As I’ve written before, there was a point for each of us that we suddenly became aware anime was “different” from other kinds of animation. Whether it was the mature stories that involved drama and death, the level of fighting and violence portrayed on-screen, or watching characters fall in love and kiss, we all knew that anime was not like any other kind of animation we’d ever encountered. For many of us, the moment we knew anime was something totally new was when we got our first quality pantyshot. So I decided to ask J-List’s Twitter followers, “What was your first anime pantyshot?” And here’s the list we came up with!
What was the first panchira (pantyshot) you saw in anime? Sauce is ??? pic.twitter.com/OG9Rz6JKXk
— J-LIST 🎃 (@jlist) September 21, 2019
First of all, pantyshots are not new at all, and have been with us from the beginning. Here’s some fun fanservice from 1972’s Space Battleship Yamato that didn’t make it into the Star Blazers I watched as a kid.
Science Ninja Team Gatchaman also had some choice views.
While Hayao Miyazaki never said the famous “anime was a mistake” line (it’s a fake meme), he is responsible for putting rather a lot of pantyshots into his films (even Kiki got one). When Pippy Longstockings creator Astrid Lindgren denied Miyazaki permission to make an anime of her book, he apparently got revenge by making a show about a similar-looking girl who showed her panties.
One of our readers got exposed (heh) to panties in anime through this show, Majokko Megu-chan, from 1974. (Image source is here.)
Touch is a baseball anime and manga that’s very dear to my heart, since I basically learned Japanese from it. And got to see Minami’s frilly panties. By chance, the city I founded J-List in, Isesaki, is the hometown of the manga artist Adachi Mitsuru.
The other show I learned Japanese from was Orange Road, about a family living in Tokyo who were espers, able to use telekinesis and teleportation and time travel, though they had to keep it secret from everyone. In this gif, one of the esper family members uses his powers to expose Madoka’s skirt.
Another anime to please fans with some pantyshots was Bubblegum Crisis, an extended homage of Blade Runner.
Project A-Ko also had some great moments. This anime was actually originally conceived as part of the hentai series Creme Lemon until the creators realized the idea was too good to waste on a mere adult series.
Then there was that time Bulma made an inappropriate offer to Goku.
https://twitter.com/JListPeter/status/1176677632231915520
Or that time Bulma lost her dragon balls.
As we move into the 90s, some shows realized that panty fetishization could become more central to the stories. Apparently viewers rose to the challenge.
Some shows still used anime pantyshots for occasional fun for viewers, or to highlight certain aspects of the characters (like how Momiji from Blue Seed wanted to be seen as grown-up, yet can’t stop wearing “neko-pantsu” with cats on them)…
…while some other shows positively defined themselves with the highly detailed fanservice they provided, like Golden Boy.
Here’s a choice scene from Himitsu no Akko-chan 2, the 1989 remake of the original magical girl show.
Moving into the 90s, anime starts to get really popular around the world. And in addition to those nude transformation scenes from Sailor Moon, we also got a lot of entertaining pantyshots.
Evangelion was also very popular, with its great fanservice moments, including some great anime pantyshot moments.
Eventually, pantyshots in anime would approach their own current levels, as shows like Agent AIka pushed the envelope on how awesome panties could be in animated form.
I consider the dividing line between the “golden age” of anime panties and our modern one to be 2002, when Chobits came along.
The origin of the “pantsu” meme in English is this episode of Chobits. Do you like pantsu? pic.twitter.com/XaK5Gs2Fym
— J-LIST 🎅 (@jlist) May 17, 2017
In fact, according to my research (I am an expert at researching anime panties), this episode is when the word pantsu — which is the Japanese pronunciation of the word “pants,” which in most British-English countries and Japan refers to underwear rather than outer trousers — entered the English language.
In the “modern pantsu era” we got shows like Ikki Tousen, which turned anime pantyshots into an art form, and the entire point of the show.
A big change happened the anime world around 2006. The DVD licensing bubble burst, as Music Land, Sun Coast Video and all the other places you could buy anime went belly up. Suddenly, anime studios couldn’t rely in huge revenues from licensing their anime abroad, and had to develop the domestic market.
This is, in my view, where we started getting “weaponized” pantsu, which we really sexy and cute and made fans feel extra perverted.
Another thing modern anime will often do is give you one good pantyshot in episode one, to get fans’ attention and create buzz on the Internet, then nothing else. That’s what the Wake Up Girls! idol anime did, and it apparently worked, because I have a customer who’s traveled all over northern Japan just because of this gif.
Well, that’s my survey of the best classic anime pantyshots. Did I miss any good ones? Let us know on Twitter!
