Four Films, Four Sundays, No Paywall
Free-to-air Japanese satellite channel BS12 Twellv has locked in the November 2026 schedule for its Sunday Anime Theater block, and the month is a straight run of classic theatrical anime. Harmagedon (幻魔大戦) opens on November 1, followed by Ghost in the Shell 4K Remaster on November 8, Innocence on November 15, and Armored Trooper VOTOMS: Pailsen Files The Movie on November 22. Every film starts at 7 p.m. and goes out nationwide for free, according to a report from Japanese anime news site Anime Anime.
Three of the four have been on Japanese television before. Pailsen Files has not. The November 22 broadcast is its first free-TV airing anywhere in Japan.
Mamoru Oshii Gets Two Sundays, Plus a Theatrical Opening in Between
Oshii directed both Ghost in the Shell (1995) and Innocence (2004), his two film adaptations of Masamune Shirow's manga, and BS12 is running them on consecutive weeks. The month then closes with a VOTOMS prequel film.
Armored Trooper VOTOMS Hexe (灰色の魔女), the first completely new entry in the VOTOMS franchise in five years, opens in Japanese theaters on November 20, two days before the Pailsen Files broadcast. Oshii is directing it. Bandai Namco Filmworks has announced the project as a two-part theatrical release, animated at Sunrise with production cooperation from Production I.G, with original series creator Ryōsuke Takahashi supervising. It is billed as a Sunrise 50th anniversary work. So a viewer who follows the BS12 block through November gets two Oshii films on TV, a new Oshii film in a theater, and the VOTOMS prequel, inside 22 days.
Harmagedon Is Where Katsuhiro Otomo's Film Career Starts
The November 1 opener is the oldest title in the block. Harmagedon was Otomo's first piece of film work, five years before AKIRA, and he came aboard as character designer rather than director. Rintaro directed, with animation at Madhouse (One-Punch Man, Death Note), and the film holds a second credit worth knowing: it was the first theatrical anime released under the Kadokawa banner. BS12 is airing the digital remaster.
The story comes from Kazumasa Hirai's novels. Luna, a Transylvanian princess with psychic powers, allies with a cosmic consciousness named Floi and a cyborg soldier named Vega to defend Earth from the Genma, destroyers set on conquering the planet. Luna plans to gather espers from around the world. In Japan, Vega's provocation forces open psychic powers that high schooler Jō Azuma (東丈) never knew he had, and then the Genma appear in front of him.
Section 9, Twice Over
Ghost in the Shell is set in 2029, when computer crime and cyberterrorism have scaled up alongside the network itself. Public Security Section 9, an unofficial extra-legal unit of elite cyborgs, is formed in response. Full-body cyborg squad leader Motoko Kusanagi and Batou drive the film. Their case is the hunt for an internationally wanted hacker of unknown identity, known as the Puppeteer.
Innocence picks up in 2032, three years later, and shifts the focus to Batou, who is left with a sliver of organic brain and his memory of Motoko. A girl-type companion robot goes berserk and kills its owner. Batou and his partner Togusa work the case through the cyberbrain network while a mysterious hacker attacks Batou's own brain. It was also the first Japanese animated film ever selected for the competition section of the 57th Cannes Film Festival.
The broadcasts land in a busy year for the franchise. Science SARU's new TV adaptation of Shirow's manga, The Ghost in the Shell, premiered on July 7, 2026 and streamed worldwide on Prime Video.
Pailsen Files Finally Reaches Free TV
Pailsen Files is a prequel to the 1980s TV series Armored Trooper VOTOMS, the benchmark for battlefield mecha anime. The classified Pailsen File records the secret of a rare gene producing what the series calls abnormal survivors (異能生存体), soldiers who keep walking out of situations nobody should survive. Fedok Wockam, vice-minister of intelligence for the Gilgamesh army, takes an interest and sends the five men named in the file, Chirico, Barkoff, Godan, Zaki and Kochak, into brutal battlefields as little more than test subjects. A century of war is winding down, and both armies are preparing a decisive operation. The five end up at the center of the assault on planet Monad.
Looking Ahead
The four broadcasts run November 1, 8, 15 and 22, 2026, Sundays from 7 p.m. on BS12 Twellv, with details on the Sunday Anime Theater program page. BS12 is a Japan-only free satellite channel, so there is no international simulcast of the block.
International fans do not have to wait for the broadcast, though. In the United States, Ghost in the Shell (1995) currently streams free with ads on Tubi and Plex, and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is on Paramount+, Kanopy and Hoopla. Shirow's original manga is published in English by Kodansha Comics, including deluxe hardcover editions, and Science SARU's 2026 TV series is on Prime Video. Harmagedon and Pailsen Files are the harder gets, with no current US streaming home announced for either.
As for VOTOMS Hexe, part one opens in Japan on November 20. No international release date or streaming partner has been announced.