© TRIGGER・今石洋之／NPSG製作委員会
The funniest joke in New PANTY & STOCKING with GARTERBELT is that it’s ushered in a world where the cliffhanger ending from the original series is now resolved. Stocking slicing and dicing Panty had been a memetic troll-job of an anti-finale that ruined Christmas for fifteen years. If you’d asked me anytime between then and last week, I would have told you that I thought it was perfect and that the best thing Hiroyuki Imaishi and his funky bunch could ever do would be to simply not follow up on it. But the mad lads did! A decade and a half later, they delivered an actual, full-throated finish that not only followed up on those inexplicable threads, it kicked a ton of ass while doing so! Do you have any idea of the improbability of coming back with a long-awaited legacy sequel and living up to everything that made the original great? This is like pulling off Twin Peaks: The Return but with decidedly more dildos and giant disembodied vaginas on-screen!
And just like that, all the jokes about how Panty & Stocking left everyone hanging were nullified. You can’t just post that frame of Stocking with her sword through Panty’s head as a bit anymore—we know what comes after now, and we know it’s great.
So, of course then the second episode of New Panty & Stocking is the one that immediately lurches back to simply recreating the opening of the very first episode of the original series. Time and studios may change, but some things, like Imaishi and crew’s love of screwing with viewers, will never change. This, too, is trolling, of course. The status quo has been shifted with the Demon Sisters having moved into the household and working as maids while doing so, there are Heaven and now Hell Coins to collect, and even Garterbelt’s ominous phone call from the end of the premiere episode is revealed to be but professional correspondence with the underworld discussing the technicalities of increased Ghost cleanup. It’s all debaucherous business as usual, even as the colors are a bit more vibrant and a new streaming service, daddy Amazon, lets them get more graphic, naughty bits and weed shops on-screen.
But just as the original Panty & Stocking led with a literal shitshow to make sure viewers knew the exact level of sophistication to expect, the New anime is doing all this at the beginning to establish a baseline for its goings-on. So as a standard-bearer, this A-part is still a riotous roll with Imaishi’s name and fingerprints all over its depictions of sex and violence at mach speed. So much of this is in service of showing off splashy new stock-style footage of the Angels and Devils assembling and rolling out, a written cacophony of sound effects collaging and crowding over them. I fell in love with the art of Panty & Stocking from its very first promo images so long ago, so seeing this now, in new context, in as crispy a quality as Amazon‘s bitrate will allow—it’s like coming home all over again, to a house covered in snack wrappers and used condoms.
If there’s any question of how Panty & Stocking might have adapted to waking up in the modern world, it doesn’t seem to have missed a beat. While only five minutes officially passed in-universe, I appreciate the sense of time marching on regardless, the modern state of the pseudo-America this series takes place in is marked by those aforementioned weed shops. And of course, the B-plot of the second episode deals with Panty being canceled. Not for any reason of inappropriateness or offensiveness, of course; this universe has no problem abiding by that. Rather, she’s simply held accountable because continuity from the first episode kicked in, and she wound up going over budget. There might be a potshot about Gainax‘s old financial woes being taken there, except I honestly can’t believe that the Trigger team would care that much. They’re too busy having fun with this, which is why it all instead leads into a filthy Yu-Gi-Oh!/Magic the Gathering riff where a pooping cartoon uncle gets a drill-do shoved up his ass in a style that’s probably only slightly calling back to the crew’s work on Gurren Lagann. Amemiya already got to play with his Transformers toys in the first season, so now he and Rino Yamazaki get to geek out about the Black Lotus.
Even with those forward-moving future fuck-arounds, Panty & Stocking, for now, feels just like an extension of the original. Even the transformation sequences seen in the second episode are effectively the same as the ones for Panty, Stocking, Scanty, and Kneesocks in the first season. Why mess with perfection, especially since the first episode already cut loose and delivered a new giant-sized transformation animation for Panty, for all the macro-fetish freaks in the audience. The second episode reveals that Kneesocks works shifts at the local collectibles & cards shop. Rest assured that this anime is going to find all manner of new ways for granular audiences to get horny for these terrible, terrible cartoon characters.
Teddyloid‘s soundtrack backs the action as effectively as ever, though his musical style has noticeably evolved in fifteen years. There’s a bit more of a poppy sound to some of the new tracks, including the new version of “Fly Away.” And I respect the hard mash-up of the Anarchy Angel Sisters and Demon Sisters themes slammed together for the combo transformation in the second episode. Even with an all-new dub cast, the general tone that so many liked about that version of Panty & Stocking still feels like it’s being stuck to.
It’s a new world that New Panty & Stocking helped make, with this one-two punch proving that Trigger never should have been doubted about their ability to deliver on promises made fifteen years ago, as well as that there’s still a place for Panty & Stocking as it was back then. They’re still building models of the ghosts and blowing them up, thank God. More than anything else, I’m most excited to see where it goes from here. Way back when this season was first announced, Trigger President Masahiko Otsuka talked about this new anime serving as a place for the new blood at the studio to mix with the original staff and see what came out of it. I believe that’s how this series could manage to surpass even that extraordinary opening volley that managed to save Christmas in July. As a non-OSHA-compliant playground for Trigger as it is today, New Panty & Stocking feels like it could pull off some tricks that would top itself.
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New PANTY & STOCKING with GARTERBELT is currently streaming on
Prime Video.
Chris has to slay a bunch of anime reviews to earn his own Heaven and Hell coins, and he hopes his editors won’t deduct too much for occasional potty mouth here, given the context. He’s probably reskeeting fan art of Panty and/or Stocking on his BlueSky right now, and you can also check out his own back catalog over on his blog.
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