New Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt Goes Further Than Its American Influences Were Ever Allowed To

The messaging here is provocative and potent. Women are consistently put down, subjugated, and outright harmed for their sexual promiscuity. It ties into a rule of thumb that Brief mentions at the top of the short—the “blonde bitch” is often the first to die in many horror films. The effect of this goes beyond the obvious puritanical concerns (sex = death) and into the economics of typecasting. For as many mythologized “scream queens” and “final girls,” there are dozens more dead blondes whose names only fringe enthusiasts remember. This is a fascinating consequence to consider, and one that can be seen as almost analogous to exploited laborers in these types of international co-productions.

“Bitch Serial Killer” is another example of New P&SWG recognizing the international and collaborative nature of a popular art form. Despite giallo’s association with Italy—coined from a line of mystery novels with ‘yellow’ (giallo) covers—the explosive sub-genre was a global melting pot. Italian directors like Dario Argento and Sergio Martino often employed American and British actors, and shot in Spain; meanwhile, giallo became a trend in ‘70s Spanish cinema with pictures such as Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll and The House That Screamed made entirely in-country. Japan’s pink industry even yielded giallo­-esque pictures such as Door and Kazuo Komizu’s Guts trilogy, which owe a deal of stylistic debt to these pictures.

To evoke this genre is to evoke that very international spirit of influence, which ties back into the global nature of the series itself. All the while, it never abandons striking designs and an absurd atmosphere that would feel at home in an early Cartoon Network Studios production. But this episode, too, would be unacceptable on 1990s American television—for adults or for children. Something this provocative—both in terms of ribald content and subversive subtext—would not be allowed to air unchallenged, let alone supported by companies with financial stakes tied to it. 

That was especially true after the formation of the TV Parental Guidelines in 1996, which put a tight collar on what could and couldn’t be aired for whom and at what time. It was prompted by the early ‘90s hysteria over violence on television, which culminated in the advent of the “V-chip.” An unsavory aspect of this is that a group of around 30 TV executives figured out how to part and parcel out cable television to specific, catered demographics, which birthed the advertising landscape that carried us into the 21st century.

The other vexing thing about the TV Parental Guidelines is that they have been—largely—an expensive failure. These did little to curb children’s access to extreme material, especially as the internet entered more homes. Instead, the standards have only made television a more difficult medium to create for. For queer creatives, they’re a nightmare to navigate depending on who’s in the White House (perhaps worse than ever, at this time of writing!). For parents, they’re so vague and broad-reaching that to follow them to a T is to—to some extent—shelter children from reality. Worse, these standards allowed CEOs like billionaire Haim Saban to decide what ought and ought not to be for children—people who should have the least amount of input into how a child is raised. A disturbing byproduct of this system is that an American child’s media diet is decided upon by businessmen who hope their parents will buy them action figures and Fortnite skins.

The consequent difference between animated media made for teenagers in America versus Japan—which has no such ratings system in place for television—in the 1990s is staggering. Revolutionary Girl Utena, a queer surrealist anime pitched towards teen girls in 1997 Japan, would have likely faced massive challenges if pitched to the same audience in America. A conservative right that swore Tellytubbies would turn their kids gay would have a field day with content such as this, or even animated queer dramas for adults from earlier in the decade, such as Dear Brother. 

This isn’t speculation, either—Utena’s cross-playing creator, Kunihiko Ikuhara, worked on Sailor Moon prior to Utena; the former series is notorious for its hackneyed DiC localization, which edited out queer storylines and even dubbed some characters as different genders. These edits were done to capitulate to potential advertisers in advance—changes that DiC felt would make the show more palatable to doll makers. Ikuhara is a specific example of one artist whose integrity, reach, and penetration in America were limited by these absurd, nebulous standards.

Worse, these standards wound up doing unchecked harm to those early American innovators—not just would-be Japanese hitmakers. Rugrats, once a smart and provocative show for all ages, leaned into Burger King crossovers and fairy tale episodes after its first few seasons. Powerpuff Girls tamped down on the controversial physical carnage of its first season, its regressive bait villains clearly not a point of contention with watchdog groups that worried the show was “too violent.” Later Klasky Csupo efforts like Wild Thornberries and Rocket Power, while quality productions in their own right, lacked the risky and energetic verve that put the studio on the map. This only got worse post-9/11, after which the collective cultural standards of Americans were shifted rightward by controlled interest groups. With anime, it resulted in oddities like children’s program Case Closed airing on Adult Swim because it dealt with crime; this killed the series in North America for a decade-plus. As it turns out, everyone loses under censorship—even advertisers.

This is why excessive regulation of mass media is a net negative at best, and actively harmful at worst. More often than not, the parties responsible have vested capital interest in the success of enforcing such regulation. While it would be naive to suggest there isn’t a vested capital interest in the success of New Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt—one of the main producers is merchandising mega-giant Good Smile Company—that doesn’t undermine the artistic integrity of the core product. Its merchandising appeal lies in the glance value of the characters and their alluring designs, neither of which seems to have any bearing on the extremes of the content.

Over the past year, I’ve worked on a piece about the multinational production history of Inspector Gadget. My research has thus far borne out that Japanese and American animation have been two sides of one coin, really, since the 1950s. Hanna-Barbera began outsourcing its labor to Japan in the late ‘60s, right around the time early anime like Astro Boy and Speed Racer became household names. Since then, both industries have exchanged in a global back and forth that’s yielded everything from The Real Ghostbusters and Transformers to Avatar: The Last Airbender and Rick & Morty. Even the Powerpuff Girls pilot short was animated in Japan!

With this context, a show like New Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt is even more impressive. Where serialized American animation has fallen victim to harsher restrictions and limited creative vision from investors, Japan’s animation industry is built upon catering unique animation to diverse age groups across multiple TV seasons per year. There has never been an American equivalent to this phenomenon, and there likely never will be.

Yet perhaps this is fine. In the age of the internet, global barriers mean very little, and animation is more accessible than it’s ever been. The streams are crossed, to borrow a parlance; as much as Panty & Stocking resembles Western cartoons, series like RWBY and My Adventures With Superman are designed around anime-adjacent aesthetics. To complicate matters even more, Americans have been involved in anime production as far back as the 1980s. In fact, key staff on Panty and Stocking also boast credits in Western productions like Steven Universe and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. 

These creatives have likely understood, if New Panty & Stocking is anything to go by, that the argument of “cartoon vs. anime” was settled long before most of us were born. Even the very first anime TV series, Astro Boy, was produced in close collaboration with NBC. Animation has always been a universal language, of sorts—a global business and populist art form built around expressive facsimiles of human emotion. Whether produced in Japan, America, or Soviet Russia, animation has the capacity to engage our imagination and expand our mind in a way that no other art form can.

Perhaps the divisive godfather of the industry, Walt Disney, understood his medium best at its outset.

“Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive,” he once said. “This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.”

Madeline Blondeau has been writing about games since 2010. She’s written for Paste, Anime Herald, Anime News Network, CGM, and Lock-On, among others. In addition, she has written, hosted, and recorded film criticism podcast Cinema Cauldron. Her published fiction debut is due out between 2026 and 2027. You can support her work on Patreon, and find her on BlueSky @mads.haus.