As part of their 10 Year Anniversary & Announcement Panel at Anime Expo this weekend, Studio Trigger has announced that they are working on a new anime project for ‘Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt’ (PSG). This announcement took anime fans by surprise. Panty and Stocking was an IP owned by Gainax, Trigger’s predecessor, who hasn’t put out an anime in years.
Yet like an angel from heaven, a new anime dropped from the sky and I am so happy it did. PSG is one of the most bizarre and audacious anime I’ve ever watched and fully captured the spirit of Gainax, one of the most important anime studios of all time. While they’d produce a few more anime after PSG, it was the last project Gainax made that truly had that insane spirit, their final climax. So before this new anime drops, let’s have another at what made the original so great.
What is Panty and Stocking With Gaterbelt?
Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt is a 2010 anime starring Panty and Stocking Anarchy, two fallen angels that have been kicked out of heaven. Why? Well, it probably had something to do with Panty being a sex-obsessed tramp and Stocking being a sweet-obsessed goth.
They now live in Daten City with Gaterbelt, a black priest who totally doesn’t have a thing for bondage and little boys. Together they must work to defeat the many ghosts haunting the city. This in turn will give them heaven coins which will allow the sisters to get back into Paradise if they collect enough.
Along the way, they meet allies in the form of the awkward “geek boy” Brief Rock and Frankenstein Dog-thing Chuck as well as do battle with the demon sisters Scanty and Kneesocks.
And how do they beat these ghosts and demons? Well, they activate their angel forms doing a celestial pole dance which causes their, well, Panty and Stockings to turn into a gun and katanas. These cause the ghosts to turn into stop-motion models, and they blow up.
What Happens in Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt?
So PSG is a pretty weird anime. The first thing you’ll probably notice about the show is the fact that it looks less like an anime and more like a Saturday morning cartoon. The show is set out like one as well with two shorter stories in each 25-minute episode, complete with their own title cards (with references). Each story is completely episodic with little overarching continuity, unlike most anime.
And what happens in the anime? Well, Panty and Stocking obviously beat a few ghosts but there’s also an episode where they beat-up zombies with dildos, one where they and their belongings turn into Transformers and Panty “screws” one of them, and even one where they create a music video with numerous references to famous western bands. All while swearing, making innuendos, and showing copious amounts of T&A along the way.
It’s certainly not for everyone. The show’s over-the-top nature and toilet humor can be outright disgusting at times, like the episode dedicated to Panty picking her nose and orgasming over it. But that’s also why people love it. People loved just how daring it was with its experimental sex-positive nature, a unique blending of anime and Western media, and the intense feeling that the animators are just going whatever the hell they wanted fully shone through.
It should also go without saying that the English dub of PSG is fantastic, one of the best of any anime and that’s in part due to the nature of the show. The English script is able to flavor the dialogue with even more innuendoes and jokes that just aren’t possible in Japanese, making the final product all the more hilarious.
The Last of Gainax
Perhaps this should come as no surprise considering who made Panty and Stocking: Studio Gainax, the same group behind Neon Genesis Evangelion, FLCL, and Gurren Lagann, which was made by the same director Hiroyuki Imaishi. These shows of same the same DNA as PSG: experimental animation and storytelling alongside strange, often over-the-top visuals, particularly during the fight scenes.
They’re also known for their heavy focus on fanservice and the curse of writing extremely strong beginnings, only to finish with weak, rather abrupt endings. A curse that PSG, despite being mostly episodic still falls into.
You can tell though with Gainax it’s always more about the journey rather than the conclusion, the wild gangbang of a journey filled with explosive animation, physics-defying boobs, and even some surprisingly down-to-Earth soul-searching every now and then.
Kill La Kill (2013)
This is something that Gainax’s successor Studio Trigger has continued with works like Kill La Kill, and Promare both of which were also directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi, continuing to take anime to the next level alongside a lot more anime boobs. That being said considering how insane all these shows are, I’ve never seen the pervy parts as super horny as much as I did just adding to the chaos happening on screen.
Imaishi and Trigger even made…