Critic’s Log - Earthdate: November 24, 2013. Review #69: Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt

Get ready to get turned on and aroused with Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt!

In a town named Daten City there is a group of ghosts that move in that are taking advantage of human greed. In Daten City there also lives Two angels (as well as sisters), Panty and Stocking, are sent from heaven to exterminate them. However ,in reality they got kicked out for naughty behavior.

Oh dear, where do I begin? Well, this is a Studio Gainax production and this is by far their most interesting show to talk about, as random as it gets. I ed watching how silly, manly, awesome, and badass Gurren Lagann was and I ed how cool FLCL was. With Panty and Stocking, this is a little different. Before you say that the animation is decent, well this show will trick you right there. The animation may not look like much, but that is exactly what Gainax intended. Gainax payed homage to American animation and even some other stuff. The style is unorthodox compared to the typical anime viewing we tend to get. Panty and Stocking succeeds strongly here. The animation is inconsistent intentionally and I swear this is one of the most over the top anime that Gainax has produced. Dead Leaves is crazy, Gurren Lagann is awesome, FLCL is fun. Panty and Stocking is pretty much all of that rolled into one. Also, the explosions are fucking hilarious.

But the biggest highlight of the animation is the transformation sequence. Enough said. Am I the only one that thinks that Gainax really got a little too carried away with these scenes. I mean they made Panty and Stocking look pretty. fucking. hot. With a show like Panty and Stocking, Gainax sure had a lot of fun making this show and they made this show awesome.

The music by Taku Takahashi and TCY Crew is also pretty damn good. Like the show’s nature, the soundtrack is crazy, loud, and just way too fun. Well… for the most part. The soundtrack compliments the show and it is a soundtrack worth listening to outside the show. The opening is a rare anomaly when it comes to anime. It’s only 30 seconds long. As for the closing, it’s pretty nice. The highlight song is undeniably “Fly Away” by TeddyLoid. This song kicks ass and it makes the transformation scenes or any other scene that the song is used in worth watching. This soundtrack is great and another strong factor to this show.

When it comes to voice acting, The Japanese cast is over-the-top like you would expect. Arisa Ogasawara is a blast as Panty, Mariya Ise is also great as Stocking. Kouji Ishii is hilarious as Garterbelt. Hiroyuki Yoshino plays Brief well. Yuka Komatsu and Ayumi Fujimura are great as Scanty and Kneesocks, and Shigeru Chiba is over-the-top as Corset. The Japanese cast is well-casted because of the show’s nature. As with the English Dub, Jamie Marchi is a riot as Panty. Monica Rial was a huge surprise for me. If you thought she gives her characters whiny voices, Think again! That is actually her normal voice on a everyday basis, well...for the most part. Beside that, She is fucking hilarious as Stocking. As far as English Dubs go, Stocking is one of my favorite roles that Monica Rial has voiced. Chris Sabat does the voice of Garterbelt which I swear is either awkward or just too damn funny. A white guy voicing a character that is Black. I’ll let you be the judge on this one. The only thing that Chris Sabat is lacking is the over-the-top quality that Ishii-san pulled off well. Even though Garterbelt is played by an Asian man and a white man. The voices are still pretty good, but I must it… I think Kouji Ishii had the better performance. There were a couple of moments that Chris Sabat botched. The fact that he’s a white guy, he does give a convincing performance in the dub. Joel McDonald is terrific as Brief. Colleen Clinkenbeard and Cherami Leigh are pretty good as Scanty and Kneesocks. Chris Ayres is okay as Corset. Know you’re probably wondering why I’m not mentioning Takashi Nakamura and Ian Sinclair when it comes to Chuck. That’s because they don’t need to do a whole lot of work with that character. Just saying. They were both good. As much as I like the Dub, I will say that the Subtitled Version has one advantage over the Dub, and that is even though the language in Japanese, most of the profanity is spoken in English…

Allow me to correct myself, it is spoken in ENGRISH. But even if the Subtitled Version has one advantage over the dub. I will compliment Colleen Clinkenbeard for her credit in the ADR direction and taking the liberties to stay true to the original Japanese script despite some differences in dialogue even though it’s insensitive either way. It is still a Dub worth listening to, but I strongly recommend watching the Subtitled Version before or after watching the dub if you want a good laugh.

Speaking of good laughs, The characters are a riot. Panty is not the stereotypical dumb blonde. She’s just very selfish, She’s very rebellious, rude, easily angered, and very bitchy. She is also a sexaholic. All she cares about is finding men to fuck and she likes to help her friend “Pinkie Pie”.

Yeah, I just went there. Stocking is a complete opposite to Panty even though she has her own “interests”. She likes to eat sweets (hmm, interesting), she can be just as rude when pissed off, and she compliments Panty very well when it comes to appearance, personality, etc… Garterbelt is also a great character to watch alongside Panty and Stocking. His “interests” sure are interesting but not for everybody. The entire trio is a riot. Scanty and Kneesocks are pretty much Panty and Stocking’s counterparts as well as archenemies. The same goes for Garterbelt’s archenemy. But they compliment eachother fittingly. But here’s a kicker, the main characters aren’t the only fun characters, so are the episode exclusive ones as well and a couple interesting ones as well. Oh let’s not forget Chuck. He is awesome, Why? Because if you Invader Zim and loved GIR, then you’ll love Chuck.



The show has appreciative animation, the show has kickass music, the show has funny characters, and should the story be important? Pfft, fuck no! The show contains shit jokes, penis jokes, boob jokes, women jokes, men jokes, sperm jokes, weight jokes, nose-picking, vomiting, Ass-kicking action, robots, Zombies, sex toy jokes, lawyers, the Beach, relationships, Chuck, backstories, a music video, transformation scenes, Movie homages, video game homages, TV show homages, Movie title parodies, TV show title parodies, sex jokes and a bunch of other shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits that this show has offer.

This show is socially insensitive, insensitive on gender, and it is religiously offensive to a certain degree, and guess what? This show does not give two fucks about all that. This show is very sporadic, yet it was done on purpose. And…That’s why Panty and Stocking is an awesome anime. However it may not be everyone's cup of tea. Here’s the one important kicker. This is not a Hentai anime even though it has a lot of sexual jokes and moments. There’s even a few sex scenes albeit not as explicit as a Hentai anime. Let’s remain mature, shall we? He he… Giggity. Anyway the show is pretty awesome in the long run. That is until…

Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt is available by Funimation.

With all that said, Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt is a crude series that was intentional since Day One. It is an awesome anime once you turn your brain off, On second thought… Let this anime fuck your brians out. The animation is appreciative, the soundtrack is bitching, the characters are out of this world, and fuck the plot. The show is not perfect, but it is still awesome.

I give Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt a 9.2 out of 10, it is EXCELLENT!

Feel free to leave a comment, and REPENT MOTHERFUCKERS!

Huge text of random stream of thought follows. Consider yourselves warned you lazy bastards!

When I first gazed at the entry picture and read the name, I though it would be just another ecchi comedy with minimal animation and crappy storytelling. When I eventually sat down to watch it out of curiosity I realized I was wrong… But not in the sense that it turned out to be the exact opposite of what I originally thought; it really “IS” an ecchi comedy with minimal animation and crappy storytelling. The thing which makes all the difference is that… it is different.

What I mean is that a good show, being comedy or action, is supposed to surprise or excite the viewer. If you can tell what the joke will be or how the battle will end minutes before they actually occur, then you have yourself a mediocre series. The jokes and the outcomes are not supposed to be predictable if you are to be highly entertained and this is what makes this show a class above the average tale out there. It is unpredictable! Really, you just don’t know what will happen next, or even if it will be funny or tragic.

What I’m trying to say is that this show does not follow a formula, as most shows do. You know what I mean, you see the pilot episode of an average shounen adventure and you can pretty much foresee how it will play out in the next 500 episodes or even how it will end (and don’t tell me this is not the case with Naruto or One Piece ). The premise is clear, the outcome is obvious, you are just hoping to enjoy the in-between. As entertaining as that may be for some time, it ends up being dull after awhile and the thrilling finale may just find you saying “Ok, it ended as I expected; where is my pop-corn?” That effectively kills half the enjoyment you would otherwise get if you weren’t aware of how the story will unravel.

So this is why I liked this show; I couldn’t tell the outcome or predict the jokes. And if you add to this fact how the industry these days plays it safe and rarely tries to take risks, then you end up liking it more. Where others go for safe formulas by chewing the same established stereotypes and successful tropes, P&S pretty much said “Screw it, let’s just have fun.” And this is what most series of today lack you know; the feeling that you watch something its creators made with love and not with anxiety if it sells or if it ain’t goddamn moe enough to draw in the mindless consumers.

Before I move on, I must make clear that I don’t consider this show to be original or groundbreaking. It also is heavy on sexy/moe stereotypes aiming to draw in the masses, but it is also not DAMN afraid to be as extreme as it wants to be. Here is a basic example from the show: Do you know all those endless carbon-copied harem and ecchi comedies where the same shit happen in all of them, in almost the exact way, around the exact same people? Isn’t it frustrating that they always “hold-back” on the juicy parts? I mean, some dork gets to score with chicks and the chicks may want it too but something really lame always happens every time to stop it. Why? Because that is the limit. It can’t go beyond that and just offer what it is supposed to be about: SEX! The most distinctive example in recent memory would be the anime B Gata H Kei (which I reviewed as well in case you want to torture yourselves with further reading). Its selling point was to show a girl having sex in a thousand depraved ways with a thousand random dudes. Yet all it was showing were lame sex jokes and the girl chickening out or random people stopping them just because the show wasn’t willing to go beyond a certain point.

So P&S comes along and WHAM performs a Limit-break on this junk. The main heroine is not afraid to have sex with random people she just met. Sounds too simple and may not even be surprising to see such a character in real life. But in a non-hentai anime??? INCONCEIVABLE!!! It was so simple yet it was never shown (implied at best), not even in the boldest erotic shows. Because they were all chickening-out! But not THIS show. It is not afraid to show ridiculous amounts of shit, puke, semen, nudity, splattered guts, profanity and anything else all other comedies just fool around with sparks of it. It is NOT original but then again NOBODY had the guts to show it in such a degree before.

What is even funnier is that everything is shown with such minimalistic animation that manages to not be gross to the point of hating it; you might as well just find it disgustingly humorous. And speaking of the animation, it is another thing to take notice of; it again makes the show look special. In an earlier review I wrote how the American version of the Powerpuff Girls looked a lot more special than its run-of-the-mill appearance of the Japanese version (reviewed that as well; go for it you bookworms). This is a similar case with P&S, where the minimalistic western look of animation makes a huge contrast amongst other anime and thus it becomes memorable. Not only that, but the characters seem to move and act a lot more lively despite being a lot easier to draw them and animate them than an average looking anime character. Which is again a major thing most modern anime have forgotten. You don’t need to look slick and complicating in order to be likable; you just need to have the vibe and the emotion present. Many famous retro series of the 80’s have that which makes them more interesting than most other high budget cartoons of the same era. Most modern anime try too much to play it safe and end up copying one another to the point you don’t care anymore about any of them. But P&S with its vivid motions, explicit context and special animations just stands out like a singing nun in a goth brothel.

It wouldn’t be that much interesting if it was JUST the animation that stands out. The soundtrack is actually equally good on its own, full of beaty songs which are great enough to buy the CD. Really, for someone like me who doesn’t even fancy such a type of music, I ended up listening to them again and again because of the vividness of the show in general. Fly away, Chocolat, Anarchy, Fallen Angel; I find them all addictively likable and (unlike most anime OSTs) extremely memorable.

Now as far as the characters and the story go, I must again make clear that they are NOT original or special. The cast is quite stereotypical and the story hardly exists or matters. But again, both are so unpredictable and extreme that they end up being memorable or even likable if you like this sort of humor. Heck, each story lasts around 15 minutes so you don’t even have the time to be bored. I sure prefer this form to that of silly shows like Gintama, where they literally tell you when it is ok to laugh by making a reference to another show and YELLING THEY JUST MADE A REFERENCE!!!

I must also point out that it’s not as if the show is without any direction at all. Although the jokes and the stories appear to be random, down to it they all have to do with moral liberty from social norms. And yes, it may seem like I am overanalyzing something heavy around an otherwise silly ecchi comedy but it is true. All the themes revolve around guilt, lust, punishment, retribution, and catharsis, things religion and moral laws strive to uphold. It is all played for laughs but it is nice to see how the show itself is making fun of limits and constraints by having the exact elements as its mockery target… And if I am to overanalyze it even further, I say GAINAX, the production company of the show, is famous for doing this shit. Heck, it revolutionized the anime industry back in 1995 by making Neon Genesis, a show which again played around stereotypes in a way to ridicule and reconstruct the mecha genre and even indirectly criticize escapism.

For the third time I make it clear that P&S is no Neon Genesis and it doesn’t revolutionize anything. It just came out to remind the industry NOT TO CHICKEN OUT as it has been doing for the past 5 years. Hopefully the Youth Ordinance Bill will put a stop to the overdone moe and ecchi shows and finally force the companies to turn to something else, preferably artistic and stylized just like P&S. They will of course not be allowed to air on tv such ridiculous amounts of … EVERYTHING but it is still a nice example of a show which at the end of an era reminds us all NOT TO SETTLE FOR MEDIOCRITY when we can always strive for something different. The sky is the limit… and even that can be pierced by Guren Lagann.