New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt Episode 1 Discussion

You have to understand that everybody who worked on dubbing S1 is now so far removed from ADR that even if CR did pick it up you'd maybe get one or two VAs reprising their roles. You also have to understand that Funi/CR isn't the same company it was 15 years ago. Modern Funi (if they hadn't gone under) wouldn't touch this show with a 20-foot pole.


Seeing as how this got picked up by Amazon and Monica/Jamie work for CR I doubt it has anything to do with their politics. That being said it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if both Monica and Jamie have been trying to distance themselves from this particular IP in recent years.


My man.

The original english dub of Panty And Stocking is widely considered to be one of the greatest of all time, one of the few rare cases where the script writers and voice actors actually significantly improved upon the japanese dub. But the anime dubbing industry back in 2010 was very different than it is now in 2025 so there were major concerns over these changes potentially having a severe negative impact on how the second season's dub would turn out. So far however, whilst I have mixed feelings, I am definitely feeling on the more optimistic side.

On one hand replacing all the original actors was an absolutely braindead move given how iconic their performances were. I mean I think the new actors will probably do a good job, at the very least quality wise it's already pretty obvious this is a union actor dub rather than a non-union actor dub (the later type of actor usually leaves to become the prior type of actor once they're skilled enough to compete in that scene since it pays more so union dubs tend to have better acting), so far garterbelt and brief in particular seem to be doing a good job, and whilst the other actors haven't been given much to work with yet to judge how they're performing, at the very least I know silverstein and venezuela always give good performances. Though it's still super disappointing such an iconic cast is not reprising their roles, can't stress that enough, definitely puts a damper on my excitement about this returning.

On the other hand however I'm very pleasantly surprised at how well the script turned out. There's a lot of pretty awful localizers in the modern anime dubbing industry who don't know to make english dialog flow well, and who also tend to have pretty severely mentally ill political beliefs and thus are the kind of people would have absolutely loved the unique opportunity of being able to get their hands on such an unusually irreverent anime and just absolutely eviscerate the show's script to be politically correct and virtue signal in order to stick it to the anime fans who would enjoy a show like this, so it was awesome to see that the producers seemingly kept those sorts of awful localizers far away, and that the script both flowed well and was actually faithful to the original intention of the japanese script.

Now, stepping away from how the dub is turning out and moving onto the show's actual core writing, I think they handled continuing from the first season's stupid ending decently well (they could have easily botched the way they continued off it), and past that this definitely feels like the exact same Panty and Stocking we left off with all those years ago like it's created by the exact same people (to be fair to some degree it is lol). The charm is all there (from the stylish animation all the way to the expletive filled dialog) and it still had the occasional funny moment. It's not quite at the quality level of the first season, but it's only the first episode and they had to spend a lot of time doing setup in this first episode for the rest of the season. I think the second episode will give us a far better look into how the rest of the season will play out. I'd be surprised if the animation doesn't end up actually being better than the first's (due to the original's restrictive budget), and I think anime comedy has gotten better over the years so who knows there's a chance it could end up being funnier than the first (which by anime standards was standards was funnier than the vast majority of anime, but still not at like Saiki K levels of funny where it can compete laugh for laugh with american comedy).

Now all this isn't to say that the writing can't still end up falling short, and the english dub's script localizing / voice acting could end up falling short too, frankly it's way too early to tell, and as mentioned I am indeed disappointed with the original cast being replaced, but in many ways this really does feel just like the same panty and stocking from before so I'm fairly optimistic about how things will turn out. If I had to guess I think the show's going to end up being an 8/10 and it's going to have an above average dub, though overall in both those areas it will fall moderately short of the original (though there's still a chance it's as good as before and smaller chance it's somehow better). I tend to watch anime subbed but I'll definitely still be watching this one dubbed and I think that might still end up being the better way to watch this show like last time.

@kuribo-04 You're entitled to your opinion, but I think most people who've watched both the dub and the sub would disagree with you, it's a famously good dub.

@kuribo-04 You're entitled to your opinion, but I think most people who've watched both the dub and the sub would disagree with you, it's a famously good dub.