It’s still January, so we’re still going to be taking a long, long look at Darling in the Franxx. Last week we looked at the opening act, which told the story of Hiro and Zero Two coming together, seemingly overcoming fates that would have seen them be trapped alone in the world. If you want the introduction to the show and a lot of material that this entry will largely assume you have, follow the link and read on. Where the show was set to go from there was a big question mark – there were hints of ‘more’ to come, but no real concrete outlook as to what we were doing next.
Seems like the perfect time for a beach
episode to me.
I’m not kidding – in respect of their
huge success in the last mission, APE decides to reward the kids with
a vacation, if a tiny one, bringing them to a tiny slice of unspoiled
surface, a secluded beach around with is greenery and even a ruined
settlement of humans on the surface from long ago, before the
Plantation system. The episode largely does… exactly what a beach
episode wants to do, showing off the girls of the teams in their
swimsuits and furthering interpersonal puttering.
That is, except for the fact that this
episode is cleverly used to set the scene for just about everything
that’s coming up in the arc, and even beyond. Some elements you
realize at once are setups, or are even transparent about that,
others you either might not realize are setting up plot elements for
later or are fairly certain to underestimate the importance of.
On the obvious end, we get a scene
where the APE council discusses current events. They’re all quite
impressed with Hiro and seem to like the fact that Zero Two now has a
partner, while affirming that this ultimately has to carry her to
some place called Gran Crevasse. This gives us our backbone for the
next arc: the first story, in terms of the action objectives, was
building up to the fuel transfer between the two Plantations. This
one is headed for an attack at Gran Crevasse. We don’t know what
that means yet, but we now know that there is a plan and an “endgame”
rather than just an endless supply of random Klaxosaurs to kill.
The blonde kid from the end of episode
6 also introduces himself to Hiro, so that’s something. Clearly
someone who’s going to be a recurring character, though just why is
currently unknown.
On the other hand, we visit the beach.
We get a lot of that interpersonal goodness, with most of the cast
playing or watching while Hiro and Zero Two swim out a bit together,
and she teaches him a thing or two about kissing (namely that it’s a
special gesture), and is cut short from learning about the kiss
between Ichigo and Hiro in Episode 2.
When he comes back, the other boys
corner him about the topic; their interest in the girls clearly
inflamed by the setting, they want to know just what secrets Zero Two
has been offering Hiro (particularly about the enigmatic gesture of
‘kissing’) and won’t take no for an answer, at least not until Ichigo
breaks it up (narrowly managing to dodge awkward questions about if
she knows anything about kissing in the process). A path has been
found into the local abandoned town, and the squad is keen to explore
as a group.
On the way up, we get a couple moments
of Mitsuru interacting with Kokoro rather than him with Ikuno (who
regards him coldly as he well deserves) or her with Futoshi. These
moments are a little weird, because other than Ichigo/Hiro it’s the
only cross-partner and cross-gender pairing that gets real
acknowledgment: Zorome, for instance, mostly interacts with Miku and
the boys. Ikuno interacts (little though she wants to) with Mitsuru
and other than him with the girls. We don’t spend time, for
instance, on having Goro chat with Kokoro or seeing Zorome bounce off
Ikuno. Even Ichigo, despite being squad leader, doesn’t really have
scenes with the boys other than her partner and her crush.
Mitsuru’s still a brooding jerk,
though. He comes off as maybe a sliver less horrid than he comes
off, but considering he’s callous and sharp tongued enough to cause
Futoshi to demand he apologize to Kokoro at one point… yeah, that’s
not saying a whole lot.
A couple of things happen as the kids
explore. Not only are the imaginations sparked by witnessing the
wreckage of what used to be human life, but they make a couple finds.
Kokoro discovers a book for expectant mothers in the decay and seems
to be a little fascinated. Given the seeming unnatural lack of
families for the Parasites, there’s sure to be something in there
that challenges the dystopian information control established by
Papa… but we don’t really follow up on any concept of what at this
time, we just know she has it and, as viewers who have some inkling
as to what she’s found, can expect that it will be of at least minor
importance somewhere down the line if the writers bothered to show
it.
We also get a scene between Zero Two
and Ichigo. Ichigo discovers an old movie poster depicting a couple
kissing, which quite naturally starts to stir feelings in her, when
Zero Two arrives to declare (brag?) that she’s done as much with
Hiro, starting a miniature cat fight by declaring that Ichigo
wouldn’t be ready for something like that. Ichigo gets defensive and
forgets herself, declaring that she’s kissed – though before she
can be pressed by Zero Two to answer with who, Goro and Hiro appear
to gather up the girls for a return to the beach.
Over dinner the group talks some more
about humanity’s abandonment of open cities and what they know (or,
more to the point, don’t know) about history, giving us some clues as
to what the true nature of the conflict between mankind and the
Klaxosaurs is like. The topic is cut short by Mitsuru and Zorome
playing two sides of the loyalist coin – Mitsuru as the sour
quisling who thinks it’s wrong to doubt Papa, and Zorome just plain
proud to serve and protect the glory of Papa and humanity. Ichigo
then gives a nice – honestly nice, surprisingly not catty –
welcome to Zero Two, acknowledging her as part of their squad… with
Zero Two not present because she slipped off for an evening swim a
little earlier. Brilliant timing, Ichigo. I’m sure those were in no
way words Zero Two, already shown to have something of a complex
regarding being seen as an outsider (particularly a “monster”)
would have liked or needed to hear. I don’t think she was trying to
be low-key catty by doing it then but it’s hard to know for sure.
To give our episode a capstone, the
squad sleeps on the beach that night, but two people just can’t seem
to get any rest: Hiro and Ichigo. They end up taking a walk
together, a long way along the beach, gazing up at the stars. Hiro
doesn’t remember teaching her astronomy (as he apparently did), but
he does remember that just between the two of them the fifteenth star
of Orion was the ‘Ichigo’ Star, and something they’d wanted to see
together. Ichigo pledges to do do her best, and hopes that Hiro will
have some time for her friends. In the romantic setting she manages
to start talking about their previous kiss being something special,
but before she can manage a real love confession that Hiro could
hear, she gets interrupted by a slice of natural wonder as a meteor
shower lights up the sky with shooting stars. As they fade, Hiro
asks what Ichigo wishes for, but she’s more set to be playful than to
really follow up on her resolve from a moment earlier, so that goes
nowhere. The rest of the crowd continues to sleep, but Zero Two
looks up at the shooting stars alone herself.
So, this episode had a ton of meat to
it in some ways. It set up Gran Crevasse. It set up one vehicle to
break with Papa’s programming. It set up a look at history and the
conflict between Klaxosaurs and humans. It stepped up and moved into
a new phase Hiro and Zero Two’s relationship (by making them
official), while also stepping up and moving into a new phase Zero
Two and Ichigo’s rivalry. We may not have any mecha action this
episode, but the way it’s used is absolutely loaded with material,
and the way it’s shot and paced has a certain beauty and a good flow
of emotion that captures the mystery of their surroundings and the
strange melancholy of this little group of kids being the only people
in a hidden slice of paradise on a dead desert Earth more than it
does simple prurient gawking. Not that, in and out of character
alike, we don’t also get a fair share of prurient gawking. The
in-character side is even at least somewhat important, since it helps
us understand where these kids are in their lives and what they
understand or don’t understand. And there’s more than that besides,
down to the flow of certain conversations that I did not notice until
revisiting this for the review. The episode is, honestly, packed
without feeling packed in the least. If every show used its beach
episodes with half as much skill as Darling in the Franxx did, I
don’t think it would be a trope worthy of mockery.
The next episode, though… it’s a
little special, and while I bear it an odd affection on some points,
I’m going to come out and say that’s largely not special in a good
way.
The episode starts out in battle with a Klaxosaur. Now, one of the things that’s good about Darling in the Franxx, particularly in the stretch we’re looking at this week, is that each Klaxosaur enemy seems to have its own strengths and weaknesses, including a variety of unique abilities that keep combat fresh and require our team to really think about how to handle them. They may not be on the level of Evangelion‘s Angels, but Franxx is focused far more on the character stuff (as opposed to the action) when compared with Eva, so that’s okay. This one, though, has the worst and most transparent gimmick of the lot. It vomits goo as an attack (okay so far) which even seeps into the Franxx cockpits (Very threatening) but… only dissolves clothes. Because of how it falls, specifically the suits of the girls.
Do you think the other Klaxosaurs make
fun of that one? Like they all have powers like defensive explosions
or burrowing through stone or laser breath and there’s this one
sodding embarrassment that rolled Disrobing Spittle as its special
attack? This may be a Trigger production (at least in part) but I
somehow doubt that a weapon effective on and only on the Life Fibers
is ever going to put up a good showing.
I know it’s a little thing, just a
setup for the character interactions later in the episode, but it
really does bother, especially because it (like the whole episode)
feels like someone didn’t get the memo about the tone the show was
going for. Darling in the Franxx can be funny (and that’s a big part
of Zorome’s likability and Zero Two’s charm), which I normally take
to be a very good thing even in a heavier show… but it did skew
heavier. Even the beach episode had a lot of good drama and a
particular air of the sorrowful and poignant that Darling in the
Franxx largely tries to maintain as its ‘default’ mood, letting funny
moments stand proud when they happen because they are the exception.
This entire episode is the exact opposite – it’s mostly zany
antics, with just a few potent moments that keep it afloat.
Speaking of which, getting to the zany
antics: Hiro alerts Zero Two when he sees what’s wrong, an action
that infuriates the rest of the boys who were all busy getting great
views of their partners. The Klaxosaur is finished off, but the
girls (other than Zero Two) are in no mood to even begin to forgive
the boys for their lecherous behavior. Hiro (who’s a little less in
the dog house, and not at all with his partner) and Zero Two try to
play peacemaker, but the girls have none of that, nor Goro’s excuse
of not wanting to distract them in battle.
Because of this, the Girls decide to
separate themselves from the boys, literally taping a line down the
middle of their house to divide the space like a bad sitcom.
I… There are points where there is no
quick or pithy way to sum up a reaction. This is one of those times.
I’d say I have no words, but really the answer is that I need more
words. I can only assume that there’s something lost in translation
and return. The “line down the middle of the house” is one of
those things that, in English language media, has felt not like
beating a dead horse but beating a dead unicorn, something that
became a tired cliché that would only be used in cases of terrible
writing, but that is never seen played straight and perhaps never has
been, the only examples you can find being moments that call to the
deep-seated idea of this being something that was done at some point
and was comically infantile. But here in Darling in the Franxx, the
line is played entirely, 100% seriously. It lives every second of
the trope, every beat. I have to assume that the writers were aware
that the trope existed, but not that it had connotations of being bad
when they decided “Yes! This is what our character drama mecha
show needs! This is what will propel the story we’re trying to tell
with child soldiers in a dystopian future forward!”
Weirdly enough, there are ways in which
it does. I said I had something of an affection for this episode,
and a good measure of that is grounded in the fact that it manages to
actually use its scenario in a meaningful fashion to say and
establish things about the greater setting and the characters
involved, despite the setup itself being almost tautologically
stupid.
For one, one of the handlers for the
kids (Nana) becomes agitated when she’s aware of the pubescent
symptoms the kids are showing, and she says that by the book they
should intervene and shut it down, with some implication that they
don’t mean the feud but rather a good round of brainwashing to numb
out its root cause. Dr. Franxx shuts her down; these kids are his
experimental squad and he won’t see them tampered with, so the
handlers aren’t to tell APE either.
Towards the end of the episode, the
kids discover a sealed room which, inside, has artifacts of the
previous Squad 13, who must have been wiped out some time in the
past, and wonder what kind of people they were and how things got to
this place, another window onto APE’s plantation system. There are
also a couple decent character scenes, but those are better handled
in order.
In any case, the feud goes through
trolling from the girls and counter-trolling from the boys, with
extra levels of friction between Ichigo and Goro on one level and
Zorome and Miku on another. Zero Two is initially uninterested in
the feud and doesn’t even play along. After coming around to the
idea that it needs to be spiced up, though, she ‘caves’ to pressure
from the other girls to hold the line, and begins devising her own
masterstroke.
During the feud, we get another scene
of Mitsuru and Kokoro when they both end up heading to a secluded
spot for their own reasons: Mitsuru to hide that he’s still taking
medicine presumably for the damage his outing with Zero Two did to
him, and Kokoro because she’s reading that baby book from the last
episode. Neither one seems particularly belligerent about the feud,
even if Mitsuru is still cold and somewhat miserable.
Finally, Zero Two springs her trap: she
tells the boys – formerly locked out of the hot bath, that they’re
now allowed to use it, and while they get ready changes the signs to
indicate it’s unoccupied and ready for them when in fact the other
girls are all bathing. The boys blunder in, and stripped down
themselves walk in on the girls. Bath products start flying both
ways as the cold war in the house gets hot, but Hiro looks over his
shoulder to notice Zero Two gathering up everyone’s clothes with a
look of mischief. Towel around his waist he chases after her as she
treats the scenario like a game, but doesn’t manage to stop her from
scattering the clothes from the roof. Why did she do it? Because,
in Zero Two’s words, she wanted to take part in a human fight, and
she asks Hiro if that made her look any more human. It’s a
surprisingly earnest look into one of her big remaining hangups, even
if it is a very brief moment punctuating more comedy nonsense.
At this point Nana and Hachi step in to
at least call a stop to the fight (but not its root in the kids going
through puberty). The intervention and careful words from Hiro, Zero
Two, and Kokoro – the latter clearly having learned from her book
that there are things boys and girls can accomplish together other
than piloting Franxx mechas – getting a general agreement for
reconciliation, with Miku being the last holdout. Despite that,
she’s also the first to really step up and address things, going full
tsundere and accepting she’s “too cute” to not be stared at a
little. With a return to status quo and Hiro realizing he wants to
know Zero Two even better, the episode comes to an end.
The next episode is another one I have
some very deep problems with, but they’re very different than the
problems of the previous one.
The episode starts innocently enough,
with the Parasites’ version of Christmas where once a year Papa
offers them each a gift and a letter. The way the kids are utterly
overjoyed by their fairly simple gifts and the ceremony of receiving
them reinforces that it’s not just Zorome; they’re all pretty well
programmed. Hiro finds a hand mirror to give Zero Two both because
she wasn’t part of Papa’s offerings and because he wanted to do
something good for her and the episode’s focal character, Goro, takes
a look at Ichigo and flashes back to a previous gift time when they
were all little kids: Hiro asked for a hair clip, which he gave to
Ichigo and which she still wears. Goro did the exact thing, but was
a little too slow and still has the one he asked for, a regret he
carries with him as he slowly realizes what “love” might be and
that he feels it for Ichigo.
Shortly after, the kids head out to
battle, in a rare instance of a fight not being contained at the
start or the end of the episode. The jellyfish-like Klaxosaur can
grow rapidly and detonate parts of itself to fend off attackers, a
vicious combo that ultimately sees Delphinium trapped in the beast,
which is when Goro pulls the emergency eject for Ichigo, rocketing
her to safety and leaving himself, alone, trapped inside. While
there, we get a furious effort to think of a way to save him while
his life support power dwindles and he has a lot of time to think and
have more flashbacks to his history with Hiro and Ichigo.
And this is where we have the problem.
This episode’s ‘meat’ isn’t bad on its own, but it is shamelessly,
excessively lifted from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Specifically, this
episode of Darling in the Franxx (“Triangle Bomb”) is pretty much
a carbon copy of Episode 16 of Evangelion (“Splitting of the
Breast”). That Evangelion episode saw Shinji in Eva 01 swallowed
up by the enemy of the week’s unexpected power, left floating in his
cockpit in a dark space, spending much of the episode on
introspection while the team on the outside tries to work out how to
kill the monster and save the trapped victim, with the steady
dwindling of the mecha’s reserve power as a harsh timer on how long
the victim has to live or the outside team to rescue him.
It’s exactly the bloody same. I guess
you could say that it might be an homage, but while the plot is
ripped straight from Evangelion I don’t think the emotions are really
right for an homage… and what a random episode to choose to homage
at that. In Episode 1 of Darling in the Franxx, when Strelizia
spears through the Klaxosaur’s core and the animation is almost
identical to when in Episode 1 of Evangelion Shinji stabs through the
Angel’s core, that’s an homage. It’s a brief moment, it’s obviously
acknowledging its predecessor, but what was taken isn’t overly much.
It would be like some other magical girl doing the Sailor Moon pose;
obviously a kind of cheeky reference, but fine on its own. Lifting
the entire plot for an episode just seems kind of lazy.
Because of that, there’s not all that
much to cover in depth for this episode. It’s largely focused on
expressing Goro’s crush on Ichigo. Like I said, it works on its own,
and we are able to feel his pain and understand his love as long as
we aren’t too distracted by the fact that this is an Evangelion
episode… but to an extent we did already get that Goro was carrying
a torch for her. If we were going to get an episode dedicated to
developing that, that’s alright. At the end, after Ichigo swims down
through the body of the Klaxosaur to rescue Goro before Delphinium
self-destructs and takes out the enemy (a fairly badass move on her
part) he even manages to give her the hairclip (she lost the one from
Hiro on her swim) and confess that he loves her. That’s something.
Now, Ichigo doesn’t respond to Goro’s
feelings properly at this time. She still has her eyes on Hiro after
all, and I actually want to give the writing a pat on the back for
that; it would belittle Ichigo’s feelings if she turned around and
paired off as a spare right now, throwing away a long-burning love in
the face of Zero Two’s fairly recent arrival. There’s an honesty to
her response that’s really refreshing to see… but in a sense,
doesn’t that make it even more pointless to have spent the whole
episode on Goro’s feelings if we’re just going to have to do this
again?
So, alright, let’s say we’re having a
Goro-centric episode. That’s fine. It focuses a lot on his feelings
for Ichigo. That’s natural. But because it’s neither introduced nor
resolved here, the meat that the exploration was built around had to
be good. And from the point of view of an ignorant viewer, it
probably would be good, with one of the show’s most unique and
troublesome Klaxosaurs… but knowing how totally this was lifted
from a prior source – and not just any prior source but one of the
major cornerstones of the genre?
They could have showed us something
else. Something new and unique. And it’s a distraction and a shame
that they didn’t. Shame on this episode.
The next episode, though, is one that
uniquely belongs to Darling in the Franxx, and is rather good. Like
the previous episode was largely focused on Goro, this one all
belongs to Zorome. After a we start off the episode with the end of
a battle, reminding us that these kids do fight Klaxosaurs in an
effective manner, we get another mysterious talk from the APE council
where they discuss the situation, how Squad 13 is shooting past
expectations but also something of a problem as their individualistic
nature presents a bad image when APE itself wants a future of harmony
through conformity.
Their conclusions are to push up the
timetables for attacking Gran Crevasse, routing the squad to the
Garden facility they grew up at to handle “maintenance”, and
meanwhile to reward the kids in a way that reinforces their place as
soldiers, leading to the team being scheduled for a medal ceremony in
the depths of the Plantation city, a the place they live to defend
and yet a place they’d never been.
News of the Garden visit puts Zero Two
in a sour mood that will ultimately persist for multiple episodes
while she and Hiro are largely out of focus, and the medal ceremony
turns out to be… underwhelming. There’s something of sterile
pantomime to the praise the plantation’s mayor offers the kids, and
when Zorome offers a hand to shake he seems downright disturbed
before moving on. Really, the whole city seems empty, recalling
(including to Hiro) Zero Two’s comment in episode 3 about the city
being lifeless. Still, despite being eerily silent and empty, it is
very pretty, and the kids take something of the scenic route out.
During this, Zorome falls behind and gets separated from the rest,
ultimately running into an Adult and getting himself hurt when he
falls from a ledge calling out to said person in the hope of being
shown the exit.
Zorome comes to having been brought
into the apartment of the Adult, who seems to be a kind old woman.
She disinfects her home while explaining that she tried to check him
over with a medical scanner, only to have to set it to ‘pet’ to get
any sort of result. In the meantime, they talk a little, and she
offers Zorome some tea and cookies, setting a very familial scene.
She also introduces Zorome to her
partner (partnering being, for Adults, a vestige of outmoded ways), a
man who lives in a Skinner box, which the woman seems to regard as
something normal. When she and Zorome return to the main room, she
reveals that she can’t even remember the sound of his voice, a fact
which gets Zorome onto the subject of Miku (as much as she may be the
Tsundere classic, Zorome has his own shades of complaining until
really put on the spot, at which point he clearly likes her a lot).
The woman, though, seems to have some sort of condition ailing her,
and calls to have Zorome picked up by the authorities. Before they
arrive, Zorome, feeling an odd kinship with the woman (clearly
calling to the need for a mother as he never had) asks if, when he
becomes an Adult, they can be friends.
Apparently that’s “impossible”
enough that the question is taken as a joke, but the authorities
arrive before any more explanation is given. Zorome is sprayed with
disinfectant by masked figures who mutter something about ‘infected
children’ and those children being victims, and led out of the
Plantation city. Ichigo gives him ‘clean the bath’ duty for a week,
and all seems to be well that ends well.
To an extent, we already knew that the
reality of Adults in Darling in the Franxx had to be messed up, what
with using identity-deprived child soldiers to fight their battles,
but this is really beyond the pale for what we the viewers
understand. Zorome only finds his experience slightly disquieting at
worst, and actually had more of a good time talking with the old
woman, so it sifts out on the positive end if anything, but that’s
because he doesn’t have the perspective to see something of the
horror apparent to, I dare venture, most modern humans.
The woman’s partner is a good example of this. Zorome finds his existence, living in a machine that stimulates the reward centers in his brain for a seemingly indefinite period of time, to be weird based on Zorome’s reactions… but not weird enough to speak out about. But then, Zorome knows nothing and idolizes the idea of being adult, so there’s a huge part of his mind that’s going to rationalize anything he sees or hears. The old woman has lived the progress to this point, and while she seems to get some hints of melancholy having to explain her way of life to Zorome, it’s something that she clearly came to accept a long time ago. For the audience, however, the loss of human dignity in the Plantations is clear.
Up until this point it was easy to
write off the dystopian elements of Darling in the Franxx as probably
belonging to the leadership, such as the APE council and their
SEELE-knockoff ways. There was plausible deniability for the idea
that down in that city, as much as Zero Two called it ‘lifeless’
there were something resembling ordinary humans living something
approaching ordinary (Maybe cyberpunk? Maybe fake-utopian?) lives.
Now, it’s horrifyingly clear that the Parasites, who are somehow
infected and will never become Adults the way Zorome believes they
will, are the hope we have for humankind as a whole.
There’s a degree to which the setup
here reminds me of the infamous film Zardoz – which for all its
complete stylistic insanity and questionably-dressed Sean Connery did
some legitimate social science fiction, exploring a society that was
slowly withering and dying from its own stagnation, as opposed to a
“society” of people who retained the brutal and ugly facets of
humanity as well as the noble ones. The comparison is even more apt
when one considers the vague implications at this point in Franxx,
later confirmed, that Plantation-humanity is (like the decadent
society in Zardoz) immortal, and that said trait is a factor in their
current condition.
This episode, to an extent, changes the
objective of Darling in the Franxx. You could suspect from the start
that Papa probably wasn’t on the level, and that if the show went far
enough in terms of its ambitions the kids would eventually be forced
to see at least a portion of APE as their enemies. The council is
kind of transparent in the fact that they’re sinister, with every
scene with them written to enforce the idea that they’re evil
manipulators without actually coming out and telling us that they’re
evil manipulators.
With the veil being pulled back here so
that we see just how massive and progressed the rot is, both the
urgency and scope of the eventual rebellion against the forces that
control them has been increased drastically. It’s clear that we’re
not exactly going there for the current arc: Gran Crevasse looms ever
closer, enough that you can probably guess it’s going to be our next
arc end, but we’re also clearly setting up for a show that goes on
after whatever “decisive battle” or such happens there.
So, that’s a lot of set up. How about
some payoff? Enter Episode 11. The episode opens up with Mitsuru
having a dream about his past as a little kid, idolizing Hiro while
his present teen self screams ineffectually at his memory to not
trust Hiro because he’ll just be betrayed. To be honest, Mitsuru
seems kind of like a narcissistic prick in this, but OK.
He’s also, it turns out, sick and out
of commission. The others talk about him a little, getting out the
story of how he received a dangerous treatment to better his aptitude
and changed shortly after (mentioning that it also boosts ‘yellow
blood cells’, tying in to the idea that the Parasite children are
somehow infected), with a side note that Hiro changed a little around
that time too. We get another sequence of Mitsuru’s memories where
he tries to promise with Hiro to pilot together before getting the
treatment that would make him able at great risk to his life
It’s so hard to feel sorry for Mitsuru.
Objectively he’s been in a bad situation after bad situation, but…
he needed to up his aptitude to not get pruned regardless of anything
Hiro said or did, this was longer ago than they were old at the time,
what he wanted was neither technically possible nor within Hiro’s
power, and apparently it’s still what causes Mitsuru to hold this
massive all-consuming chip on his shoulder. He’s not even shown to
have any real stake in what the promise was, he just cannot get over
not having a wish granted as a little kid.
He’s not doing so hot in the present
either. Wonder injection from the past or no, his scores are
declining and he may soon wash out and be pruned if something isn’t
done. At the critical juncture, with Mitsuru and Ikuno’s synch
possibly dragging down the otherwise over-performing squad, Nana
suggests a “Partner shuffle”, repairing Mitsuru and Ikuno with
others. Ikuno asks to try a pistil-pistil link with Ichigo, while
Kokoro goes and breaks Futoshi’s heart by offering to test pilot with
Mitsuru. Ikuno’s little experiment predictably goes absolutely
nowhere (to which Ichigo is chipper, but Ikuno even more sour than
usual), but Mitsuru and Kokoro manage to form a stable bond,
cementing the idea of swapping Futoshi and Mitsuru in the field.
Abandoned by Kokoro and promptly dissed
by Mitsuru (with whom he failed to start a fight), Futoshi is left in
agony from the emotional blow. He clearly cared a lot for Kokoro,
and had wanted to stay her partner (something she tepidly agreed to
when, earlier, he wanted them to promise to stick together.), and in
keeping with him having no cool or dignity to go with his
surprisingly big heart and even more surprising general competence
(more on that later) he’s left literally on the floor as he reaches
out to Hiro, who can at least understand where Futoshi is at.
Mitsuru, meanwhile, meets up with
Kokoro where they had their conversation a couple episodes back. She
wants to talk about children, and what changed in humanity, but
Mitsuru largely blows her interest off to demand if she just stepped
up out of pity, because for Mitsuru it’s all about him, isn’t it?
Kokoro says that it’s not, but can’t
explain before the alarm sounds.
At this point, I feel like this needs
to be said: I don’t think my words, short-form as this is, can really
get across just how much of a git Mitsuru comes off as through the
show-to-date. I seriously hated this kid by this point. It’s not
just what he says or does, but how. His every mannerism seems to
scream that he’s a complete prick; arrogant, spiteful, and
self-centered. He has most of Zorome’s flaws (not so much the short
fuse, but the rest) and none of his redeeming features. He doesn’t
do anything wrong, exactly, other than being rude, but he is so rude
that he hits Shinji Matou levels of “People you’d like to see
suffer”. I’m pretty sure it’s intentional; the kind of scum
Mitsuru comes across as doesn’t happen by accident when trying to
write a more likable character, and when they go to try to start
redeeming him, this episode containing the first baby steps, the
writers seem to understand that it’s a herculean task. Like, full
Twelve Labors Herculean.
In the ensuing battle, Zero Two is in
an exceptionally savage mood, part of the degeneration in her general
status that started in the previous episode, manifesting in a more
obvious and external way, but her ferocious attack accomplishes
little: It’s up to teamwork today. Mitsuru gets mad at having a role
in combat rather than getting to be the ace, and this ends up
resulting in him cutting out with Kokoro in a bad place. Futoshi
comes in, crying and desperate to protect Kokoro, holding off the
Klaxosaur and giving the two of them time as the group regroups.
This brings me to a small aside about
Futoshi. Here he is, linked with ice-cold Ikuno of all people,
crying out in desperation for another girl, and he’s still driving a
Franxx he’s never ridden in before with a pistil who he hasn’t
partnered with before, and doing it at essentially 100% ability. In
episode 6 Ichigo cuts out from Goro just from getting distracted by
her feelings. Zorome cut out from his connection with Miku in
Episode 2 – granted, they were just starting out, but he still
disables his unit with less distress than here. Mitsuru’s problems
connecting are pretty well known, and do reflect somewhat on Ikuno as
well. Futoshi never does; even if he’s a weepy vehicle for fat
jokes, he actually seems to be a shockingly reliable and effective
Franxx pilot. Dude does not get enough credit.
In any case, while Genista is disabled, Kokoro and Mitsuru talk. She gives him the old ‘I believe in you’ speech and wants him to rely on others, especially her, which drags out his oh-so-great trauma over being “betrayed” by Hiro in early childhood. You know, Mitsuru, when Homura Akemi famously says she won’t rely on anyone anymore, she’s got a good bloody reason and a lot more trauma than your flashback where Hiro seemed earnestly confused at you bringing up any ‘promise’. Kokoro introspects and realizes that she’s not exactly a good girl and did something similar to Futoshi just this episode, but that imperfect people can still form relationships and learn to rely on one another. Insisting that she believes in Mitsuru, she turns Genista back on, entering Stampede Mode. Recall, if you’re not Zero Two, running in pistil-only Stampede Mode is a good way for the girl in question to be seriously hurt or killed. She basically forces Mitsuru’s hand, and he jumps to it, reconnecting and bringing Genista back to the fight at full sync, returning the absolute trust that was just given to him.
Naturally, the Klaxosaur falls down not
much later. Mitsuru gets a well-deserved punch in the face from
Futoshi over how much bloody danger Kokoro was in, but it’s still
Futoshi’s turn to cry as he has to come to terms with being passed
over like this. It makes Hiro sad to see, but Zero Two quietly
reassures him that they’ll be together ’til death do they part.
In any case, the next episode sees us
actually reaching the Garden, the facility where the Parasites grew
up and where they’ll be prepared for the attack on Gran Crevasse.
It’s not exactly a happy homecoming, though, as they’re just there to
visit the lab, which most of them never saw the inside of before.
Hiro did, apparently being something of the designated guinea pig,
and one of the others points out Mitsuru did as well – an event
that Hiro doesn’t remember at all, which seems to disturb him as well
as annoy Mitsuru. We see Zero Two facing down ‘testing’ and also
properly meet the blonde kid from earlier, who introduces himself as
9 Alpha. He’s the apparent leader of the special forces squad known
as the 9’s (presumably because their code is 009 despite their being
multiple individuals.) He seems to regard Zero Two as a former
member, calling her Iota, and offends Ichigo a little while
approaching her in an overly familiar manner that, based on who the
9’s are, isn’t flirting but sure as hell comes off as it.
Zero Two’s frustration only increases, and she ends up getting tranquilized to force her compliance, making it a matter of wonder just what she might be afraid of. Hiro and the gang, meanwhile, want to visit the children’s area of the Garden because that’s where they were told parasite washouts – particularly pre-episode-one Hiro’s partner (Naomi) – get sent: back to the Garden. They’re ordered not to, but this is squad 13 we’re talking about, they find their excuses to do it anyway. When they get there, they find that Naomi is not present. In fact, no program wash out is, and remembering their own experiences, they realize no one ever did come back to the Garden after leaving as long as they lived there.
For the audience, this is kind of
nothing. Even in Episode 1 you kind of got the sense that Naomi had
a bright future as Soylent Green (or something similar) and even that
she may have suspected as much given how she pushed Hiro out of the
transport. The truth is something we’ll get to, but the fact that
the public story was a lie was blindingly obvious from the framework
of child soldiers and a dystopian nightmare society.
Still, it’s a kind of hard blow for the
kids. They’re confused and a little concerned. The more loyal don’t
want to reach the natural (for the audience) conclusion that
something is actually rotten, and they don’t really get a great
chance to talk it out before being recovered and scolded by Nana. 9
Alpha appears to Ichigo again, needling her before ultimately
providing a hook with her jealousy, offering to show her the truth
about Zero Two.
Speaking of Zero Two, if you thought
she was in a bad place before, it’s only gotten worse. She goes on a
rampage in the home the kids share, breaking all the mirrors
(including the hand mirror that Hiro gave her) unable to stand her
reflection. She goes fully berserk in a minor battle, ripping the
Klaxosaurs apart with all her might until Strelizia runs out of gas
and shuts down, furious and desperate, insisting that she needs to
kill more Klaxosaurs in order to become human, and is running out of
time.
Hiro confronts her later, trying to get
through to her, but Zero Two has hit a low enough point where she
can’t even seem to hear him anymore. She calls him fodder and
doesn’t answer. Hiro uses what he learned from seeing Goro and
Ichigo struggle to confess that he loves Zero Two, finally
understanding what he feels for her, but in her dark place she
misinterprets his words in a way that reflects as badly as possible
on her bonds with humanity, bitterly offering to “show him what
comes after kissing”, partially undoing her uniform and pushing a
kiss onto him that’s a lot less romantic than any other we’ve seen in
the show. However tempted Hiro might have felt, though, concern is
what’s first in his mind, and after he refuses that path, she stalks
off. Through these scenes, it’s clear that it’s not just her mood –
her nails and teeth in particular are looking a lot more monstrous
(much focus is given to her fangs in particular) so it’s clear that
what’s happening is going on many levels and probably what she was
afraid of being uncovered.
A slight aside: As important as kissing
scenes are to the progression of Darling in the Franxx (or perhaps
because of their importance) there aren’t many of them, and I have to
give the animators some credit that each kiss throughout the show
conveys a different mood. Kisses are always hard to shoot to have
them look good, and having them not only look good as pivotal scenes
but also say more than the basics? That takes skill. The one here
certainly has an edge of lust, seeing how Zero Two is offering up
(or, perhaps more accurately, forcing) her body, such as it is, but
you also get the undercurrents of bitterness and desperation that the
scenes with her have been building up.
Meanwhile, based at least somewhat on 9 Alpha’s needling, Ichigo spies a little on Nana and Hachi as they two of them look over the test results, and learns that it’s not just Zero Two who’s becoming less human: Hiro, if he keeps this up, will also lose his humanity, gaining Klaxosaur traits like Zero Two’s. Seeing as 9 Alpha also had the decency and grace to paint Zero Two as a heartless monster, citing her (possibly accurate) kill count of former partners and desire to approach humanity perhaps by consuming it, Ichigo is now fairly convinced, once again, that she needs to split them up.
The call to battle sounds once again,
though, before Ichigo can really do anything about it. In the fight,
Zero Two once again goes berserk, even worse than before, and this
time when Hiro tries to rein her in, she ends up attacking him in the
cockpit, crying and screaming that she needs to become human, so she
can find her REAL Darling. During the assault, as she lets all her
feelings about past and future spill out, they’re still linked, and
the intensity of the experience sends them spiraling into flashback
land for the next episode…
Now, I will talk about the flashback
episode in detail, but there’s something I need to address now that
requires the Cliff Notes version: essentially, Hiro and Zero Two met
when they were little children. Though it was brief, it was her
first positive human interaction and went a long way to shaping who
Zero Two became. But, as can be guessed from his general missing
memories, Hiro had induced amnesia about those experiences,
remembering nothing until the current incident, while Zero Two never
forgot, and has remained fixated on reaching Hiro again.
The question is, and this is one I’ve
discussed with people I know: Did Zero Two recognize Hiro? If you
don’t read between the lines of her character through the show up to
this point, I feel like you can reach either conclusion, and that
whichever one you reach will have some logical holes in it. My
personal analysis is this: I think she recognized Hiro, but at some
point in her downward slide fell prey to doubt. I submit as my first
evidence Zero Two’s behavior in the first arc. Now, she never tries
to call Hiro on their possible past together, that much is true, but
all the same she treats him differently from the start. The offers
to “Run away together”, and the fact that even before his third
ride in Episode six she respects him as a person and has a vested
interest in staying partnered with him doesn’t jive with the
impression we’re given of her having treated previous partners not as
“Darlings” but as expendable fodder. True, some of these
impressions come from 9 Alpha, who seems to be intentionally coloring
perceptions, but he’s not alone. The way Zero Two turns on Mitsuru
when she goes all out and what he reports of a demon trying to devour
his soul is more like what we’re told is Zero Two’s behavior with
stamens other than Hiro that she’s been paired with, indicating that
such is real behavior, and that her treatment of Hiro is the anomaly.
If she doesn’t recognize him as her true Darling, there’s no reason
for this.
But then there’s the anomalous
behavior. Zero Two is fixated on her Darling; if she knew she’d
found the genuine article, you’d think she might be more possessive
than she is in episodes 1 (where he has to ask repeatedly to ride
with her), 4 (where he has to call out to her for her to take him on
the second sortie), and 5 (where she offers him a chance to ‘get off
the ride’).
For one, it’s clear that there would be
doubt in Zero Two’s mind as to whether or not Hiro is really Hiro.
After all, he doesn’t remember, and everything in his manner dealing
with her says the he doesn’t recognize her from before, casting a
long shadow over the supposition that he’s the same person. Seeing
as Zero Two plays things close to the chest and keeps her secrets in
general, I don’t think it’s too odd to assume that she wouldn’t want
to make the first move regarding calling back to the past. And if
the present is going well for her, she doesn’t need to. On the other
side, most of Zero Two’s behavior seems to lean towards preserving
Hiro. Not riding with him is, in a sense, saving him, but as was
discussed in the write-up for those earlier episodes, the key seems
to be that Zero Two respects Hiro’s wishes.
She’s also, from the start, fairly
fatalistic. In Episode 3 she talks about the inevitability of death
and being forgotten, so I also don’t think it’s too much of a stretch
to imagine that if she does believe Hiro is Hiro, and he wants to
ride with her, she’d let him – hoping that they’d really be able to
be partners but accepting if that’s going to be the end. The degree
to which she’s devastated when he (nearly) dies in Episode 6 also
inclines towards that. Zero Two can drive in Stampede mode, but
after Hiro cuts out, she doesn’t seem to be looking out for her own
survival.
Then, we get her downward slide. From
the point where it’s announced that she’ll be going in for her tests
until this final break, she grows more and more sour. Remember: Zero
Two can be a fun, sweet, loving girl… but she’s not defined as
such. She’s also, from the start, been tormented with a bleak
outlook on reality and serious image issues, both of which are
intensifying with her physical degeneration and the prospect that
once medical scans confirm it, Hiro will be taken away from her
again. As her mood worsens and her body continues to degenerate
(with any psychological effects that come with that), it’s natural
that the natural doubt about her ‘premise’ would creep back in. This
would get worse after she fails her last minute bid to escape going
through testing, and also as she interacts with Hiro in the place
they first met and still nothing is coming back to him
I feel like the last scene of her and
Hiro before the ride into battle at the end of the episode. At this,
she’s near her lowest point. In the scene of Zero Two breaking the
mirrors, which has already happened, we understand that it’s the
image issues as well that are tearing her apart. As much as she may
believe that she can be human by killing enough Klaxosaurs, she’s
slipping away from humanity, losing it inch by inch, and becoming
less what she wants to be. When Hiro says he loves her, and then
rejects her aggressively offering her body, that’s going to look
different to her than it does to Hiro. For Hiro and the audience,
he’s not taking advantage and trying to express a more pure emotional
connection. For Zero Two, what would she see except a liar judging
her? To say he loves her, and then reject her? To, as a human, fear
and be repulsed by the tainted body that disgusts her so?
As with giving Zero Two of all people a
mirror as a gift, Hiro here steps on a land mine he couldn’t have
known about, but that’s easy to see from an outside perspective. The
message he tries to send and the message Zero Two receives are
entirely different, and the one she receives is one of being lied to,
betrayed, and abandoned. Again.
And, from her perspective, would the
Darling she’s built her life around do that to her? The person who
cared for her in the past reject her for what she is? Of course not.
Because of that, when on the heels of that incident she reaches
another level of stress and madness, the doubt and despair were
always going to consume her, and lead to her rejecting the idea that
this boy is her ‘real’ Darling. And if he’s not the one, that means
he’s in the way.
At least until their meeting of minds
shows Zero Two otherwise, leaving her distraught about how she
doubted it in the wake of such revelation.
As Hiro and Zero Two’s consciousness
intertwine, they’re drawn back to the critical past, the time Zero
Two could never forget and that Hiro had forgotten completely. And
here, we begin to really get answers.
Zero Two, we learn, spent her early
life in isolation, bound in a small room with only a strange
caretaker, who gave her a picture book before disappearing, leaving
her to be dragged from her lair. She also didn’t look much like the
Zero Two we know, having blood red skin and an overall more monstrous
visage, an image glimpsed briefly in places like episode one and the
intro animation, and thus that the audience has been primed to
recognize.
Hiro, on the other hand, as a
low-numbered Parasite candidate, we see getting special treatment.
We also are first introduced to him when he properly ‘meets’ Ichigo,
consoling her that it’s alright that the two of them are different
and even giving her the name. Through this, we see a few interesting
things: Both Hiro’s naming of Ichigo in particular and his little
practice of handing out names were more meaningful (and the latter
somehow even more rebellious) than we believed. The other Parasites,
outside those that will become Squad 13, are devoid of emotions, and
the only reason Hiro isn’t punished harshly for naming his friends is
that he’s a special and valuable specimen.
He’s also sent to the lab for enhanced
testing (as all the kids remembered) which is where he first
encounters Zero Two. He sees Doctor Franxx examining her. Franxx is
in full mad scientist mode, overjoyed that she’s taken such a human
form and more that she regenerates so quickly when he zaps her with a
laser.
If you think this portrayal of Doctor
Franxx is a little odd… good. Through the show to date he’s been
fairly mellow, hardly even ‘mad’ by Mad Scientist standards. He has
had a few moments of admiring the monsters, but by in large he’s
helped Zero Two, given Hiro good advice, and functioned as a distant
parental figure shielding Squad 13 from the worst of APE’s tyranny
and scrutiny. Here, he’s torturing the little kid version of the
girl he ultimately ends up as a positive father figure to and seems
to be reveling in every minute like he’s completely off his meds.
I’ll have more on Doctor Franxx in next week’s edition, but for now I
felt I would be remiss if I didn’t point it out.
In any case, this piques Hiro’s
curiosity. He asks after the girl with horns only to get shut down
by the adults, but he doesn’t let that stop him. Little Hiro is
resourceful and relentless, and tries numerous times to sneak his way
to her before discovering she’s kept in a room with a window, and
that he can look in if he climbs up a large tree. There he sees her
fighting to keep ahold of her picture book, and gets emotionally
involved in the poor thing’s struggles.
The situation for the Parasites gets
darker. Friends are taken away, Papa’s orders, and Mitsuru goes up
to the lab to get his deadly dangerous treatment and escape culling
himself. We see his promise with Hiro and… wow. Naming Ichigo,
earlier, was so much more meaningful than we were led to believe,
offering her a ray of light when she was absolutely devastated and
couldn’t take her existence any longer. The promise with Mitsuru
is… even more underplayed here than in Mitsuru’s flashback, and
Mitsuru’s situation even more for his own sake. Go ahead, play a sad
song on the world’s smallest violin for him.
As Hiro gets his scheduled testing,
Doctor Franxx is in attendance. Apparently he took his
anti-psychotics that day because he looks over Hiro with the same
demeanor he shows in the present and nixes intervention, wanting to
see what kind of Parasite someone with Hiro’s empathy grows up into.
That doesn’t spare Zero Two, though, and Hiro sees her being ‘tested’
(more like tortured) with some horrid electric shock rig. Hiro can’t
take it any more. After the testing adults (Not Franxx this time)
blow him off when he tells them to stop hurting that girl, Hiro takes
matters into his own hands. He goes back to the Garden area, gears
up, and heads out to smash in Zero Two’s window, and offers his hand
to lead her out to freedom. He doesn’t exactly ‘stick the landing’
because the branch breaks under their combined weight, but it’s the
thought that counts.
This is also the first of many scenes
that calls back to events that will happen in the future, but
somewhat flipped around. Hiro offering his hand to Zero Two from the
branch is pretty much a direct inversion of Zero Two, in Episode 1,
offering Hiro her hand to take their first Franxx ride. The motion
is similar, but the positions of the characters are reversed. The
emotion, though, a matter of desperation leading into a rush of
freedom, is very reminiscent.
The fall knocks Hiro out, but Zero Two
carries him away, understanding his intent far better than she can
understand words at this point. Away from the base somewhat, she
finds a family of mice and starts hunting them. Hiro wakes up to
find she’s got one in her mouth, and tries to convince her to let it
go, getting bitten for his trouble before he works out a soft touch,
and realizing that there’s a communication barrier where she only
half-understands human speech. All the same, he tries to work out
introductions and, noticing that the shackle on her ankle marks her
as code 002 and that she hasn’t given any other name or designation,
tries to mull over what sort of name he could give her. He briefly
considers “Oni” (which would be apt given that she resembles the
mythological creature, particularly in her young form) and, not
satisfied with it, starts mulling over the sound of “Zero Two”.
He’s not pleased but she latches onto that sound, quickly repeating
it and taking it as her name.
Again, there’s a callback here to an
earlier scene: In Episode 3, Hiro offers to come up with a name for
Zero Two, but she refuses with perhaps more vehemence than you’d
expect. Given that it’s not exactly just her code, nor the only
designation she’s had (having been 9 Iota) you come to realize that
she already had a name given to her by her Darling, and that it
probably stung at least a little to be offered a new one, adding an
extra layer of meaning to the older scene.
Hiro continues to try to help her out
after that, improvising some shoes and, to cover some of that food
need, offering her one of the candies he was given as a reward for
participating in his own tests. Again, we partake in a mirror seen:
in Episode 2, Zero Two tries to feed Hiro at breakfast, telling him
to “Say aah” with a very distinctive animation. Here, to let her
know what a candy is and what to do with it, Hiro gives the same line
and even the same animation. This would also be Zero Two’s
introduction to normal food in all likelihood (seeing as she had no
qualms stuffing a rat in her mouth beforehand, I don’t think they
gave her much good stuff as an experimental subject) and could be
seen as likely kick-starting her notable love of sweets.
They dodge a patrol looking for them,
at which Hiro overhears the guards talking, including about what to
do with him. In their words, recovering 002 is top priority.
Recovering 016 (Hiro) is ideal, but they’re also authorized to use
lethal force if he resists. Up until this point, Hiro could probably
be assumed to have thought his station would protect him from any
repercussions, just as it had with every prior defiance, but after
that conversation, he can have no illusions. Despite this, it
doesn’t shake him in the least, and he promises to take care of Zero
Two.
In a quite moment as they make their
way out through the winter, he’s also able to read her picture book
to her. The book is called “The Beast and the Prince” and is
sort of like The Little Mermaid if instead of a mermaid its lead
character was some sort of winged humanoid monster. The creature,
observing human society, falls in love with a prince and makes a deal
with a witch to become human so she can be part of his world, though
the pairing is ultimately destined for tragedy because she and he are
of different sorts.
Hiro finds the story rather sad and
(with Zero Two learning communication with shocking rapidity) talks
about some of the ideas from the story, like how the characters
wanted to get married. He also notices her scraped knee and,
recalling the idea of licking wounds, tries to do just that. Zero
Two thinks he’s proposing and… Hiro just sort of owns it, promising
that they can be together and that he’ll be her darling just as soon
as they can escape. She’s overjoyed, but celebration is cut short by
the arrival of a group of soldiers. Even knowing it could cost him
his life, Hiro tries to defend Zero Two but… yeah they’re a couple
of fairly little kids up against trained goons, he doesn’t exactly
pose much of a threat and both of them get taken in.
Papa has commands for this, ordering
Doctor Franxx to erase their memories. The procedure works to at
least suppress Hiro’s memories of a block of his life around knowing
young Zero Two, resulting in things like him forgetting his promise
with Mitsuru and presumably the other hinted at lost moments like
teaching Ichigo astronomy. He also becomes more passive and
tractable, no longer handing out names or acting out as the little
rebel, leading us to realize that the Hiro we’ve spent the show with
up to this point is Hiro with one mental hand tied behind his back.
Zero Two, on the other hand, resists
the procedure. She ended up eating the picture book to make it part
of her, and desperately clung to her memories and her hopes,
eventually being indoctrinated by Papa to believe that she could
become human as she so desperately wanted to if only she killed
enough Klaxosaurs.
In the present, the two of them come
to, realizing the truth of their bond. Zero Two seem shocked, and
horrified at what she’s done, while Hiro is more overawed by the
return of his memories and his new understanding. Their peaceful
reconciliation has no time to happen, though, as Ichigo is quite
reasonably on the war path, attacking Strelizia with all she’s got in
order to save Hiro.
Which is exactly where the next episode
picks up – Zero Two and Hiro just starting to talk out what they’ve
been made aware of with Hiro’s health flagging when Ichigo rips her
way into Strelizia’s cockpit with Delphinium and, entering herself,
bodily throws Zero Two off of Hiro, determined to get her contained
and him some medical help. Goro and the others help Ichigo, while
Hiro passes out.
We get, very quickly, that his
condition is not good. He’s on the verge of ‘saurification’, and no
one is quite sure just what that means for his status. Zero Two
tries to go and see him, but Ichigo has her blocked at every turn.
Ichigo drops what she knows about how Hiro will transform and how
Zero Two was ‘just using him’, and even though the rest of the squad
wants to believe in Zero Two and not what Ichigo is saying, Zero Two
can’t deny it, setting herself against them. The conversation goes
very sour, escalated by Ichigo’s protective envy and Zero Two’s
inability to trust people, leading to Ichigo vowing to never let Zero
Two see Hiro again, and having the support of the rest of Squad 13 to
stand in Zero Two’s way.
Hiro comes to, and while he initially
wants to see Zero Two, Ichigo insists that she’ll protect him. As
his friends filter out, he stops Mitsuru to have a heart to heart,
revealing the recovered memory of his promise, which Mitsuru largely
blows off, and as Hiro thinks to himself we get the post-script of
his time: it was after that incident that his aptitude began to decay
to the point we saw in Episode 1, a fact he attributes to having
ingested Zero Two’s blood. I’m not so sure; I think the
spirit-breaking amnesia mad science might at least have had something
to do with it as well, but that’s the best answer we get from the
show.
Ichigo insists to Nana (and through
her, command) that Zero Two be removed from their squad before the
battle for Gran Crevasse, threatening to basically strike (like
they’d be allowed to) if such a demand wasn’t met. However, she was
apparently set to be returned to the 9’s already, which she protests
to no avail, without a sympathetic voice among either Squad 13 or
their leaders. Ichigo makes good on her promise to keep Hiro and
Zero Two apart, posting guards at both of their rooms.
During this stretch, she goes and
visits Hiro herself. Over the course of this scene, she peels an
apple for him, musing about how he might hate her for what she’s done
and continues to do, but that she can’t and won’t stop all the same.
Ultimately she gets too lost in thought and cuts herself, breaking
the scene and herself out of the ‘trance’, but for a moment there she
was actually… downright scary. There’s an interesting contrast
between Ichigo in this particular scene and Zero Two in her darkest
moments. When Zero Two goes dark and scary (this being true from at
least episode 5, where we get this kind of portrayal after Ichigo
slaps her), there’s the sense that she is powerful and actively
dangerous, but either barely restrained or slipping her restraints.
Zero Two, at her most terrifying, is like a tiger on a leash, and the
leash is about to snap. Dark fury, hunger, and violence are where
the fear comes from. Ichigo is scary in this scene, even if it’s
just for a short moment, but it’s completely different. Ichigo is,
here, absolutely contained and restrained, and isn’t straining at the
‘restraint’. Instead, she owns it completely, coming off as
tranquil, but also calculating. If she’s dangerous, it’s because
she’s acting as an intellect and, in her admission of how she’s
hurting Hiro and will keep hurting Hiro for his own sake, weirdly
disconnected from the emotional impact of her actions. She’s going
to do what’s right by her and you get the sense that nothing’s going
to stop that. If Zero Two is scary the way a tiger is scary, Ichigo
comes off as scary the way a sociopath is scary.
I must stress, her frightful moment is
brief. I don’t think Ichigo is a scary character. She doesn’t want
to be, and some of of the distance in her performance is more
conveying the fact that she’s at a low place and has had to
disconnect a little from her actions in order to be able to push
through and reach what she hopes is going to be a good ending, an
important trait in someone who’s been chosen to lead, being able to
put momentary feelings aside for the sake of the mission. Between
the animation and the voice role, a ton of emotion and motivation
gets across in not a lot of time.
After she cuts herself, Hiro helps her
bandage the wound, and they seem to reach something of a rapport,
where Ichigo’s nightmare scenario of being hated isn’t likely.
However, as she retreats, Hiro ends up keeping the knife.
Zero Two, meanwhile, is in the middle
of her second collapse (the first having been when she attacked
Hiro). She breaks out of her room, launching Goro, just when Ichigo
returns. She and Ichigo exchange some harsh words, but both Goro and
Kokoro prevail on Ichigo to let Zero Two at least talk to Hiro.
Perhaps because things seem to be sewn up with Zero Two’s return to
the 9’s, Ichigo relents, with Goro adding the term that the entirety
of Squad 13 will be there watching her. They go to Hiro’s room and
all enter… only to discover that Hiro has used the knife to make a
bedsheet ladder and escape his room through the window because he
wanted to see Zero Two and has reclaimed his rule-breaking and
adventurous spirit.
His timing, of course, couldn’t be
worse, and Zero Two does not take the empty room well or lightly,
entering a berserk or near-berserk phase as she accuses Squad 13 and
Ichigo in particular of toying with her.
Hiro, meanwhile, makes it to Zero Two’s
room. After getting no response he enters, finding it in shambles,
torn up and even marked with dried blood as she’s raged at her
containment. He makes his way back to where he’s supposed to be to
find Zero Two and the squad all there, but not at all how he’d want
to see them: Almost everyone has been knocked out and is on the
floor, and Zero Two stands, eyes gleaming a hellish and feral red, as
she lifts Ichigo by the neck and chokes her. For a moment, Zero Two
is overjoyed, gleeful to see her darling so they can finally talk…
but this time, Hiro is having none of it.
For me, this is a critical scene for
separating Hiro’s character from a possible failure state. It would
be all too easy to write him (or write him off as) a spineless
lover-boy who does whatever his girl, Zero Two, wants. This is
especially true since he’s been seen to disregard his own well-being
for Zero Two’s sake. However, what Hiro doesn’t disregard is the
state of his friends. He rebukes Zero Two, even saying she’s being a
monster – harsh words that he has to know are devastatingly harsh.
This isn’t something he’ll easily forgive, it comes off as though he
doesn’t know if he even can forgive it. (Of course he ultimately
will, but the fact that there is some hang time is important) Being
told off by her darling cuts Zero Two right to the core. She snaps
out of her rage mode into a deep depression, realizing the magnitude
of everything she’s done to Hiro, and that what’s following is her
rightful punishment.
The next day, Zero Two, horns now grown
long, leaves. She passes Hiro on her way out, but neither of them
can or will say a thing, even though it’s clear that both of them
deeply regret things had to come to this. After that moment, we see
Zero Two welcomed by the 9s with a squad of stamens available for her
use, as she bitterly walks by, not seeming to care about anything
anymore.
Ichigo, meanwhile, takes this time to
confess her feelings to Hiro. She kisses him, and, tears in her
eyes, explains just how much he means to her and how she wants to be
together with him and no one else forever. Hiro… does not manage a
vocal response. And with Ichigo’s confession, such as it is, can you
blame him? He’s clearly got hang-ups (namely his own love for Zero
Two, which hasn’t died with the present rift between them), but it
would take nerves and will of adamant to outright say ‘no’ here.
Anime tends to give you quite a few
love confession scenes, but Ichigo’s here is… uniquely
heart-wrenching. It is absolutely one of the best written for
intensity and best delivered. You feel every bit of her need,
desperation, and affection. Especially after the apple scene, it
helps you understand the depths to which she is, honestly, a decent
girl desperately in love in a world rigged against her from every
angle. There are few scenes that do a weepy confession even half as
well, especially when you have to consider that Ichigo retains her
dignity as a character through it. You get swept up really easily,
even though you know Ichigo’s confession is doomed.
For me, this episode made me look
seriously at Ichigo’s voice actress, only for me to discover,
shockingly, that Darling in the Franxx was her only credit at the
time. That actress, Kana Ichinose, has gone on to do a lot more
roles, but if certain sites are to be believed she basically got her
start with a tough, complex character with a big range and a number
of emotional scenes, and absolutely nailed it. I only intermittently
take note of cast at all, but this is certainly one that I noticed.
That brings us, then, to the last
episode of this arc and the battle for Gran Crevasse. Squad 13 is
either late to the party or held in reserve, and gets to see footage
from the ongoing battle before wading into it. Like Episode 6, this
one is mostly fighting (if with a lot of character moments woven in)
and is on a level completely past anything in the show up to this
point. We’ve seen the Franxx squads take on lone and powerful
Klaxosaurs, a few on one, and hold off waves with a few standing
shoulder to shoulder against numerous fodder. This is all-out
madness. There are countless red-shirts and several plantations on
the human side and a vast swarm of varied and fairly decently ranked
Klaxosaurs on the other. Even the characters acknowledge how much
this has stepped everything up.
One of the things they see on the
monitor is the 9’s, including Strelizia… already in Stampede mode.
We cut to APE’s high council, where they note that Zero Two has
already finished off all the Stamens we saw at the end of the last
episode, but that doesn’t so much matter to them when victory is at
hand. Doctor Franxx, however, leaves to get a “front row seat”
for what’s to come.
Squad 13, then, is made ready to sortie. Ichigo, acting full-on affectionate to Hiro, promises to teach him to pilot from the ground up when she returns, while Hiro just wants his friends to be sure they do all return alive. On the field, Ichigo and the others meet up with the 9’s, which isn’t a particularly pleasant bit of cooperation, as well as meeting up with the squad they fought with in episode 6, which is a good deal more friendly. After the joint operation starts to pull forward, though, the rank and file Klaxosaurs fall back, and something truly huge emerges: a Klaxosaur like an angry mountain, designated a “Super-Lehmann Class”, a rank that’s new to even most people familiar with the nonsensical Klaxosaur classification system. (For the record the littlest ones seem to be “Conrad” average are “Mohorovicic”, and standard big ones like the boss of episode 6 or the one that swallowed Goro “Gutenberg”. I’ve yet to discern any logic to this naming system, but that’s something I let slide on sounding cool even in terrible shows like Hundred)
The Super-Lehmann literally flips a
plantation (the home of the squad of friends from earlier) as it
emerges, destroying it utterly. The High Council orders the
parasites we’ve briefly met to go with a plan that amounts to suicide
bombing the blasted thing as it barrels down on Plantation 13.
Surprisingly, it works, and the titan grinds to a halt… but not
before its front tears through the outer shell of Plantation 13,
allowing it to start vomiting Klaxosaurs into the city. Squad 13 is
recalled to deal with that (somehow) and the rampaging Zero Two also
ends up killing Klaxosaurs in a generally “into the plantation”
direction.
Speaking of Zero Two, we get a few cuts
to in Strelizia’s cockpit throughout this sequence, and… it’s a
horror show. Honestly the shots of her tread the line between being
extremely effective and maybe even being a bit much, saved (in my
opinion) by the fact that the entire episode, really the entire
movement of the show since the first episode at the Garden, has been
very operatic, meaning that the pretentious elements don’t stick out
quite as badly as they can in other places. Most of these shots are
in deep shadow, and they’re fairly brief, so you can’t quite process
what you’re seeing accompanying some of Zero Two’s thoughts, her
doubts and fears about herself. But it looks, for that brief moment,
like something right out of Night of the Chimera’s Cry or another
case where something really frightful (for one reason or another) is
about to be revealed. Zero Two’s horns have grown into something
between antlers and a root network, filling some of the space and
connecting her more to Strelizia with a web of red crystal, while her
eyes glow, also a hellish crimson, in the dark. The image of
something inhuman is completed by the fact that we’re viewing Zero
Two (who’s in the usual kneeling-on-all-fours position the girls have
to pilot in) directly from the front and possibly a bit below, which
means that she doesn’t really have a humanoid silhouette. When we
later see what’s there in better light and from the side she’s not
actually that bad off, but the way the image is framed through the
dark times sells her degeneration very well.
In the control room, Hiro is advised to evacuate to the Parasite living quarters, that might be a little farther away from danger, while Doctor Franxx is recalled to somewhere more befitting a VIP. On the way out, the doctor has a little talk with Hiro, subtly needling him about Zero Two, questioning if Hiro sees her as more beautiful than any human, and like a Klaxosaur, before sadly saying he’d thought she’d finally found a partner… laying a little guilt into Hiro for not being there when she needs him. This was something that Hiro kind of needed to hear to galvanize him to reach across the rift from last episode, and I’m fairly glad that Doctor Franxx (a monster-admiring maniac who wasn’t part of last episode’s falling out, and aside from that Zero Two’s father figure) was the one to deliver it, because it would have felt pretty bad from most other sources. Zero Two may have been hurting, afraid, and consumed by doubt. We know that, and we know that it’s even worse now, but her behavior, both towards Hiro and his friends, is still pretty hard to forgive.
That alone doesn’t motivate Hiro, but
he visits Zero Two’s room in the living quarters and finds that (on
what must have been the night between their fight and her departure)
she tried to tape the mirror he gave her and she broke in a fit of
rage back together, indicating at least a desire to actually turn
over a new leaf even when she would have known she probably wouldn’t
get the chance. This causes Hiro to wonder what he’s waiting for and
go and do something bold and stupid.
The city, meanwhile, has turned into an
all-out battleground. From an investment standpoint, the fighting
here feels much more intense even than the first parts of Gran
Crevasse. From a visual standpoint, the change from an empty desert
to an increasingly ruined futuristic city is a welcome breath of
fresh air, giving us a lot of different shots as the Franxx and
Klaxosaurs engage in urban warfare. From a story standpoint, it
drives home just how much of a total climax we’re looking at as we
get scenes like the old woman from episode 10 looking out her window
to see Klaxosaurs and the city on fire.
In this mess, the squad notices someone
zip by them, through the blazing wreckage, in one of the little pilot
training mechs – of course, that would be none other than Hiro.
The training unit takes a hit, but Hiro is determined to press on
when Ichigo (in Delphinium) and the rest of the squad confront him.
Goro cuts Ichigo’s arguments short though, as he disconnects from her
and tells Hiro to get in the robot so that Ichigo can take him to
Zero Two. After all, Hiro’s not getting there on his own and Goro is
completely done with his friends being at odds. As Hiro and Ichigo
accept and connect (quite successfully – it seems Hiro has improved
a good deal by even standard measures), Zorome/Argentea picks up Goro
(literally) and, as they race off, asks what Goro is acting cool for.
Unspoken answer: Goro is acting cool
because he is cool. He sees this big problem that everyone is
invested in, and does what he can to solve it even against his own
personal interest.
Not too against it, though. As Ichigo and Hiro ride, their minds connect, and Ichigo receives the answer to her confession in… probably the best way she could honestly, directly and without malice bearing witness to the fact that all of Hiro’s thoughts and memories are centered around Zero Two, letting Ichigo realize for herself that there’s no room for her there.
Ichigo still gets to take out a little
frustration facing Strelizia though, getting some harsh words and
harsh slaps out before locking heads with the other unit, by which
Hiro is able to be delivered. He finds Zero Two, as dark a place as
she’s in, and tries to reach out to her while the remaining active
Franxx fight to protect the disabled lot while they’re still down.
Outside, a few important notes happen.
The kids notice a damaged (but not fully shattered as usual)
Klaxosaur core, and an object that falls out of it with an eerie
resemblance to a human. Papa and the rest of the high council also
put into motion their plan to win the battle even without Strelizia,
sacrificing entire plantations as city-scale bombs to take out the
defensive dome over Gran Crevasse, an act which confuses the
parasites (other than the 9’s) and disgusts Doctor Franxx.
On the inside, Hiro takes a hold of the
horn growth and is brought into Zero Two’s memories again, seeing
more of her post the attempted wipe, and finally breaking through to
where her psyche has been trapped. Her horns shatter (though the
stubs are still more than her usual) and she and Hiro have a properly
weepy reunion in realspace, apologizing for all they’d done to hurt
each other (with Zero Two at least still torn up about her own
actions more than anything else, which is a nice sugar coating for
the potential unfortunate implications), and sharing a tender kiss.
So, remember when, in Episode 6, Hiro
and Zero Two reached a new level of emotional connection and that
resulted in Strelizia sprouting wings and gaining super strength? So
do the writers, so they decided to take that sequence and just keep
making the ideas bigger until we get one hell of a rousing turnabout
for the battlefield. Once Hiro and Zero Two are back together, at
heart as well as in space, the triumphant music is playing and it’s
over for their enemies. Strelizia turns into a red super version of
itself and zips around like a rocket, effortlessly skeletonizing the
Super-Lehman Klaxosaur by shooting through it and otherwise pulling
aerial stunts that seem to defeat all Klaxosaurs en passant. Hiro
and Zero Two declare their love for each other with no more secrets
hanging over them, the High Council is pleased at the victory, and
the damage is surveyed. Again, this could have been a climax all
unto its own and it would have been more satisfying than the climaxes
of some other shows.
And again, we get the hint of something
to come when they inspect the wreck of the Super-Lehman and find that
much of its core (a giant cluster of cores) is still intact… before
something in Gran Crevasse decides it’ll be needing that back. A
giant hand emerges, shadowing the world, and slaps down on the Core
cluster to drag it away, incidentally flattening much of what was
left of Plantation 13 (though the parasite dwelling atop it is still
there). That’s a hook if I ever saw one.
Little spoiler here, though, the hand
is never really explained. But we’ll get to that disappointment
among others in the third installment.
So, how does this stretch of Darling in
the Franxx hold up? It may seem odd, given that I spent a good
amount of time in this review (probably more than is entirely
healthy) gushing about the good choices made through this stretch,
but it’s actually very much a mixed bag. Compared to the first arc,
it does go bigger and bolder in every way, the way you would want a
continuation to go. It would have been lame in the extreme if, after
the first arc, we dialed back the emotional drama and action, and
that’s a problem some shows do have, burning everything in their
introduction and not having the material to sustain. The action is
bigger, going from a few scattered battles including one big one to
an assortment of battles and a truly dynamic war. The emotions are
bigger, especially when it comes to the fact that Hiro and Zero Two
kind of go through the same cycle of coming closer and having to
overcome some force attempting to keep them apart, with the question
asked of if they even should. And the characters are expanded to a
great degree. The first arc belonged to Hiro and Zero Two, with some
hints of Ichigo. This arc gives full treatments to pretty much
everybody but Miku (sorry, Miku), and develops them into rounded and
interesting characters while still moving the leads forward in a huge
way.
But, for all that it does everything
the first arc did bigger and better, and more besides, this arc does
have more notable flaws than the first arc. The divided house
episode feels like it’s just a bit in the wrong show. Goro’s episode
was shamelessly stolen from Evangelion. And of course we had to put
up with Mitsuru for his episode, which was a hard pill to swallow.
And even in the good stuff, like the flashback episode, there are
some issues where, if you think about it too closely, certain
elements don’t make sense. Either you have to develop something of a
headcanon (which I do feel is legitimate if you feel like you’re give
enough tools to know the characters as people) or things start to
fall apart a little when you look at them too closely. Imitative
notes aside, this isn’t Gurren Lagann, where you take the insanity
completely in stride because it’s brilliant lunacy from frame one and
don’t end up really worrying about any plot holes that may or may not
exist; it’s a character drama with mecha-fighting in it, and even if
we take some unreal stuff, like powering up with the power of love,
when some of the material is presented seriously, we have to be able
to take it seriously.
For some people, it’s better to have
high peaks even if they’re accompanied by deep valleys, while other
people prefer a more consistent quality level even if it never rises
quite as high. I’m personally of the first type, more often than
not, and I think which you are is going to strongly inform your
reaction to this stretch of show, and really to Darling in the Franxx
as a whole.
Because trust me, the last arcs? They
have some… issues that must be addressed.