Thursday, March 10, 2011

Panty And Stocking With Garterbelt

Decided to share the other anime i've been watching lately, from this season and last, besides Madoka Magica.

Panty and Stocking with Gaterbelt
Ah yes, that name, heh. This is an odd one, from the last season, i first heard about it from Jhonen Vasquez who described the character Chuck as "the Mr. Sparkle version of Gir". It's fitting, that's for sure, and i'm guessing it's intentional as one of the characters wears a Slave Labor Graphics shirt in a later episode.

The show has quite a pedigree, being from Gainax, who brought us Neon Genesis Evangelion, FLCL, and others. They can do serious, seriously messed up, and seriously funny, sometimes all at once. This is more in the vein of mindless fun, and them experimenting i feel. The humor tends to be quite low brow, but sometimes very unexpected and twisted. 

The opening credits:


It's style is mostly similar to the Power Puff Girls, angular and simple lines, but will shift art styles at various times. It's also mostly a half hour show with two stories, similar to how a lot of Adult Swim tends to be. The video below shows the shifts of art in the first episode, PPG style at first, then for transformation they shift to more "realistic" anime style (complete with stripper poles), then for the villain defeat, a real model.



The show isn't high art by any stretch of the imagination, well, maybe, but it's fun to see people trying new things and seemingly having fun doing it. It sort of ended on a cliffhanger/Gainax ending, and got enough ratings to get a second season, but the director hasn't said if he's just going to leave it there or go on. Either way, it's a fun watch.