New PANTY & STOCKING with GARTERBELT

Episodes 12-13

So it turns out the rapture did happen, it just took an extra day. There's almost always an apocalyptic escalation to be had by the end of a Trigger show, especially with Hiromi Wakabayashi and Hiroyuki Imaishi heading things. And while I expected a certain level of edgy trolling in finishing things off for New Panty & Stocking, I also knew that they wouldn't let things wrap without spectacularly blowing their load at least once. Even the original Panty & Stocking had a cataclysmic climax before its infamous cliffhanger.

Still, it wouldn't be a Panty & Stocking finale if it didn't leave me with some stupefied, conflicted feelings in the wake of it.

First of all, if you know me, you know how I loathe Christmas-themed episodes that air outside of Christmas time. Panty & Stocking is all about pushing limits and making people squirm, but holly-jolly dissonance making me want to eject my entire skeleton out of my body is entirely down to my own neuroses. I can't really fault Trigger for that issue, and in this case, I will admit I actually have to hand it to them, a bit. Christmas is a special time for Panty & Stocking—not on account of the religious iconography (which, as we will see, might not be as baked in as previously thought) but thanks to the timing of that aforementioned original season finale. That infamous finish aired on December 25, 2010, memetically immortalized as the creators ruining Christmas! So perhaps it's only appropriate to kick off the New season finale by specifically invoking the holiday. It's a cute meta-reference, in a series from creators known for deploying much more rife, overt meta-references.

The segment is fine, by the way. It's got an enjoyably exasperated Kneesocks saving Christmas at the behest of a sexy, Die Hard referencing Santa Claus (who gets pegged on-screen by Panty). As a Panty & Stocking Christmas special, it's about exactly what anyone could ask for, and the salient holiday themes of togetherness work with the ingratiated status quo of the household to show how far these bitches have come together over the course of the season and reinforce things just in time for the final story proper to kick off.

And it's here, still in the beginning of the finale rather than the end, that I quibbled with the commitment and execution of this seasonal finish as much as the original. Chiefly, I wonder if the decision to release the last two episodes as a one-hour special had less to do with drumming up attention to a massive, epic finale and more with the fact that this first half of the story doesn't stand super satisfyingly on its own. It's not that it's slow—Panty & Stocking rarely is, even in its most deliberate, sentimental moments. There's just a ton of setup to get through in getting the gals and everyone up to Heaven, introducing its governance and how it intersects with their family situation, the mechanics of mortals moving around between the realms… It's mostly mildly interesting, and the design work is regularly a delight to look at. I love the composited materials making up Panty and Stocking's parents, calling back to the original finale and tying into the heavenly hands glimpsed on Ramie.

But even when the gags are being laid out, like Panty and Stocking's mom and dad being every bit as debaucherous and selfish as they are, it still feels very infodump-forward. Ramie makes his move to usurp them, and there are more explanations to be rolled out. Even when the big bad is descending into a tour of Heaven itself and grandiosely detailing his plan to cram the polytheistic population of this alternate afterlife into some sort of immortal instrumentality, the absurdity can't quite rise past all the exposition. It's just barely backed up with crazy cock-and-ball visuals, incongruous rock operas, and the Poly Peeps' constant barrage of unhinged zoomer lingo. Seriously, props to the storywriters and the translators on this, I was constantly hit with whiplash any time these two opened their mouths (and then the series found a way to top it, but we will get to that).

But it feels like it needs just one extra pop-off, one lavish-looking pre-climax before the "All Is Lost!" moment, and the pacing can swing back around for the big finish. Because swing around it does, and the last eleven minutes or so of the final episode is basically exactly the kind of huge hits anime fans have been coming to Panty & Stocking for, especially in the New season. I'd been presuming all season that Polyester and Polyurethane's ridiculous transforming truck was going to gattai somehow for some full-on mecha action, but Chuck and Fastener unzipping themselves into hulked-out monster forms? Okay, technically, that was foreshadowed a couple of weeks ago, but still, how could I have known? There are still a few ostensible shortcuts, like the zoomed-out fly-around fight around the holy superweapon with cut-in conversations, but it's all stylized coolly enough, regardless. It is every bit the portrait of a Wakabayashi/Imaishi climax, with enough "new" indulgences brought forth by that army of animators at Trigger and other new blood that have defined this season. You know they had Akira Furukawa direct again for this big finish, there's a director who's going places.

Said big finish also delivers on the thematic front, that is, slowly, through all the exposition, set up through this two-episode finale. It's funny how natural it feels to see this family of angels, demons, people, and critters celebrating together on Christmas, but that's what they, in their odd compassion, have grown into. Who would've thought that semen-based Fast & Furious riff way back in the season would be so relevant, because family really is the ultimate theme here. It's what the "F" in "Fuck" stands for, you know.

With that in mind, dragging Panty and Stocking up to confront their parents, they feel virtually no connection to (similar proclivities aside), makes perfect sense for the setup. It doesn't matter how much they have in common; there are no bonds there, nothing forged. Panty and Stocking are willing to cover for Garter, Scanty, and Kneesocks getting into Heaven with them before this all goes down, and the Anarchy Sisters even stick up for the Demon Sisters in their own scrappy way when confronted by Ramie. And Brief? I can see some potential issues with incongruity with Brief's relationship with Panty, as he's been blown off by her (the only way she's blown him) all through this New season like it was the first one. Seemingly odd, given their get-together by the end of that original season, but there the dude was, really just a number—the angel's 1,000th lay to get her powers back, ultimately. Panty's probably had sex with, like, 1,000 more dudes since then, even if she has grown plenty otherwise.

The casual sex proudly glorified by Panty is freed to be separate from love, after all, and that free-wheeling is one of the things Brief loves about Panty. He's just got to work up the confidence to stand by her. The boy declaring his unabashed dedication to his geekdom marks an appreciable parallel to Panty's embracing of what it truly meant for her to be a "bitch" in the original finale (and not for nothing, paints an interesting point for Gunsmith Bitch, who is both a bitch and a geek, but that's a separate essay). The point is that Brief, like all the others in the church's household and in Panty and Stocking's orbit, has to accept himself, damn society's stigmas, before he can be fully recognized as part of the family, help save the day, and get his shot with Panty. Which all happens, and things work out, and everything is totally resolved and—

Oh, come on, like you really thought it would be that easy.

Really, the only way New Panty & Stocking was going to top the original show's cliffhanger was with a double-reverse cliffhanger! Hell had been set up well enough throughout this season that it made sense to deploy as an escalation (and let the animators get in one more instance of Hands), but making sense isn't going to cut it when you're dutifully trolling the audience. I honestly would've been content to wait another fifteen years to see this hellacious adventure (and find out if Garter actually freaking died there), except then Trigger decided to jump about that far into the future in-show. I thought the Zoomer lingo of the Poly Peeps was enjoyably exasperating, but I was not prepared for the irreverent Gen Alpha adventures teased to be spun by "Junior & Bastard." Junior deadass leads with a "Sup, chat?". The dub makes sure to clarify that the missing parental Panty and Brief went out for a pack of smokes and never came back. It's beyond my wildest expectations for what Trigger would pull, and I need those promised ten seasons and a movie yesterday. So help me, I will live to see Trigger characters utter "crashout" and "aura farming." I'm serious, even with the longer, rougher runway of this finale, it still hit the right climax to confirm New Panty & Stocking as the worthy, elevated successor to a modern classic of the medium. Don't keep us hanging for so long next time.

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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