After announcing an incredible line-up of anime titles to their collection in July 2025, the cinephile hub is adding even more to its streaming platform. Criterion Channel, the streaming service under Criterion Collection posted the titles that will be available next month: Gunbuster: The Movie and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex S1.
Stand Alone Complex originally aired in 2002 and will be available in both English dub and subtitles. This announcement follows Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell film that was added into the platform last year. Meanwhile, the Gunbuster movie will be the first half of the Gunbuster vs Diebuster Aim for the Top! The GATTAI!! Movie double feature. Criterion has not announced if its sequel, Gunbuster 2: Diebuster, will be added in future releases.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex — Season 1
Of the myriad adaptations of the foundational cyberpunk manga Ghost in the Shell, the animated TV series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex arguably comes closest to capturing the breadth, vision, and thematic complexity of the original. 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. Combining sleek visuals with provocative themes surrounding the dissolving boundaries between humans and technology, Stand Alone Complex remains a thrilling high point in the art of anime: absorbing, intelligent, and often unsettlingly prescient.
Gunbuster: The Movie
Two young women forge a bond while battling alien insects in this exhilarating—and disarmingly poignant—space opera from the creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Source: Criterion Channel
