
I been trying to get into the Fate franchise but the problem is alot different people holds streaming rights to different series. Fate was based on a visual novel that had three separate paths that had the main dude ending up with a different girl and fighting a different villain. Also it had a prequel and semi-sequel. I been told watch Unlimited Blades Works 1st, then Heaven's Feels, after that, either the 06 anime or Fate/Zero. Easier said then done.
Unlimited Blades Works and Fate/Zero is on multiple places like Crunchyroll, Hulu, Netflix. That's fine and good but I'm told Fate/Zero is a prequel and not the 1st entry of the franchise. It be like watching the Star Wars Prequels 1st, or Metal Gear Solid 3 or Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. It may be sort of easy to watch the prequel 1st that way but it be seeing all these references and foreshadowing that may fly over your head. Also Fate/Zero spoils certain stuff that happens in Heaven's Feels.
About Heaven's Feels, I had to use VUDU to watch that movie trilogy and update my credit card since it shows how often I use that service.
The 2006 show, it's on HiDive. Everyone has opinions on the 2006 anime since it's not done by ufotable studio and that show is mostly based on the Fate route but mixes parts of UBW and Heaven's Feels into it instead of giving a true adaption. And that's the main part of Fate. I haven't bother to look into the rest of the multiverse but I'm sure it's going to get messy to figure out which series is on what streaming service but good gosh, all these different services, just to watch the main part of Fate.
I took a quick peak at Gundam and even it is on different services. I have notice back when Hathaway got his own movie Netflix, they put most of the UC Gundams on Netflix frontpage that made it easy for people to catch up on. That is at least a good thing, however ZZ Gundam never got dubbed and not released on Netflix.
Video Games may not count as streaming but there is one gaming franchise that's on multiple game systems. While it's true that as time goes by that you have to get the newer game systems to play the new entry but it's usually going from Wii to Switch or PS4 to PS5 but I'm talking about different games across different systems that belong to different parties. I'm talking about Kingdom Hearts. KH1 and 2 are on the PS2. Chain of Memories is on GBA. Coded is on a Japan-only cellphones. 258/2 Days and remake of Coded that we got years and years later, known as Re:Coded were on the DS. Birth by Sleep is on the PSP. Drop Dream Distance is on a 3DS. Good gosh! Bouncing back between Nintendo and Sony.
Thankfully they released a compilation a year before KH3 on the PS4 to finally played most of the games on the PS4. It also has the bonus content when the games were re-released in Japan a year later with extra bosses and cutscenes that ended up important to the plot and the later games will have flashbacks to these scene and confused people who didn't play these bonus content.
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