New PANTY & STOCKING with GARTERBELT

Episode 8

New Panty & Stocking has shown some serious chops from the fresher talent at Trigger, but the old crew can prove they've still got plenty of sauce to put on this show. This week's episode sees Akira Amemiya and Hiroyuki Imaishi take the stage with old ideas, new ideas, and new takes on old ideas. I can't overstate just how fresh the New Panty & Stocking is feeling at this point. Even the few iffier episodes earlier on haven't been able to detract from the cocktail of increasing talent and fifteen years of simmering ideas alchemizing into the orgy of delights seen so far. It's not just how new it all feels compared to the old Panty & Stocking—I'm thinking it really might be the stronger show. Quality should be borne of such experience, I would hope.

With that in mind, the A-part of this week's adventure sees Amemiya return to Trigger's roots, with an extremely on-brand crossover with…

…Inferno Cop Impact Cop! The only good cop, because the only good cop is a cop on fire. He's here in all his adult-swim-sliding-cutout-animation glory, seeking justice and trying to defeat evil as only he can in bite-sized episodes. Panty and Stocking are basically along for the ride. And it's only devilishly appropriate that the cop's opponent turns out to be the internet itself, as his own debut was a web series. He's also right about the internet, as we should have known all the way back in 2012. Obviously, this thing is the root of all evil, and relying on it for all the answers only feeds that evil. This Impact Cop would sever and destroy his own head rather than let the internet continue to exist. Truly, he is a real one.

Beyond that, the idea of looking for answers is the joke of this episode. With Amemiya leading all of it, it's easy to get caught up in meditating on the minutiae of how this might tie into a broader Trigger-verse. Chief Over Justice from Space Patrol Luluco is here, voiced by Toru Inada and everything, as Impact Cop's commanding officer. Except he winds up dead, and viewers never find out precisely where Impact Cop goes from here. Is he actually the Over Justice fans know and love? Is this Inferno Cop before he joined the Space Patrol, per his own overconnected backstory? Does featuring the internet mean they're all somehow connected to Alexis Kerib from SSSS.Gridman? How do all the Mechanical Violator Hakaider references fit into this? Shut up! It's Panty & Stocking—by the time they've got you theorycrafting about this shitpost of a series, it means you've fallen headfirst into the bit they're doing. It's like Impact Cop, then Panty and Stocking reiterate: there are some things you don't understand, which you're better off not knowing. Remember that the next time you're asking inane questions about continuity.

The metatext is hilarious, to say nothing of being simply funny on its own terms thanks to Amemiya's idiosyncratic style. The long, awkward pauses between Impact Cop and the chief's chuckling conversation are deliciously churro-worthy. The static slides of the cops clash brilliantly with the flickering animation of their head flames and Panty and Stocking's own movements. To say nothing of how the cool blue colors embrace those palettes that New Panty & Stocking has deployed so well already.

It's all an unmitigated delight that would win this whole episode if it weren't simply setting the stage for Imaishi, plus Kōdai Nakano, Syunpei Gunyasu, Akihiro Satō, and Yoshitaka Mano, to take it and stun with their following performance. A couple weeks ago, my charismatic co-writer Coop and I discussed some of anime's more memorable musical indulgences, and I am infuriated that this episode wasn't out yet so we could count it among them. Seeking to answer the question of "What would a Panty & Stocking musical look and sound like?" yields…basically the precise answer you would expect, but it's no less stunning in its execution for that.

There are only a couple of numbers in here, as this is a half-episode entry with a fair amount of lead-up on it, but everything about that setup and the resultant symphonic shitpost is operating at glass-shattering levels I didn't even know Trigger could hit. I could listen to Arisa Ogasawara spew English-language swears as Panty all day, which is what sets off this story, even as I understand how it might grate on the other characters. This genuinely has to be a record for the number of F-bombs not just in this show but in anime overall, and the punctuating punch-line of Panty's tongue getting circumcised off by a celestial censorship device might be one of the funniest moments in the series.

And then Panty finds the La La Land loophole letting her continue to spew obscenities as long as they're in-song. The episode bursts to life the way musical theater so requires of its participants—except this is Panty & Stocking, so the resultant number is like nothing so much as a follow-up to Carole & Tuesday's "Galactic Mermaid". Look, music is about passion, and Panty's passion is bein' a fuckin' bitch. It's passion you can see and feel as well, as animation directors Gunyasu, Sato, and Mano truly bring that musical smoothness to Imaishi's storyboards, and Ogasawara frankly crushes it singing in English. She gets a duet with Shunsuke Sakuya at the end, which also sees Panty donning a tuxedo. Simply put, I don't know how I could have won any harder with this episode.

Even as this episode stands as a platform for two of Trigger's established heavies, what really stands out is the feeling of how New Panty & Stocking continues to innovate. This musical indulgence sees Panty trying something she would ordinarily dismiss, only to find she actually excels at and enjoys it. She even says singing feels better than sex by the end of the episode! I can't help but feel a similar energy from Imaishi throwing out something like this stylistically apart from his old sex and violence at mach speed. It's a mark of growth, and not just from the characters, as this season has demonstrated in their consistent understanding and sparing of the Ghosts. It shows off just how far the artists at Trigger have come, compared to the old days of the original Panty & Stocking.

Rating:

New PANTY & STOCKING with GARTERBELT is currently streaming on Prime Video. Chris has to slay a bunch of anime reviews to earn his own Heaven and Hell coins, and he hopes his editors won't deduct too much for occasional potty mouth here, given the context. He's probably reskeeting fanart of Panty and/or Stocking on his BlueSky right now, and you can also check out his own back catalog over on his blog.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.