NEW PANTY & STOCKING WITH GARTERBELT

DESCRIPTION

CAST

ANIME ActionPanty & Stocking with Garterbelt

REVIEWS

• 

  Misoony

  85/100
  The Bitches are Back!! Sorta?

  The Bitches are Back!
  Oh my gosh, when I heard the announcement that there'd be a season two, I was so excited! I love Panty and Stocking, so I was really looking forward to this season! And this season didn't disappoint! Do I have my criticisms? Yes, but overall I really enjoyed this season. It was something I looked forward to every week.

  

  I'll start off with a summary of my thoughts and then go further into them. My mom and I like to watch this show together since it has our humor. (She looks horrified while watching it, but never mind that.) Personally, I think season one is a lot funnier, but she likes the animation of season two a lot better, so I, for the most part, only watch season two with her. And I think that's a good way to summarize my thoughts. While the animation looks a lot better for this season, it's just not as funny as the previous one.

  To start my review off, I want to clarify that I watched the Dub. I don't know how the Sub is between seasons, just the Dub so I will be judging based on that.

  What I like best about Panty and Stocking:
  I have immature humor. Panty and Stocking season one was my exact sort of humor. I loved Panty and Stocking and the dumb stuff they'd say. The plot was stupid, the characters were stupid, and so was the dialogue. I loved that. It was the perfect show to turn on when I just needed something lighthearted to laugh at. A lot of this is tied to the dub. I really, really liked the dub of season one. It was hilarious.

  The Difference with Season Two:
  Season two was still great, I laughed a lot. But that humor the previous season had wasn't all that there. It was still there in some moments, and the show was still quite vulgar, but it just lacked the same charm as season one. Now season two did have a different dub cast, and I think they did well! It was just the dialogue itself wasn't as funny to me and sometimes it just made me cringe. But I think the voice acting was good! So that's one of my main qualms with season two, it just wasn't as funny.

  There's another reason for this, though. Some of the episodes just felt pretty eh. They just weren't very funny. Almost every episode of season one felt stupid and funny. But some of these episodes I just felt very uninterested in. They were still good, just not as good as the previous season. I'll give two examples. There were more wholesome scenes in this season, and to be frank, I just didn't really care. It was sweet, and I feel heartless for saying this, Lol but I just didn't care to see wholesome scenes in this sort of anime. Give me the stupidity! Lol! This is more just my preference, I know a lot of people liked these scenes, but I at least figured I'd mention it. Then there are the episodes that were just unique animation, and while they looked cool, I didn't really find them funny. It was still cool to watch, though.

  I also felt that this season lacked Panty and Stocking a bit. Not that they weren't in the show, they were in it quite a lot! But I miss the scenes from season one that were just of Panty and Stocking casually interacting. This season had a lot of characters, and while I liked that in some episodes, I miss the scenes just between the two sisters.

  What's Better about Season Two:
  There was some episodes I really really liked from season two. Primarily the musical episode and the one that introduced Polyester and Polyurethane. Those were really really good. I feel like this season was experimenting a lot more than the first one, especially with the musical episode and the differently animated episodes. And while I did say I wasn't a huge fan of the different animation episodes, they were still cool to watch and not something I'd really seen in anime before! So that is a positive.

  The animation for this season looked a lot better! Season one looked good, but whenever I watch it, it's kinda blurry. That's not the case for this season! I loved the color scheme, I loved Panty's different outfits, and everything just looked really good! Especially the fight and transformation scenes!

  I really like Polyester and Polyurethane. Their dub voice actors did fantastic using all the Gen Z slang. They did a really really good job and I really liked their characters! Heck, while I'm not a fan of a huge cast, I wish they were in this season even more! I liked them a lot!

  This goes for season one and season two, but I loved the music from both seasons! So much so that some of the songs are in my playlist!

  What season do I like better?
  Season one. I don't think this season is as good as the previous, but it's still really good, and if you were a fan of season one, I'd still highly recommend watching this season. You'll probably still really enjoy it and find it funny. Despite having its flaws, it always managed to make me smile.

  Continue on AniList
• 

  HidamariSeashore

  81/100
  Panty and Stocking are back, b*tches!

  (WARNING!: This review contains spoilers for the last episode of the previous season and the first episode of this season, so you better proceed with motherf*cking caution!)

  About fifteen years ago, the world was introduced to Panty and Stocking Anarchy, a pair of foul-mouthed angel sisters who starred in one of the most uniquely-animated anime series to come out of Japan. Any kids who might have wanted to watch it back then but couldn't because they were too young (as well as those who sneakily watched it, anyway) have grown up to a more appropriate age for viewing now, just in time for a sequel to come out. Having watched (and reviewed) the original "Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt" for myself (albeit years after its initial release), I speak for everyone who had watched it at any point before the sequel aired when I say that this sequel was a long time coming. Who would ever think that it would take the P&S crew this long to come up with an explanation as to how Stocking is suddenly a demon? (Seriously, the director, Hiroyuki Imaishi, has apparently claimed to have not put any thought into the original ending, so it could have actually taken him more than a decade to come up with the explanation we get!) Well, even with its original studio, Gainax, not in the picture anymore, we still managed to get a sequel thanks to Trigger, and now, I can follow up my review of the original series with one of its sequel, "New Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt"!

  For those who ignored the spoiler warning and don't know what Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt is even about, I'll give you the basic rundown. Panty and Stocking are angels who got kicked out of Heaven for bad behavior and now have to kill ghosts plaguing their new home of Daten City in order to earn enough Heaven Coins to buy their way back into Heaven; in the meantime, though, they indulge in their respective obsessions, which is sex for Panty and sweets for Stocking. At the end of the original series, though, Stocking cuts Panty up into 666 pieces, reveals herself to be a demon, and takes off with Corset, the villain of the last couple of episodes. At the beginning of this new season, however, this is revealed to just be Corset brainwashing Stocking into believing she's a demon (which I guess is an explanation that makes sense) and making her cause chaos throughout the city; to stop her, Garterbelt (a priest who watches after Panty and Stocking), Brief (a geek with a crush on Panty), and Chuck (Panty and Stocking's pet), along with Scanty and Kneesocks (two demon sisters from the first season), gather the pieces making up Panty and are eventually able to restore her to her normal self. After a showdown ensues between Panty and Stocking....well, things just go back to the status quo of the original series, with Panty and Stocking gathering up the Heaven Coins needed to go back to Heaven. This time, however, they're joined by Scanty and Kneesocks, who themselves have been banished from Hell and need to gather enough Hell Coins to go back.

  Truly in line with the American cartoons that have had an influence on the series (if we're not talking about the more serialized ones that have been coming out in recent years), pretty much any character development the main characters have gone through in the last few episodes of the original is pretty much reset by the second episode of this season. This may be annoying to some, especially those who would have thought Panty and Brief's relationship might have progressed by this time; instead, Panty treats Brief pretty much the same way she did for most of the first season. There's a part of me that doesn't mind, though, as it does allow for the fun shenanigans that we've all come to love from the series. I actually think I've come to appreciate the parody angle that the series has been going for all along even more than with the original series, as I've become more aware of the movies that are referenced, such as "The Fast and the Furious" and "Home Alone". The madlads at Trigger decided to even reference past works from Gainax with a parody of Inferno Cop! Now THAT'S gold!

  Speaking of newfound appreciation, I think I've come to find that in the character of Stocking. What can I say? She's a fun character with a cool goth aesthetic! I'll admit that I liked her a little better than Panty this time around, but I do still find Panty to be a good character; she even has some pretty heartwarming moments in this season, such as when she bonds with a ghost cat in one episode. Two more characters I have a newfound appreciation for are Scanty and Kneesocks; they have a cute sisterly bond that gets a decent highlight on it for a few episodes, and they can each be pretty fun when paired with the Anarchy sisters, who they actually have pretty good chemistry with. That's pretty much another point in this season's favor - the introduction of some pretty fun character combinations, which even includes Brief and Chuck. Unfortunately, while the returning characters are as good as ever, I didn't really care for the new ones (except for Gunsmith B*tch; she was pretty fun). The new angel pair introduced in this season, Polyester and Polyurethane, have very annoying attitudes; although I'm sure it's on purpose (and there was one episode that made it seem like they could potentially be likable), I still have an actively unfun time whenever they're onscreen. Seriously, these boys constantly make me think something along the lines of "Kids these days!" when I'm not even sure if I'm even at the age to be thinking thoughts like that! Oh, and there's also this random foreigner character whose name I forgot (if he even has one) who doesn't really have a purpose other than to be a "gaijin" type of comic relief character; he didn't really get that many laughs out of me, though.

  Despite the studio change - although with Trigger basically being a successor to Gainax, is it really a studio change? - the animation still looks as smooth and pleasing to look at as ever, with the action scenes being great. The previous season had a lot of sequences of ghosts exploding when defeated, which are still present here and still look cool, although there is a smaller number of them here than I remember there being there. I also thought the little animation sequence present in the ending theme was pretty cute, with a pretty rocking song in "Reckless" to go along with it! Speaking of theme songs, the new opening theme, the very creatively-named "Theme of New Panty & Stocking", is pretty catchy; I've had the "P-A-N-T-Y S-T-O-C-K-I-N-G" part of the song stuck in my head for weeks! Finally, there's the voice acting. Since Amazon Prime got the rights to this season instead of Funimation-which-is-now-Crunchyroll, the voice cast for the English dub (which is the version I watched) has changed. The new cast is decent enough, but I definitely felt the loss of Jamie Marchi as Panty and Monica Rial as Stocking for a few episodes; luckily, Courtney Lin and Cristina Vee are decent replacements, and I got used to their voices soon enough. Is it just me, though, or do the characters in this season speak way faster than they do in the first season? There were times where I had difficulties keeping up with the dialogue because of how fast the characters talked, and I don't recall having that problem with the first season! (It's been over a decade since I watched the first season, though, so that could just be my imagination.)

  Admittedly, I enjoyed this season a little less than the original despite all of the praise I've thrown its way, and I'm not even sure why. Still, I can confidently recommend New Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt to fans of the original; it's a pretty good payoff to all of the waiting fans have had to do for over a decade. Well, that about wraps up my review. See you all in 2040 for season three!

  Continue on AniList
• 

  TheAnimeBingeWatcher

  35/100
  I waited fifteen years for this? What a joke.

  There was no reason to expect we would ever get a sequel to Panty and Stocking. It's been fifteen years since this crass, unabashedly filthy bomb of sex, swearing and Hollywood references first crashed into the world, a lightning-in-a-bottle show if there ever was one. Even if the rights were somehow wrestled out of Gainax's decaying corpse, the anime landscape is in such a different place today. Studios are more capitalist than ever, focused on appealing to the most people and ever-broadening their appeal with mass-market consumer products. What space does today's world have for a show with enough F-bombs to make South Park cringe and the balls to make an entire Saving Private Ryan parody out of talking semen? What space does today's safe, shrink-wrapped market have for something so audacious and anarchic? The world Panty and Stocking was born into no longer exists. The thought of it somehow coming back in this drastically different environment... it might as well be a pipe dream.

  And yet, against all odds, it happened. Hiroyuki Imaishi and his pals at Trigger have dragged the fallen angels out of retirement for another carousel of debauchery and rebellious attitude. The bitches are back, baby!

  It's just a shame it ended up such a dud.

  Look, it's not like I want to be the bearer of bad news here. The original Panty and Stocking is a classic for a reason, one of the most batshit creative experiments in the industry that used its filthiness not just as the basis for some truly all-time jokes, but as a statement on sexuality itself and the importance of pushing against what's considered "acceptable" to the masses. I'm as far from the target audience for this kind of humor as I can be, and it still won me over hook, line and sinker. It's proof that being raunchy as hell doesn't mean you can't also be artistic and meaningful about it. But this new season? It's the worst kind of half-assed sequel, the kind you'd expect them to crap out a couple years after the first season to keep the brand recognition strong while completely forgetting what made it great in the first place. It's a hollow echo of past glories with half the creativity, half the heart, and none of the point the original was trying to make. By the time it was over, I was shocked how little I enjoyed it. How did a show this special turn into something so dull and meaningless?

  It's not like the show's been radically altered, either. New Panty and Stocking still has the same format as the original: each episode is split into a couple shorter segments, in the style of the American cartoons it's parodying. Each segment is its own little adventure where Panty and Stocking get mixed up with some situation, usually involving sex, with animation styles shifting wildly from segment to segment for the individual creators to express their own vision. The major difference is now, the angel bitches are rooming with Scanty and Kneesocks, the rule-obsessed demons from season 1, so they get swept up in the shenanigans too. And later on, we get a new antagonist pair in that same vein, a pair of angel boys for a change who speak exclusively in terminally online Gen-Z slang (they're the best part of the season for real, no cap). But structurally, this is very much the same show it was fifteen years ago with the same sense of humor and wildly anarchic artistic variety. So why isn't it working anymore?

  An obvious culprit to point to would be the dub, OG Panty and Stocking's dub is truly iconic, a creatively unhinged script that wrings solid gold from every filthy line (Stocking on a guy she finds hot: "I would totally have his abortion!"), delivered by Jamie Marchi and Monica Rial at the absolute height of their powers. In an ideal world, we could've gotten the same cast and scriptwriter to carry that energy into season 2. But for whatever reason, there's a new crew now, and they just... don't have the juice. Lines of dialogue endlessly re-iterate the same information with no personality beyond yelling "FUCK!" and "BITCH!" at the camera a million times. Yes, this is a filthy show, but there's a difference between the sheer gonzo delight the original dub took in embracing its absurdity and just swearing a bunch. Every line feels like the most literal, unimaginative translation possible, no thought given to how language flows differently in English or how natural these words sound coming out of English-speakers mouths. And while most of the new cast finds their footing with their characters eventually, Panty's actress is... bad. She's just bad! She can't make a single line of dialogue sound natural! Everything she says is stilted and off, and between that and the perfunctory translation the jokes just do not land anymore. The OG show made me cackle on a regular basis: I can barely recall a single time the sequel got me harder than a light chuckle.

  But it's not fair to judge a show too much by its dub, even for a series as defined by its dub as Panty and Stocking. Unfortunately, there are plenty of issues that even a dub on par with the original would struggle to fix. Remember how the OG show split every episode in two, so you got two twelve-minute segments per episode? Well, for some reason, lots of episodes in New PSG split into three, with two segments of six minutes and one of twelve minutes. And hoooooooooo boy, six minutes is not enough to tell any kind of coherent story. So many of these extra-short bits barely even feel finished: there's a premise established and a start to the action, but then we cut right to the climax with no development in the middle. Sometimes we don't even get a proper resolution! It just cuts off at a random point! I realize it's been a long time since most of us watched the original, but OG PSG had, like, stories, you know? Coherent beginnings, middles and ends to all of its bits? It didn't waste time of these half-formed ideas that don't last long enough to matter.

  Granted, it's not like most of the full-length skits feel like they matter much either. For as many different styles and ideas as this show explores, there's a shocking lack of impact to most of this season's offerings. Hell, for a show called Panty and Stocking, we barely spend any time with Panty and Stocking as a duo. So much time is dedicated to the demon sisters, or Brief, or Garterbelt, or even the dogs, that the two titular characters, the ones who's chemistry and personality made this show, feel like little more than strangers to each other. And it's not like the demon sisters are fun or interesting enough to justify all the space they take up; even by the end, they're still painfully one-note. Instead, we have to do the shitty sequel thing where we roll back all the first season's character development and have Panty and Brief's relationship reset to less than zero despite the bond they supposedly formed, so geek-boy spends all season screeching like a [redacted] over wanting to get into Panty's panties despite the fact they already had sex and bonded over it! Why is he suddenly acting like the Flanderized parody of himself? Why is Panty suddenly being so cruel and dismissive toward him like they didn't save the world together? It's like the first season never happened to them! It's garbage and I hate it!

  Most of all, though, it just feels so dated. Every other segment is a way-too-on-the-nose parody of some movie or another, all relying so much on reference porn (pun intended) that if you don't know what it's spoofing, you don't get the joke. The legendary Semen D-Day battle from the original didn't rely on you having watched Saving Private Ryan to understand it; you could still delight at the insanity of a bunch of sperm cells fighting a desperate battle to summit Mount Coochie with nonstop sex puns in every line of dialogue. The same can't be said for the sequel bizarre riffs on The Thing, Being John Malkovich, and a million other meaningless reference points. There's even another sperm segment, trading Private Ryan for- of all things- the Fast and Furious movies, a framework that gives the sex jokes nothing to play off of and barely even makes sense as a parody. The WW2 stuff was hilarious because it was treating the act of cumming with the gravitas of a grisly war movie; what comedic contrast is there in a bad Vin Diesel impression? It's like a symbol for this entire failed project, an empty reference banking on nostalgia for the original without understanding the joke the original was making in the first place.

  Yes, there are things I like about New Panty and Stocking. Its best moments comes when it really stretches the boundaries and does something entirely new; there's a lengthy homage to 60s superhero cartoons that perfectly parodies the style, and it's got at least half of the best jokes in the season. And like I said, the Gen-Z brainrot angel boys are pretty excellent. But those moments of freshness are few and far between, suffocated by a series already run dry of ideas and unable to escape its own shadow. The original Panty and Stocking was a lightning bolt from the blue; this sequel is little more than a clammy static discharge left in its wake. And somehow it has the gall to end on another stupid cliffhanger promising even more sequels. Hiroyuki Imaishi, if you're somehow reading this review, take my advice: don't bother. Save your energy for new ideas that haven't already been wrung dry. Cause there's nothing left to be gained from parading around this empty husk of a once-great show in hope a few more dregs can be squeezed from it before it crumbles to dust.

  Continue on AniList

SIMILAR ANIMES YOU MAY LIKE

• OVA

  ActionFLCL
• ANIME

  ActionTengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
• MOVIE

  ActionPromare
• TV SHORT

  ActionUchuu Patrol Luluco
• ONA

  ActionInferno Cop
• ANIME

  ActionKill la Kill
• ANIME

  ActionDandadan
• ANIME

  ActionDandadan 2nd Season
• ONA

  ActionCyberpunk: Edgerunners
• ANIME

  ComedyLittle Witch Academia (TV)
• ANIME

  ComedySpace☆Dandy
• MOVIE

  ActionREDLINE