How do you make a series laden with references to violence, sex and bodily excretions starring two thoroughly unpleasant women entertaining? If Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is any indication, you give it to GAINAX. Suffering the same initial incredulity as Lucky Star's promotional material had when it was first revealed, the series is a riot of aggressive stylisation, wildly varying animation and a barrage of provocative jokes. Puritans will denounce its cavalier depiction of fornication, the no-holds-barred treatment of various human fluids or the utter crudity of it, but in only three episodes there has been nary a repeated scene or situation. But most of all: it's just plain fun.
Splitting the running time into two separate segments, two story of angels sent from heaven to defeat marauding ghosts is only background noise to the bickering and bedlam the two sisters get up to. The pace at which each story moves is astounding with some beginning right in the thick of the action and only coming up for air when the credits hit. There is no character development here, each one wears their personality - foibles and all - on their sleeve and instead of being hindrances, end up as ammunition for the bedlam that every episode entails.
You'd be forgiven for recalling Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like a Lady" in the opening credits of the voluminously titled Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru; not for the song's namesake but because were it not for the obvious breasts, the lady would certainly resemble a gentleman. This is not surprising with an art style that revels in the androgynous, emblematic of a genre commonly characterised by male homosexual romances. Nothing in the opening episodes attempts to dispel this association, in many ways it revels in it with the liberal use of tropes that are keen to imply rather than extol. Despite the genre trappings however, the opening episodes are a muted but disappointing introduction to a series which while not widely accessible, plays to its strengths despite the ultimately derivative result of doing so.
women who are attentive, graceful and the only bright lights in a world populated by frowns and stoic metrosexual manliness
Yuki is an orphan, found abandoned in a hedge with only his name affixed to him, growing up feeling that he was unwanted by his parents. It doesn't help that he has the ability to see people's pasts and emotions with only a touch, making him increasingly isolated despite his looks earning him scores of adoring fans. Yuki's life is shaken up when his supposed half-brother makes an appearance and his ability to read other's emotions spins into overdrive, manifesting the unfortunate ability to shatter all glass around him. The sibling, Takashiro, seems to be involved was mysterious silver-eyed man, Zess, who saves Yuki when a classmate takes a deadly interest in him. Yuki's ability may yet come to have some greater significance and his life shows no indication of settling back down.
