Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt was never expected to be a success. It was certainly a unique idea to come from GAINAX on the heels of their success with things like Gurren Lagann, but it was also a profanity-laden out-there comedy whose simple concept of fallen angels fighting demons wrapped in a visual style more akin to South Park was still difficult to portray in a brief trailer. But it was a truly ambitious series that brought talent across the industry together for something truly singular, even if circumstances following its initial broadcast meant it took 15 years to finally receive the sequel it deserved.
A driving consensus with the series for the team, fresh off the back of their work on Gurren Lagann, was to betray expectations and create something different inspired by series they loved, and while it is certainly different, that’s not to say it’s divorced from the work that made the team so beloved. The series technically offers some narrative development for its titular angels on their search for redemption over the course of its run, but it is a series otherwise defined by its episodic flash-of-the-pan ideas, parodies and a feeling of throwing just about anything at the proverbial wall only to find most of its ideas are enthralling even at their most unusual.
Almost the entire team from Gurren Lagann took the bold swing to work on this series: Yoh Yoshinari did conceptual design on the series, Hiroyuki Imaishi directed it and, in either episode director, key animation or other roles, almost all key creatives like Sushio, Akira Amemiya, Shouko Nakamura, Takashi Mukouda, Chikashi Kubota and more were continuity creators heavily involved in this new series. While comedy is at the core and although the series initially appears simplistic, this didn’t mean the team wasn’t pushing themselves - the team used the deformed visual identity of the series to squash and stretch its putty-like world, coming into its own in magical girl-esque transformation sequences portraying the angels as more traditional anime girls in intense detail and in flashy action sequences where comic book special effects bounce fluidly.
Panty and Stocking as characters brought a unique dynamic, both rebellious in their own ways from the sex-loving Panty to the dismissive sweets-loving goth Stocking, that allowed them to naturally play off one another for comedy and action alike. It’s a dynamic established immediately with the very first story, "Excretion Without Honor and Humanity", as they fight a feces-covered ghost terrorizing the city with a strong amount of reluctance. Their caricature-like personalities make them versatile: you can put them into zombie stories ("...Of the Dead") to music videos ("Help! We Are Angels!"), without ever robbing them of a sincerity that the finale can deliver only because their crass nature becomes not just funny but endearing over the course of its run.
In an anime environment becoming insular prior to its more recent global explosion in popularity where many of the most popular series heavily leaned into pleasing and pandering to a core otaku audience, this was an expletive-laden middle finger to that consensus that thrived precisely because of the trust in the team behind it and the desire to create something different. In the words of the angels themselves, it was fucking awesome! But it also wouldn’t be as beloved and groundbreaking as it was without the outreach and direct collaboration with exciting names across music and entertainment.
Key to Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt’s appeal is that, in its against-the-grain presentation, it felt like a series that refused to sand off the edges to appeal to a broad audience, allowing it to appeal unfiltered. Every corner of the show exuded an air of cool, and nowhere is this more apparent than in its soundtrack. Far from the typical sound of most series of the time, the soundtrack was produced and coordinated by m-flo's ☆Taku Takahashi, who by that time had established himself both as an in-demand producer and headlining DJ in Japan.
Thanks to his involvement in songwriting and production across a variety of genres during his time in the industry and his tenure as a DJ he was a prime choice to lead the soundtrack for the show bringing in an eclectic mix of collaborators including (at the time) up & coming producer TeddyLoid to work with him. It’s fair to say that without ☆Taku’s sound or the contributions from TeddyLoid and other guest producers that the series would not be the same, as much of the series’ action is elevated by the punching beats they offered to the series.
Yet perhaps more notably, it’s in moments they allow the music to slow or blend genres and styles that elevate this from a pure EDM infusion to match the chaotic nature of the series into a cutting, cohesive sound embraced even by those typically averse to the genre. Only with the respect they built up both within the industry and beyond, with GAINAX perhaps near the apex of their powers having built on their 1990s heyday to regain relevancy through series like Diebuster, FLCL with Production IG, and Gurren Lagann, could a series like Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt ever come to fruition. The renegade style of the artists within it, combined with that of the talent they brought in to support them that matched their maverick inspirations, constructed a masterpiece.
It was, in many ways, a last hurrah for the studio.
The studio and its management had never been free from scandal, dealing with legal cases regarding unpaid taxes and contractual issues both inside and outside Japan ever since the 1990s and the success of Neon Genesis Evangelion. For the most part, the studio’s continued successes with the anime they produced, freedom in productions, and long-standing loyalty as a studio born from doujin and school years, had allowed them to retain much of their talent. Some had moved on, most notably Hideaki Anno who left to form Studio Khara to produce Rebuild of Evangelion, but many remained. For a time. Already by the time of the series’ broadcast had staff begun to leave in droves, and many teams under the leadership of Hiroyuki Imaishi and Masahiko Otsuka would move on to found TRIGGER.
While others would leave to go other studios beyond TRIGGER, the result of this exodus here and beyond was the end of GAINAX. Perhaps it was already gone, but the end of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt and this particular exodus including much of its core team to TRIGGER marked a certain closure to what people once knew as this studio. Much of the company’s early anime series for which it led production certainly retained the signature style of its core founders, particularly Imaishi, even as it has more recently diversified with a new generation coming to the forefront within the studio. With the team here and otherwise scattered to the wind and GAINAX now a shell of its former self, it seemed that the creative core of underground rebels had reached the end of their road.
This summer brings us New PANTY & STOCKING with GARTERBELT, the team receiving access to the IP they created all the way back during late-night meetings in the late-2000s and revisiting it with the over-decade of experience that followed.
They brought the team back together, with many of those creators now working at TRIGGER and ☆Taku Takahashi is back as music producer, tapping m-flo, TeddyLoid and more including TAKU INOUE for contributions to the soundtrack that promises once again to bring these raunchy angels back to life. It’s been a long time coming, but something this creative deserves another chance to shine.
Bring it on.
