The second season of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt aired fifteen years after the first. Was it still accessible for today’s “modern” audience? Read on to see why this irreverent, sexy romp was still worth your eyeball time.
Do you remember watching late-night cable TV? Channels would flash the TV Parental Guidelines code and list what it received before it started. The shows for “cultured” lads flashed a rating way above TV-PG or TV-14. Yes! The celebrated TV-MA! And it always gave you a list of what to expect in your softcore porn episode. You knew you were in for a good time if you had the letters D, L, and S (suggestive dialogue, coarse or crude language, and sexual situations). New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt would receive the TV-MA (DSL) on the old Skinemax or SmutTime post-midnight time slots.
However, Trigger’s anime about angelic and demonic sisters exorcising ghosts has a separate issue about its target audience. The majority of its pop culture references come from American movies, video games, and social media. So, should New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt be for Mature Western Audiences only? Let me tell you!
New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt for Mature Audiences Only (TV-MA)
Panty, Stocking, Scanty, and Kneesocks are the four whores of the apocalypse that provide the fanservice and sexual situations. New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt’s premise already categorizes the anime for sexual situations because all the main characters’ names come from underwear. Here are the specifics.
The angel and demon sisters activate their weapons by removing the pieces of clothing that share their names. Their ultimate power-up transformation scenes depict the sexy angels and demons in pin-up art style versions as they dance around stripper poles. You must be eighteen to enter these magical girl transformation scenes and twenty-one to order liquor from the bar.
New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt unapologetically shows Panty’s sex chamber containing her sex toys and paraphernalia. We don’t see genitalia flopping around, but that’s because this show is a softcore porn comedy.
This show features my favorite anime thing: Japanese girls cursing in English! Panty (Arisa Ogasawara) and Stocking (Mariya Ise — Himeno from Chainsaw Man) make me laugh so hard with their dirty talk. One chapter turned Panty’s profanity into a musical!
New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt has uncensored full frontal nudity! Okay. It’s only on Panty and Stocking’s deformed chibi versions, but when did you last see blonde and brunette downy triangle patches in an anime episode? Scanty and Kneesocks showed off uncensored snatch in the same episode during the swords and sorcery film parodies.
Oh, and the ladies shouldn’t feel left out of the sexual situations. The anime introduced angel brother rivals in Polyester and Polyurethane. They had male stripper transformation scenes, of course.
Obviously, the second season of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is for a cultured, mature audience. But why would Western audiences appreciate it more than other geographical locations?
New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt for Western Audiences Only (TV-WA)?
Trigger has usually chosen Western streaming services for its recent anime. BNA, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and Dungeon Meshi streamed on Netflix, and New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is on Amazon Prime. Trigger’s SSSS kaiju/mecha series is one exception (streaming on the conventional Crunchyroll). Trigger’s anime series that appear on general Western streaming services have one thing in common: none of them are set in Japan. That artistic choice lets Western audiences, especially American ones, access the story and settings without preconceived notions about Japanese culture and language.
So, why would it seem that New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt targets Western and American culture? Here are two reasons.
First, most episodes follow the format of Saturday morning cartoons. Two or three unrelated vignettes follow the characters through entertaining short stories full of sexual humor and fanservice. It’s TV-MA Looney Tunes, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and The Powerpuff Girls mashed together.
Second, each cartoon block in New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt dedicates itself to an American movie genre, video game, or social media trend for spoofs, riffs, and parodies. One block had John Hughes’s teen romance films (Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club) as its inspiration. Another stuck Raiders of the Lost Ark together with Tomb Raider. And one vignette made jokes about social media influencers. Chasing the Meta and the Algorithm turned the angels and demons into deformed freaks! That’s social commentary for you.
Credit Hollywood and Game Developers for America’s Cultural Reach
Here’s a counterargument, though, or an explanation, for why all these Western references in New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt appeal to the Japanese: American culture had been global for decades. Japan loves 7-Eleven and KFC more than Americans. At least it seems like it, from all these American references in any genre of anime. Only recently has Asian pop culture gone the opposite direction toward America. We see it in KPop Demon Hunters and the rising popularity of anime streaming and theatrical movies. Count how many kids dress as anime characters instead of American cartoon and comic book ones if you give out candy for Halloween.
Okay. Most of the episode chapters did not relate temporally or narratively to each other. But was there an overarching story to New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt? Yes. Still ghostbusting, the same as fifteen years ago.
New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt — PLOT and BACKSTORY
The story picks up from the fifteen-year-old cliffhanger of the main villain defeating Panty and convincing Stocking that she was a monster demon. After an absurd set of circumstances leading to a giant Panty fighting a Stocking kaiju, new ghosts appear that need both angel and demon weapons to exorcise them. Each cartoon block involves hunting a ghost or encouraging them to pass on.
Wait a minute. Shouldn’t New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt have an overarching plot that leads to shocking developments in the season finale? Yes. It’s a tale as old as the Bible.
There’s a rebellion brewing in heaven related to those angel strippers, which sends characters to hell in the end. That happens a lot in Judeo-Christian mythology. Right? And it forces another fifteen-year time skip. Like, for real this time. Not the five minutes that occurred between the first season of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt and the second one. Should we pay attention to the time skipping details? Nah. They’re only there to introduce characters, settings, and circumstances to make jokes through more Western pop culture references in the future third season.
New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt streams on Amazon Prime in multiple languages and subtitles.
Thanks for reading this post about New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt. I still wonder what an anime with Panty and Stocking in their ultra-sexy versions the whole time would look like. The visual humor would land differently, for sure, but imagine Marin Kitagawa in a messy bed with sex toys strewn about. It could work! Do you agree? Or tell us your favorite parts of Trigger’s sexy farce about angel and demon strippers in the comments below!
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