Which episodes of "GITS: Arise − Alternative Architecture" are covered by "GITS: Arise − Border" movies?

Question

I recently watched Ghost in the Shell: Arise − Alternative Architecture episode 3 and was dismayed to find that the episode was pretty much a repeat of part of the Ghost in the Shell: Arise − Border 1 movie. I’d rather not re-watch the same content, so I was wondering

• Which episodes of the TV series GITS − AA are covered by the GITS − Border movies?
• Are there any differences between the repeated stories (IE. extra scenes/new content/changed plot)?

Answer 1

I haven't heard about the “GITS: Arise − Border” movies you are talking about (I assume this is what the american licensee decided to call the Arise movies), but the storylines of Arise and Arise: Alternative Architecture overlap. If you already watched the longer Arise movies earlier, then you can skip the episodes 3-8 of AA which are basically the 4 movies split up into two part episodes. I did not do an extensive scene-by-scene or frame-by-frame comparison for all the episodes, but I watched them all in the order they aired and didn't notice any new scenes being added in AA.

I started comparing both versions of Ghost Pain yesterday in a video editor (kdenlive, one of the free editors that supports to show individual frames in the timeline) and got to about 13 minutes playtime until I gave up due to lack of skills to compare both efficiently and provide a usable result. What I found so far is that scenes have been re-arranged and shortened for AA: some scenes have been left out, while some stills appear longer on screen. The first scene in AA for example with the major at the airport in Ghost Pain was originally further in the episode/movie, scenes including dialog with Aramaki (at the cemetery) and Kurutsu (in her office) have been shortened.

Comparing runtimes of the movies and AA episodes it's 58m vs. 2*24m, so you're likely to watch an abridged version of the movies, where roughly 10 minutes of content had to be cut to meet the length required for the television broadcast edition. My guess is that the focus for creating new content was on the episodes Ghost Stands Alone (1, 2), Pyrophoric Cult (9, 10) and the new movie (see below).

If you haven't watched any of this, you probably want to watch in this order: Ghost Stands Alone (AA), Ghost Pain (Arise), Ghost Whispers (Arise), Ghost Tears (Arise), Ghost Stands Alone (Arise), Pyrophoric Cult (AA), New Movie.

Koukaku Kidoutai Arise: Ghost in the Shell

22.06.2013 till 06.09.2014, each episode is about 60 minutes long:

1. Ghost Pain
2. Ghost Whispers
3. Ghost Tears
4. Ghost Stands Alone

Koukaku Kidoutai Arise: Alternative Architecture

05.04.2015 till 14.06.2015, each episode is about 25 minutes long:

1. Ghost Stands Alone, Part 1
2. Ghost Stands Alone, Part 2
3. Ghost Pain, Part 1
4. Ghost Pain, Part 2
5. Ghost Whispers, Part 1
6. Ghost Whispers, Part 2
7. Ghost Tears, Part 1
8. Ghost Tears, Part 2
9. Pyrophoric Cult, Part 1
10. Pyrophoric Cult, Part 2

Koukaku Kidoutai: Shin Gekijouban

This is the new movie with a new story set in the Arise universe

Answer 2

Ghost in the Shell Arise - Alternative Architecture, is all of the borders (1,2,3,4), but adapted with a TV broadcast in mind, it splits up the hour long episodes into TV-length episodes (30 or 45 minutes). It also included 2 new episodes (for a total of 8 episode), meant to bridge the gap between Arise and GITS:The New Movie. Also it seems that Funimation has Licenses the series.

This is an excerpt from Reddit. I enjoyed GITS, but it has been hold for me from sometime. Also from the subreddit

Also, I have seen episodes 1 and 2 of Alternative Architecture, so far it's the same as Arise, it just starts off with border:4 and they added a new opening and replaced some of the music though the border with either silence or different music. (For example, when Kusanagi and Batou are taking Emma to unit 501, their is no background music, this scene is also intercut with Boma and Paz following the man who they captured.) Their is some editing differences, but the main point is the last 2 episodes and the new opening. As a side note, the new opening is in a different aspect ratio than 16:9, (I believe 2.35:1), I also believe that they remixed the opening song for the new film with Arise's opening

^{link to reddit}

So it is more in line with the comment posted earlier.