The Summer 2025 Anime Preview Guide - New PANTY & STOCKING with GARTERBELT

In Daten City, a realm between heaven and hell, sinister spirits known as "Ghosts" prowl the streets, feeding on human desires and resentment. Yet, in the darkest moments, two figures emerge to obliterate these vengeful beings with a divine light beyond human understanding. Their names are Panty & Stocking. These fallen angel sisters have been tasked with purging the darkness engulfing the earth.

New PANTY & STOCKING with GARTERBELT is Studio Trigger's follow up to 2010's Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt by studio GAINAX. The anime series is streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Wednesdays.

Can I say that sometimes I question if this show isn't secretly an American cartoon and not an anime? I mean, so many of the jokes are on the nose it's hard to believe it's not sometimes—especially the ones about the inflation crisis and a weed dispensary on nearly every corner. Regardless, the humor is hilarious in this show.

Sometimes we get word play jokes like the Japanese language-fumbling Super Guy “Jin”—i.e., “Super Gaijin,” the most stereotypical foreign otaku visiting Japan. Other times it's in the details like the text on the Blue Eyes White Uncle card which lists its keywords as “Malding” and “Frenzied.” Of course, most of the humor is just straight-up, in-your-face dirty humor—be that lots of cussing or a middle-aged white guy with his dick hanging out taking a dildo up his ass.

Speaking of which, this week's episode of Panty & Stocking also doubles as my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! episode of all time. It does an amazing job of showing the absurdity in that anime by contrasting Brief's reactions (as a person familiar with the actual card game and its rules) with Panty's actions (who does things that break the rules but it all still works for some reason?).

The first half of the episode is likewise enjoyable. It sets up the new status quo for the season: Panty & Stocking living with the Demon Sisters and how they're both working together and at odds with each other when it comes to killing Ghosts and collecting coins. While this half isn't an extended parody like the second, it does have many great laugh-out-loud moments (my favorite being Panty and Scanty shooting up a restaurant in frustration and accidentally healing everyone inside of all their ailments).

But the real standout of episode two isn't the humor, it's the music. From the opening theme song to the transformation song that mixes “Fly Away” and Theme for Scanty & Kneesocks” from the first season, it's just a string of absolute bangers from start to finish. Teddyloid and his collaborators have really outdone themselves this time.

In the end, this episode is Panty & Stocking at its purest. You'll either love it or hate it—and I think it's more than clear which camp I am in.

There were two obvious paths to take in making this episode. The first is the season-long arc implied at the end of the first season 15 years ago—where Brief, Chuck, and Garterbelt (and likely the Demon Sisters), collect all 666 pieces of Panty and bring her back to life—not to mention deal with the fact that, somehow, Stocking has been a demon all along. The second is to completely ignore what happened—or simply do a time jump and just say everything happened off screen—making the whole cliffhanger thing a big joke.

Luckily, New PANTY & STOCKING with GARTERBELT instead follows a third path. In the process, it manages to deliver on a 15-year-long cliffhanger but doesn't lock itself into spending an entire season resolving it. This is the best result we could have possibly gotten. We are rewarded for the long wait and the show has the freedom to do anything it pleases going forward.

Most importantly, New PANTY & STOCKING with GARTERBELT feels like the original. While many of the jokes are irreverent to the extreme—I mean, the main dilemma of the episode is how to get Panty's giant-sized “vagina cube” back into her body—there is also a ton of SFW humor that is just as funny (if not more so). In particular, the second rendition of the elevator gag had me rolling—and for some reason, so did the “mark of the devil” being the biohazard symbol. With so many jokes going off every minute, there's bound to be more than a few that hit as long as the sexual humor doesn't turn you off completely.

I was also impressed by the consistent use of continuity. This episode has callbacks to events all across the first season—not just the final 30 seconds. This is most notably clear as Panty and Stocking's gigantic fight devolves into scratching and hair-pulling while they complain about each other. This ties into what I enjoyed most about this episode: the ending.

While the first season of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt was filled with one-off adventures and absurdist humor, you got the feeling that the characters were growing and changing—even if in only the tiniest of ways. It would have been so easy to just return to the status quo but that's not what happens. Corset is fully killed, the Demon Sisters are taken in by Garterbelt and the angels, and Panty doesn't forget Brief and leaves him behind. I mean, she's running off to have sex with another man, but baby steps.

I can't imagine this episode being any more perfect than it already is. I'm giving it the easiest 5 out of 5 of my life.

Okay, that's more on the level of what I had been expecting from the start of New Panty & Stocking way back when this project was announced! Here are the coldly, cleverly recreated opening scenes of the original series—revamped for the renewed status quo that was set by that fifteen-years-late finale last week. I loved Scanty and Kneesocks in the old Panty & Stocking, so it's delightful to have them here from the start for this season—almost as "delightful" as their sleeping arrangements tacitly reminding viewers that these sisters share a bed and fuck sometimes. Studios may change, but this crude crew's sensibilities remain the same.

"More of the same" is arguably the vibe for this fresh outing. Unlike the first episode, which was on cliffhanger cleanup duty and did so with aplomb, this episode gets back to showing how these characters operate when the stakes are slightly less apocalyptic. It's as irreverent as ever, as the Angels and Devils sharing mission space leads them to lore drops about spiritual garment weapons being nonlethal to humans, so they can just shoot up a whole pancake restaurant as a ghost detection strategy. Brief, you might have gotten close there in the preceding season finale, but you and your new job never really had a chance.

Really, this A-part of the episode is all about showing that Panty & Stocking can still be Panty & Stocking in the usual way, even as time has gone on. Sure, the girls use phone apps now and their depiction of America has accurately evolved to depict weed stores on every corner, but it's still the same slick pseudo-stock-footage rollouts and transformations sequences, backed by a bangin' Teddyloid soundtrack with some fresh new tricks for a musical era. Just jamming together the transformation themes for both sets of sisters is the exact kind of crude, obvious tack I expect from a show with these kinds of brutally blunt sensibilities—and the crazy part is that Teddloid makes it work. It's as chaotic as a "back to basics" reset episode could possibly be.

So then of course the B-part sets about confirming just how bodacious the boundary-pushing sensibilities of this squad have actually gotten. Never mind that a Yu-Gi-Oh!/Magic the Gathering riff is one of those things I'm kind of shocked the original Panty & Stocking never got to, doing it based entirely on dad-bod uncles with their junkles hanging out somehow takes it to a transcendent level in a few, scant minutes. Bless Amazon's apparently lax streaming standards as it lets us behold a card based on the mythical "Black Lotus" but constructed entirely out of phalluses. It's an awareness of American-side geekdom mixed with a take on something they hadn't tackled before that really makes this "Yu-Gi-Oh! Abitched" concept work as well as it does—even beyond all the jokes about free-hanging wing-wangs. If this is the baseline that New Panty & Stocking is establishing at the outset, then I shudder with excitement to think of the extremely low heights it could potentially soar to before this is all over.

Fuck yeah.

There were a lot of ways Trigger could have gone about having Panty & Stocking return. I was half-banking on them going with the ol' cartoon-logic status-quo reset and simply not acknowledging the absurd cliffhanger the original series left off on fifteen frickin' years ago. But that wasn't giving Imaishi and his funky bunch enough credit. And so New Panty & Stocking picks up right where the first season left off, ultimately turning into less of a legacy follow-up and more of a bigger, longer, uncut finale to that original season, delivering the glorious climax audiences had been so blue-balled from for so long.

Does it set the standards perhaps unreasonably high for the absurd antics of this new season already (before things likely settle down into lighter episodic fare after this)? Maybe, but who cares when an episode like this succeeds at roaring back and reminding viewers of all the crazy parts they liked most about Panty & Stocking. Even the retcons and walk-backs necessitated by this continuation (sure, let's just forget about Oten City for now, whatever those original plans were aren't relevant anymore) can be brushed off under the auspices of that cartoon logic. Brief's still collecting and sticking together Panty while Scanty and Kneesocks order magical plot-device goo off of Satanic Amazon.com (which I guess is just regular Amazon.com). There are some energy dips in the exposition and recap, but it's made up for by the sheer heights of the highs.

If there was any question how Panty & Stocking might be brought into the world of a decade-and-a-half later, the show's self-awareness is still propelling it. Even the sight of "pure" Panty upon her resurrection is its own joke apart from her restored-virginity self from the end of the original series. Brief questioning what truly "makes" her Panty and what codifies his own attraction to her is on-point as far as his character goes, and makes for some stupidly irreverent acknowledgement of how the definitions of free-wheeling "bitches" have shifted since Panty & Stocking's freshman year. It's funny, but not dwelled on, as the entire exercise pays off with the backup crew having to deliver Panty's giant-sized woman-thing to her in order for the action to kick off. The attitude has absolutely not changed.

And once Panty's slit is slotted back in and the action really gets going? It's like the show hasn't missed a beat from the heights it hit at the end of that first season. The kaiju-sized bitch fight is punching arguably above the weight of the original series' legendary sixth episode, with smashing shooting, swording, shit-talking action that I know I'll love watching multiple times (which I will use as an excuse to check out that curious new dub). There are even some jokes that are genuinely funny, like the repeated riding up an elevator to get up to the giant angels' level. Like I said, the biggest issue is wondering where the show even actually goes after roaring out of the gate like that. But this is Trigger, and this is Panty & Stocking. If anyone can find a way, these bitches can.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it and that's kind of what this episode highlights. After we resolved the plot twist of season one and established a slightly different status quo with the introduction of the demon sisters to Garterbelt's church, I was wondering if we would get any major changes to the overall structure of the show. Remember, season one was pretty much the definition of episodic up until maybe the last two episodes and here it looks like that's going to be the case again. The only difference is that Scanty and Kneesocks are also going to be hunting ghosts for pretty much the exact same reason. We're not exactly shaking the bedrock here the same way that Panty is right back to shaking her bed with numerous guys or anything and that's fine. The show's setup was just there for the purposes of creating a bunch of parodies and callbacks as they hunt down specific ghosts. Sometimes there's a thematic throughline, but it's incredibly surface level for the most part. For example, the first half of this literally is about water and oil which do not mix, similar to how the demon sisters and the Anarchy sisters will not get along just because they live under the same roof.

I'm sure the show will get into more creative character dynamics moving forward. It would be nice to maybe get some episodes focusing exclusively on the demon sisters like how the second half of this episode pretty much focuses exclusively on Panty. That was also something with the first season where it would occasionally shake things up even if this is the main structure that we are going to go with. I love the second half for the Yu-Gi-Oh! comedy because I love Yu-Gi-Oh! and I'm easy.

I am a little disappointed about the episode just randomly throwing Kneesocks in there as someone who worked at the card shop and not doing anything with that. So I wonder if that is something that's being set up to be paid off later. I also like the continuity of Brief being rich, he just doesn't like to use his family money. But I guess he will bend the rules if it means he gets Panty's underwear. This second episode isn't as bombastic as the premiere but it's still showing us that Panty & Stocking is still firmly comfortable playing to its strengths.

P.S. I NEED THIS SOUNDTRACK WHEN IT GET RELEASED LIKE YESTERDAY

It's been over a decade since the original Panty and Stocking first came out and won the hearts of anime fans everywhere with its crazy style and bold profanity. Due to a bunch of legal stuff, a sequel to that series felt like a pipe dream, but here it is in the year of our lord 2025 and it is every bit as crazy as I hoped it would be. I love that the show literally picks up five minutes after where the last one left off and pretty much resolves that twist ending in the only way that it could. We've got profanity, we've got references and we've got animation styles of various different qualities.

Although when it comes to Studio Trigger, it's debatable as to whether or not the animation quality is all on purpose or if it's a result of production issues. I lean more towards the former because sometimes a scene is funnier when everyone is represented by sliding PNG's than by complex animation fluidity. My eyes were glued to the screen with the progressively escalating scale of everything, and having it basically boil down to a spat between sisters destroying a city felt just perfect. If anything, this episode is the perfect summation of Panty and Stocking's relationship.

The fact that they wrapped everything up and it was like nothing had changed felt fitting. I also like that Brief was sort of made as the main character of this episode because he is very much the straight man to everybody else—or at the very least his brand of hyperactiveness is a fun contrast to everyone's more blatantly selfish desires. Even the demon sisters getting introduced as members of the cast felt fitting. Basically, this episode did everything that it should have done as a revival and establishing a new status quo for future adventures. I don't know if we're gonna stick with the episodic format of the first season—or if the show will even be as crazy as it was in season one since it was referencing very specific time periods. A lot has happened in the past decade so there's a whole new well of things that can be included and I think that's what feels the most exciting.

I will say, the new dub is something I'm gonna have to get used to. This is an Amazon Prime show and history dictates they don't care that much about legacy casting so they didn't get back the original cast for the show. Granted, I knew there had to be some recasts like Garterbelts, but the fact of this is a completely new cast and a completely new writing team threw me off. It's especially sad because it did feel like the original cast and writing for the first season's dub contributed to a large part to why it was so popular over in the west so I hope that this new writing staff is able to tap into that craziness more moving forward. The cast is solid and I think everyone did fine. It's just gonna take me some time to get used to.

If last week's premiere of New Panty & Stocking was a belated season finale that wrapped up a bunch of loose ends after fifteen years of waiting, then this week sees the show effortlessly diving right back into the old status quo as if the show had never been on an extended hiatus at all. The first of this episode's two stories is aptly titled “BITCH GIRLS 4 LIFE”, which stands as a statement of the show's proud dedication to live like it is still 2010 and that references to Invader Zim and middling sequels to Will Smith franchise movies will be relevant forever more. God bless these freak-ass angels and their endless quest to debase themselves for sex and cheap junk food, I tell you.

Really, the only major shakeup to the classic P&S formula is that Scanty and Kneesocks are now fully-fledged co-stars of this production, since their daddy down in Hell has sent them on the same coin-retriving mission that Panty and Stocking have been working on since the show began. Of course, as Garterbelt extolls in between his many “motherfuckers” and “God damns,” the crumbling economy has sent the value of the heaven coins plummeting to near zero, so we are very literally starting from the bottom—and the four divas of demonic divinity will have to split the rent and split the gigs in order to make their payments. Shit, maybe New Panty & Stocking has its finger on the pulse of 2025 better than any of us thought…

The rest of this first story is really fun, with Scanty and Kneesocks fitting perfectly into the usual flow of filthy jokes, random gags, and completely excessive profanity. It's a bonus for people of taste such as myself, since we've always acknowledged that Scanty and Kneesocks are the real best girls of P&SwG, so giving them more screentime to join up with the angels as they hunt down hideous oil ghosts and get baked out of their minds on burning dispensary weed can only be a good thing.

Nothing that happened in the first story could have possibly prepared me for the glorious insanity of “The Bodycard.” I may complain about Amazon having the gall to try and get back into the anime streaming business after sending Anime Strike out to die almost ten years ago, but New Panty & Stocking is really just going all-in with the freedom that streaming on Prime gives them to do whatever stupid and disgusting nonsense the sickos at TRIGGER have been able to come up with—censorship be damned. I thought spending an entire episode trying to shove Panty's giant, disembodied vagina cube back up into her crotch was a sign that the show was off the leash, but this week we get several gloriously animated minutes of a holographic uncle shoving a profane dildo drill right up his keister so he can use the power of his punished prostate to win Panty's game of Magic: The Angry Uncle. No, I am not making any of this stupid bullshit up, and yes, the pooping uncle's floppy little dingdong is on full display this entire time.

Hopefully, by now, you will have been able to figure out exactly where you land with Panty & Stocking's brand of humor. Most reasonable and decent people probably clicked away from this preview when I thanked God for the horny angels and their kinky ways, and I'm sure any stragglers who got left behind had the good sense to find anything better to do with their time after that last paragraph. If you are a broken and unashamed degenerate like me, however, you may have also found yourself cackling uncontrollably the minute Panty and Brief came face to face with the legendary Blue Eyes White Uncle card. That one frame of this episode alone might constitute the absolute dumbest joke I have ever seen approved for a work of professional animation. Studio Trigger, you have earned my undying loyalty. We're in this until the end. I'm a BITCH GIRL 4 LIFE.

It may say “New” in the title, but don't let that fool you; Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is back, and it has learned absolutely nothing about basic common decency in the fifteen years it has been off the air. If anything, the move to a streaming platform like Amazon has only allowed the show to be even more of itself, now that it doesn't have to worry about pesky concerns like censorship laws. For anyone who experienced the original PANTY & STOCKING back in the day, you know exactly what that entails. For anyone who is diving into this cesspool of debauchery for the first time, take it from Garterbelt: “This is bitchery at its finest.” Where else could you expect to see a giant angel vs. demon-kaiju fight that gets resolved by a gang of freaks “Washoi!”-ing their way through a palanquin procession of said angel's disembodied vagina-cube (because the magma-hot core of her heinous hootenanny is what gives Panty her powers, you see)?

In other words, New PANTY & STOCKING with GARTERBELT is just as rude, just as crude, and just as unapologetically stupid as it has ever been. For me, this is not a bad thing. It's one thing when shock humor is being used just to make people uncomfortable or upset, but what has always made Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt work is that it is, deep down, a joyous celebration of freak-ass sexploitation trash. It wants, more than anything, for its audience to cut loose and have a little fun laughing at how ridiculous and filthy everything they are seeing unfold on screen is. The bright, “Cartoon Network Original Except on, Like, So Much Cocaine” aesthetics and boppin' soundtrack certainly help the show achieve its goal.

That said, I would be a fool if I assumed that any anime fan would naturally be down to clown with PANTY & STOCKING, and I think the Angel Bitches would be offended at the very thought of their show being accessible and “mainstream.” Granted, this new season is airing on the same platform that made Hazbin Hotel into a big success for adult animation, and I reckon that what seemed edgy and shocking back in 2010 could be seen as pretty vanilla for a lot of folks. The point is, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is the very definition of a show where the people who love it and the people who hate it are both equally right and justified. This is the dumbest shit that has ever been put to celluloid. I'm so happy that it's back.

It's a shame that the original English dub cast was snubbed for Amazon's localization, especially since Jamie Marchi was so instrumental in establishing the voice of the English scripts she worked on, but the new cast rises to the occasion. It is genuinely difficult to craft dialogue that is this willfully moronic and foul and make it sound good. Still, I think Courtney Lin and Cristina Valenzuela acquit themselves well as the titular duo. I also want to give a shoutout to Daniel Walton's great work as Garterbelt. Chris Sabat's enthusiastic take on playing an exaggerated racial caricature was one of the elements of the original P&S that really has not aged well, so I am glad that a voice actor who is actually Black has been given a chance to perform all of the truly idiotic and debased nonsense that comes out of Garterbelt's mouth.