Best "magical girl" transformation ever?

Bwah hah ha ha hahaha ha ha hahahahahaha ha!!!

Panty & Stocking With Garter Belt sets up your expectations right away, by jumping feet-first into an extended poop joke. It can only go up from there, right?

Trashy talk and madcap nonsense pretty much sum up the "story" and "dialogue". The animation is a mashup of the thick-lined angular western cartoony style most notably pioneered by McCraken and Tartokovsky in shows like Dexter's Laboratory and Powerpuff Girls, with the kind of frenetic improbable keyframing and action of Gainax classics Dead Leaves and Gurren Lagaan. In fact, it relies a lot on rigged-model style animation constructed out of pieces-parts like most modern western Flash-based (with packages like Toon Boom) more than the more familiar fully-hand-drawn compositions that the Japanese normally still use.

Though it does revert to that for one particular scene: the magical-girl transformation. The girls are rendered in a fluid, detailed, nuanced style totally unlike the rest of the sequences. Absolutly well-crafted parody of the usual cliche.

Oh, and they're on stripper poles.

Because, like, Stocking's magical sword is formed from one of her loli-goth knee stockings, and Panty's pistol is formed from... well, you get the point.

The whole thing is a raunchy, rowdy parody/homage to cartoons of all stripes, and rife with references to native and western influences. Most of which I'm sure I missed. But there's an obvious bit of Invader Zim here, a flat-out John Krisfalusi characterization there...

But frankly, it all goes by way too fast, and I can't quite keep up with it all. And yeah, it's kind of awkward in spots, a bit forced, and more than a bit "WTF?!?" throughout. That constructed/rigged style of animation can be a bit clunky and "cheap" a lot of the time.

But I find it hilarious, and I can't wait to see what other animation tropes they drag through the... uhh, mud.