I keep meaning to like, talk a bit about why this blog is named after Panty Anarchy, why I feel a connection to this character, especially when a lot of aspects of the show are kinda messy and it’d be charitable to say they haven’t aged well. I want to talk about that and with V-Day upon us all I’d like to talk about it now.
I always say that PSG is my favorite show that I can’t stand a quarter of, cause the back half gets a little rough before the finale. Out of 13 total dual episodes, by 8B you can already see they’re running out of budget, 9A is even cheaper, 10 in its entirety is nearly unwatchable imo, and 11B, while I like it, is a bottle episode where nothing happens and I do know people who’ve complained about that.
And right smack dab in the middle of all that mess is episode 9B. Ghost: The Phantom of Daten City. The plot of this episode is that Stocking has fallen in love with a ghost, at first sight even, the very creatures that the pair were sent to this Earth to kill. Not just any ghost too, but a vulgar, unhygienic, stinky, rude, childish, sexist, constantly farting bachelor ghost.
This episode, it must be stressed, is a mess. Despite the whole show being a comedy, it’s really hard to parse whether this setup is meant to be a joke, it’s played as a joke but the tone is deadly serious, and it’s the one time in the show that the low-key semi-acoustic love jam CHOCOLAT plays. Throughout the episode the average viewer, especially me, is struggling and failing to figure out what’s going on and why, if there’s a punchline where is it, if there’s an explanation what is it. I’ve seen theories about what they were trying to do with this concept, that it’s supposed to be a play off of Stocking’s masochism or something, but the episode itself offers no answers and no resolution. The ending is that Stocking was genuinely in love and through her love was able to help the bachelor ghost find peace.
Throughout the entire episode Panty is openly grossed out by this relationship and attempts to confront Stocking multiple times, saying things like “I know it’s not about his looks, I get that you’re not in love with the smell or the fat or the warts, it’s who he is and shit, right?” The confrontation escalates until, when Stocking plans to run off and elope with the ghost, Panty disguises herself to kill him quick and get the entire episode over with. Stocking catches on and stops her. And then she says the line.
“You wouldn’t understand, you’re too busy fucking to know what love is.”
And that’s the moment it all clicks into place for me.
I can’t imagine it was intentional, I have no idea what the showrunners were trying to do, but from my own perspective it’s almost impossible not to read into the events of the episode from an aromantic lens. The relationship makes no sense, I can’t tell if it’s a bit or if there’s some detail that I’m missing, but logically, emotionally, this coupling does not compute, it doesn’t follow the rules as I understand them, it makes no sense. And, while never to this level, that’s basically how I feel about most romantic relationships, I can pick out social cues and chemistries to follow along, but on a fundamental level I cannot and will never be able to wholly make sense of it.
I’ve complained on this blog before about a lot of the canon aromantic character roster, a big part of why I’ve never been able to connect to most of them is because their aromanticism is hardly ever explored, it’s mentioned in a line or hinted at in canon then confirmed on twitter, if even that, but the functional reality of the character’s aromanticism is taking them off the shipping board and then moving on. What Panty and Stocking did in this one episode was use filmic language, objective storytelling techniques, to speak to my experiences, it’s one of the few times I’ve felt seen and spoken to in this kind of way.
The episode continues, Panty responds to this by saying “I may not know what love is, but that sharter doesn’t either, he treats you like ass!” and then it’s revealed that actually deep down he did care for her, and then Panty vomits, either from the smell or the display of affection. She fights against their relationship to the end, and only after being held back so that the ghost can ascend does the whole sordid affair end, and even to the end Panty can’t show affection to the man who stole her sister’s heart. In the episode’s epilogue she, depending on your interpretation, either tries to connect with Stocking over the events in her own Panty way, or is just making fun of her for it. “It’s time to go kill some ghosts, I’ll even let you bang a few if you hurry.” To the end she doesn’t understand, she can attempt to connect to it from her own relationship to relationships, but can’t reach the actual emotions Stocking was feeling, neither can I, and the episode ends.
And that is why I like Panty Anarchy, and PSG as a whole, why Panty is among my favorite fictional characters, and why I connect so heavily to a weird late-season episode that was paired with a flash-tween-centric fanservice beach episode.
