© TRIGGER, Hiroyuki Imaishi/NPSG Production Committee
It’s old wisdom that most comedians who have to warn you how edgy they are really aren’t. Thankfully, with so many episodes of the gleefully profane Panty & Stocking under his belt, director Hiroyuki Imaishi never once had to face that same problem. So when Imaishi and his cohort Hiromi Wakabayashi made the stern warning that their new episode’s details were “quite crude,” you could tell they meant it. And instead of provoking shock and awe out of the audience, the two’s words inspired a deafening round of applause.
Of course, the episode lived up to those words, and why wouldn’t it? This is an anime whose natural talent is dropping more F-bombs and dick jokes per minute than an episode of South Park. Yet the two segments that made up this episode gave us a different side of Panty & Stocking we hadn’t seen before: one with an original musical performance, and another with a surprising dash of tenderness.
The musical segment was tried and true Panty & Stocking, and the perfect segment to kick off the panel. I’m in the middle of rewatching the original series for the first time since college, so I haven’t had the time to see the new Panty & Stocking yet. But the way this episode reintroduced its characters and fondness towards obscenity still felt like the perfect way for this new season to win me over. It almost felt like a good first episode, even if it’s actually smack dab in the middle of the season.
The premise itself is too good for me to spoil, so I’ll still my tongue (hint, hint). However, I will say that the song-and-dance numbers themselves were marvelous. Checking off Broadway tunes and La La Land off the list had the cantankerous Panty sing numbers laced with practically all of George Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words. To see such vaudeville ritz intertwine with lowbrow comedy and profanity was spellbinding. Musical performances aren’t new in the world of Panty & Stocking, although I immensely preferred this new number to, say, the Auto-Tuned (and very late 00s-sounding) “DCityRock” from the original series.
The second and more tender segment toned down the laughs to focus on the devilish side character Kneesocks’ backstory a bit. Being a demon celebrating her 666th birthday has left Kneesocks with nobody to celebrate it with, so she ends up celebrating it with Panty instead. It’s a slower segment for sure, and its pacing made me reminisce on a segment from the original series where Stocking became a demon’s romantic interest.
The segment has Panty and Kneesocks having fun together. They go out to fashion shoots dressing like Britney Spears, they dance together, and they fight a ghost together. There are references to John Hughes movies that bookend the segment, with Sixteen Candles being parodied as “Six Six Six Candles” through the title card, while The Breakfast Club‘s iconic last shot is gloriously nodded at the end.
During the panel Q&A, Imaishi admitted that a musical number was something he wanted to do since the inception of Panty & Stocking‘s new season, desiring something as beautiful and angelic as it was crude. Imaishi would also discuss composer Taku Takahashi‘s input, saying that it was Taku’s dream to put a literal song-and-dance number in anime.
“He put a lot of heart and soul into this for it to happen,” Imaishi would say of Takahashi. “Musicals are hard to put to pull off due to the scheduling of production. We had such cooperative staff that we were able to animate lip syncing for this song quite well. We all thought things would be touching, but since the lyrics were crude, we were hoping for a weird mix feeling from our audience.”
Regarding the segment involving Kneesock’s 666th birthday, its director Hiromi Wakabayashi said that inspiration struck him upon realizing he had given neither the character nor her twin sister Scanty enough spotlight in the original series. “At first, I was thinking of doing another chaotic or edgy episode with the twins,” Wakabayashi said. “But after laying out each episode’s story, I’ve noticed that a lot of them go towards that chaotic route, so I thought maybe I should go for a tame, coming-of-age type of episode.” Wakabayashi would also express his appreciation for other episodes devoted to other characters, and urged the audience to go watch them.
You can watch New Panty & Stocking on Amazon Prime Video on Wednesdays!
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