The Criterion Channel announced that it has added the anime titles Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Season 1 and Gunbuster: The Movie. The latter will only be available to watch in the U.S.
The first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex will be presented in both the original Japanese language version and in English dub.
© SIGK
The 52-episode anime series was directed and written by Kenji Kamiyama, with Production I.G handling the animation production. It contained two 26-episode seasons, with the first season being released in Japan from October 2002 to October 2003 and the second season from January 2004 to January 2005.
The Criterion Channel describes the first season as:
The twenty-six-episode first season unfolds as a riveting science-fiction crime procedural, following the members of the specialized police unit known as Public Security Section 9 as they investigate high-profile cyberterrorism incidents in a future where humans have increasingly become cybernetic hybrids. Their work ultimately leads them into the case of the Laughing Man, an elusive hacktivist whose attempts to expose a vast web of corporate and political corruption threaten to destabilize powerful institutions.
Gunbuster: The Movie was directed by Neon Genesis Evangelion director Hideaki Anno and Shoichi Masuo. It was released in Japan in October 2006 and is a condensed anime film version of the original 6-episode Gunbuster OVA series from 1988-1989. Gainax was the animation production company.
Sentai Filmworks released Gunbuster: The Movie on Blu-ray in September 2022. It describes the main synopsis as:
When alien nightmares attacked humanity’s push into interstellar space, Noriko Takaya’s father sacrificed himself to stop their advance. What he bought for mankind was time. Time to create a weapon capable of stopping the monsters once and for all. Now that weapon is nearly ready, and a teenage Noriko is determined to be in the battle, though it’s not until she models herself after top pilot candidate Kazumi Amano that she discovers her own abilities. However, even as Noriko and Kazumi become both partners and rivals for the same man’s affections, there’s one aspect of this war that will affect them unlike any other: Pilots traveling faster than light experience time differently than those they’ve left on Earth. Which means that even if Noriko survives each battle, home will no longer be the same place she left behind in GUNBUSTER!
The Criterion Channel previously streamed Naoko Yamada‘s Liz and the Blue Bird and five Makoto Shinkai films: 5 Centimeters Per Second, Children Who Chase Lost Voices, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, She and Her Cat, and Voices of a Distant Star.
The Criterion Channel describes itself on its website as an “independent streaming service” operated by The Criterion Collection that hosts several classic and contemporary films from Hollywood and around the world.
Sources: Criterion Channel Official Bluesky, Official Website
