I have a particular fondness for Studio Trigger and their work. The first anime I consumed in my teenage years was Kill la Kill and it changed my perception of animation in general, and since then I've kept them in my purview. Darling in the Franxx, Little Witch Academia, and their adaptation of Dungeon Meshi have all been fun to watch, not perfect but certainly enjoyable to some extent. I'd like to go back over their catalog and review them on this site, but at the moment I've finished one of their newest projects - well, more of a continuation of their oldest. New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt has arrived fifteen years after its original season, formerly owned by Gainax and now taken under the wing of their successor Trigger. While I do enjoy Hiroyuki Imaishi's style I've never been the biggest fan of Panty & Stocking and this new season, while enjoyable, did little to keep my invested and I think it's less impressive than the original.

Personal Score

this criteria uses the DecentFilms rating formula.

Letter-Grade Recommendability: C
Artistic/Entertainment Value - ★★★☆☆
Moral/Spiritual Value - -2
Age Appropriateness: Adults

For those who aren't familiar with Panty & Stocking, it's about two angel sisters who get kicked out of heaven for sleeping around. Panty and Stocking Anarchy now live in Daten City's church and they fight to exterminate demons and ghosts under the guidance of local priest (and resident homosexual) Garterbelt. The show is designed to be a parody of American cartoons and so it's very vulgar and violent, presenting a very simplistic animation style similar to what you'd see on My Life as a Teenage Robot and similar Nickelodeon shows. A lot happens in the first season, it ends on a cliffhanger that wasn't really intended to have a follow-up, and it rested for many years until Studio Trigger announced its return in 2023 and finally aired it on Amazon Prime in 2025.

New Panty & Stocking isn't too concerned with building off of the previous season, only dedicating the first episode to wrapping up everything that cliffhanger left open. From there it very quickly settles into an episodic status quo, but with a new addition of former rivals Scanty & Kneesocks living with them this time. This new status quo is an interesting one, because I do like the Demon sisters and giving them more time to interact and be in the spotlight is pretty fun. The issue with this is that there are just too many characters at any given time, especially since we get all-new characters in the form of Gunsmith Bitch and the angel brothers Polyester and Polyurethane (yes these are all actual names), and things get crowded really fast. The Anarchy sisters are still the spotlight, of course, and that means that everyone else has to fight for screentime and not everyone gets the coverage they need. Brief gets the most out of any of them, but his moments never really resonated with me and so it felt like wasted time; though in fairness I don't get his obsession with Panty anyway.

Speaking of the angel brothers, their inclusion was particularly weak. They had a good debut, setting them up to be all-new rivals since the Demon sisters weren't antagonists anymore, but they really do not do anything for most of this season. They're introduced in episode six, which was great, and then they more or less make cameos all the way until the finale, where they introduced their uncle Ramiel. Since the finale rides off of the angels being the antagonists it really falls flat because they're just not interesting and felt like they were thrown in just to give the semblance of a greater plot. It doesn't help that every other line out of them is pure brainrot; I cannot tell you if that was a localization issue or not, since it seemed like that was the idea, but man it did get a bit tiring.

It isn't like the overall plot of this season was very strong, either. The basics is that the aftermath of the last finale has spread out ghosts all throughout Daten City, and both the Anarchy and Demon sisters are tasked with hunting them. Why? Because killing these ghosts drops Heaven Coins and Hell Coins depending on who killed it, and saving enough of those up will allow the angels to pay their way into heaven and the demons to pay back to hell. Instantly this shows potential since we now get to see both parties compete on equal footing, and they do... for a few episodes, anyway. A lot of this show has one-off gags and parodies of western movies like Terminator and Mission Impossible, and while a few of these are creative and interesting to look at they actively take away from the main storyline. It should be obvious listening to Imaishi talk about this season that this is more just getting all of the spare bits out of Trigger's system that they wanted to do before, but that does hurt this on its own. Especially because there are pretty fun segments in here involving the ghosts; my personal favorite involved a ghost that turned the entire animation style into a 70s Fantastic Four parody, complete with Silver Surfer ripoff and Jack Kirby-style art direction. Segments like that are excellent, but you get to them between fairly lame segments as well as pop culture parodies that are only mildly funny.

Something that does really hurt said segments too is the sex. I know it's weird to complain about the sex in a show that's all about being edgy, but it's not good here. The first season had a lot of sex jokes and off-screen sex for shock and humor, but here it's used pretty callously and is more explicit, like in the segment parodying The Thing. I think this is partially due to the show coming out on Amazon Prime, because there is more full-body nudity and sex here than there ever was in the original. It's cartoon nudity and sex, of course, but it's still wrong and I do not believe it was neccessary at all. In general the edge was off here, and I think it's partially due to how western culture has changed compared to 2010. Joking about premarital sex doesn't hit quite as hard in a world where sex is somehow even cheaper than Panty's one-night stands.

I am being very negative about this season, moreso than I expected, so I will mention some positives. The animation is very good, and I would go as far as to say it's perfect especially when paired with the art style. I did like a lot of the parody costume designs, like in the Tomb Raider segment where Panty and Stocking wear Lara Croft's iconic outfits. I did also like the music from Teddyloid, which didn't have too much in the way of wholly original tracks but what remixes and original tracks did exist were quite good. There is a lot to like about New Panty & Stocking, and if you liked the original you'll get at least some mileage seeing this style again. But that's who I would recommend watch this, because otherwise there just isn't much to hold onto here. I do hope Studio Trigger pursues original ideas instead of stuff like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, but I don't have a desire to see more of this series in the future.