“Oh My”. Those were the first words that came out of my mouth after watching just a few minutes of the first episode of Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt. At first glance PoSwG looks like your typical friendly Saturday morning american cartoon, but it’s far from that. More than you will ever know.

Coming from one of the most loved production companies Gainax, which has great anime original series like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gurren Lagann under their belt, comes their newest original anime production: Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt! As soon as I started watching this the art style instantly reminded me of American cartoons like The Powerpuff Girls and such. From first eye view, I thought this would just be some kind of stupid kiddy type cartoon that takes an American art style for appeal. In fact, the only reason I had for watching this was that Gainax was producing it. Boy was I wrong, though.

“Excretion Without Honor and Humanity”

The anime starts with the introduction of the two so called “angels”, Panty and Stocking, who are accompanied by their black priest Garterbelt — who doesn’t really do much to keep these girls in check but assigns them missions. I first realized this wasn’t going to be a kiddy show when our first introduction to the seductive blonde Panty is shown waking up with the mail man in her bedroom and thanking her for last night. That’s where I first had my “Oh My” moment. Stocking is a bit more responsible, but seems to have a thing for sugar, which I found cute and reminded me a lot of L from Death Note. Stocking stating Panty has no standards makes it seem like I can count on Stocking to be the more responsible one of the Angel sisters.

The entire first half of the episode, which is split into two 15 minute type episodes, like most American cartoons, involves Panty and Stocking fighting a huge pile of…shit. Yes, shit. Crap. Poop. Whatever you want to call it. Apparently toilets had been eating people while they were at their weakest moment — while they were in the middle of excretion! This explains the title for the 1st half. The fight itself involves almost everyone covered in feces and vomiting at the smell of the pile of crap, which I found hilarious BUT at the same time went, “I can’t believe they actually went along and animated this crap.” (Literally and unliterally) I laughed and went “wtf?” while Garter explained the giant pile of crap was apparently the evil spirit of a plumber who was trapped in a pipe that was clogged up and suffocated by the stench of..well, you know, feces.

The most amusing part though was that the girls are named Panty and Stocking for a reason. A very interestingly cool reason. Their weapons of choice are: for Panty, her panties, and for Stocking, her stockings. What led to the revealing of their weapons caused for a very detailed flashy like mahou shoujo like strip tease of very sexy proportions, showing off a very sexy Panty groping her breasts and Gothic Lolita Stocking showing of her long hair. Awesome right? It’s then that Panty’s panties turn into a glowing blue gun and Stocking’s stocking turns into a flaming blue sword. With the yell of “Repent!” they slay the giant feces made monster and receive 1 Heaven coin. Which you know, they need to collect for some unrevealed reasons, but who cares after you just saw a giant shit monster blow up, right!? Thus ends the 1st half of the episode.

“Death Race 2010”

The 2nd half of the 1st episode doesn’t have to introduce characters anymore, so with that free time it has, it adds tons of over dramatic action scenes and sexual puns to make a priest feel like he’s gone to hell. Honestly, I’m amazed at how slutty Panty is. In just this episode alone she sleeps with 3 men! But none the less it makes for some hilarious sexual joke inserts and some funny wording, so she is forgiven by me for that. This half of the episode has Panty and Stocking fighting a giant Train evil spirit who takes control over vechiles and just wants to go really fast. When the ghost takes Panty’s panties, it gets personal. They have what looks like a 3 round chase scene with the evil spirit taking over a regular car, a semi, and a bullet train, leading to some very awesome car chase scenes, and my favorite sexual joke of the episode. Stocking says, “Round 3?” and Panty adds, “Going three times without pulling out? Not bad at all.” I repeat, this show is not for children. Watching Panty shoot the living crap out of the train was quite the spectacle and reminded me of some Gurren Lagann scenes. The train is finished off by Panty slingshotting herself with her dog’s nose, grabbing her panties from the spirits head, and “busting a cap” at the evil spirit train and, earning themselves 3 Heaven coins.

Final Impressions:
Well, this certainly has been quite the strange 1st episode of the series, and I doubt I’ll find anything out like this. Seems Gainax still isn’t out of the perfect anime game yet. The episode was sexual, had over the top action, and what I found to be very good clean fun. Underneath its cartoonish mask lies, a well…very strange but exciting anime. I plan to cover a few anime series this season, and I’m honestly considering picking this one up due to it seeming like Panty and Stocking will keep giving me very interesting topics to write about. I do plan to watch at least the first 3 episodes every new anime this season to get an idea of which ones I plan to review. For now, as far as 1st episodes go, I give Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt a 4/5.