After the End – Darling in the Franxx Spoiler Review (Part 3; Episodes 16-24)

So, after two weeks, 26,000 words, and 15 episodes, what more can really be said about Darling in the Franxx? It’s probably no surprise that the answer is “quite a lot!”, at least given the close nature of my episode summaries for this show and the number of episodes left. But it’s more than that: we’ve been through the conventional best parts of the show, but ahead of us we still have the unconventional, the strange, and the troubled… which are on their own fairly fascinating, whether these elements worked or didn’t and how.

We left off at the end of Episode 15 with the plantation pretty much annihilated and a weird hand warning us that the enemy wasn’t exactly done. We open episode 16… one month later. The High Council is disappointed by the losses (including some of its members questioning if they really needed to go blowing up plantations) but assured that their victory is incoming with control of Gran Crevasse and the near completion of the oft-whispered-about Hringhorni.

The parasites, meanwhile, have continued living at Mistilteinn manor in the “birdcage” atop what’s left of Plantation 13. For the month they’ve been up there, they’ve been isolated, receiving no contact from the outside world beyond a weekly drop of survival rations, all the caretakers (including Nana and Hachi) being gone. On the surface, things are looking pretty grim: the food sucks, the water sources are slowly fading in quality, they don’t have any orders or guidance, and Parasites are getting sick. On the other hand, they kind of treat it as something of a good situation. The group’s cooperation is at an all-time high, with Zero Two accepted in as a friend and everyone hauling together to solve their problems, even learning to cook, fish, and forage. They’re still positioned on something of a razor’s edge, though, and tempers tend to flare. Zorome, in particular, is taking the sustained radio silence pretty hard, since it’s hard to accept alongside his faith in Papa.

It’s Doctor Franxx, though, who seems to be to blame for at least some of this, as he holds Nana and Hachi (the former of which also starting to flag somewhat like the kids) back from making contact, on the grounds that doing so now would ruin his great experiment. It’s not said outright, but it’s pretty clear from the setup that the Doctor is trying to teach them self-reliance.

Also in this episode, Mitsuru makes the biggest single step in his long and difficult redemption arc: he has Kokoro give him a haircut. I’m not kidding – the new look is his attempt to turn over a new leaf, after realizing that his grudge was childish and pointless and that he’d unwisely built a lot of his identity around it. Kokoro notes that if he’s realized he was going down the wrong path, that means he can start over, and while the audience is sure to have a harder time forgiving than she does, the fact that he acknowledges that he’d been an ass holding a pointless grudge against Hiro for literally nothing does help. She also gives him a kiss, though Mitsuru has no idea how to take that at first, and she flees on realizing she didn’t get a really positive response.

The episode ends with Hiro and Zero Two – Zero Two working painstakingly to recreate her picture book from memory, and Hiro sharing time with her. But as close as they hold each other, the cries of Klaxosaurs in the distance disturb peace of mind and spirit, and we get a brief cut to a mysterious blue girl we’ll soon be hearing a lot more out of, who will be known as the Klaxosaur Princess.

The next episode continues the life of the Parasites becoming steadily more independent in Mistilteinn, including getting back to Kokoro reading her baby book, but the peaceful elements are soon interrupted by the 9’s coming to visit. Zorome is initially relieved, but the others are more wary, and 9 Alpha seems particularly inclined to needle Zero Two.

Speaking of Zero Two, in a scene between her and Hiro we find out that his ride in Episode 15 isn’t without consequences, as he’s hiding (slowly growing) blue horns like Zero Two’s red, having succumbed to saurification as was predicted. Overall, they have a sweet bonding scene, now being two of a kind and separate from the rest of creation

Meanwhile, Kokoro and Mitsuru become the center of attention. Kokoro drops her baby book, which is picked up by the 9’s who note it’s pretty serious contraband for a Parasite to have, especially in terms of information. They don’t act on that right away, though, giving us some hangtime with the pair. They chat in the greenhouse, about how the 9’s presence means a likely end to their comfortable communal life in Mistilteinn, at least until Kokoro leads the conversation to the things she’s learned about boys and girls: why they’re different, and what they can do… particularly creating new life. She comes on to Mitsuru really strong and he pushes her away, though more out of confusion than anything else. It’s probably a good thing too, as they weren’t exactly anywhere private and Zorome barges in even before Mitsuru has his clothes straightened back out. Zorome comments that they seemed to be imitating Hiro and Zero Two, but is more interested in the fact that Mitsuru was supposed to be fetching water. He says he’ll get to work, but doesn’t go until he gets a chance to query Kokoro a little more about what she was getting up to, finding out that she’s been thinking about it for a long time.

I don’t doubt it. Kokoro and Mitsuru were set up all the way back in the first arc, and without a doubt in the beach episode.

In any case, Mitsuru seeks out I guess the closest thing to a romance guru the Parasites could have, Hiro. The fact that they can talk peacefully and that Mitsuru comes to the guy he once hated with his problem here is another important step. When he was busy making his awful impression, Mitsuru was always arrogant as well as selfish: his imperious attitude was a big part of what came off as so bad. Now, he’s at least able to be a little humble. Hiro helps Mitsuru untangle his feelings on the matter, and come to the realization that he does have feelings for Kokoro that could be described as love.

Shortly after that, as Zorome’s loose lips reveal the budding romance to the rest of Squad 13 (Futoshi taking it poorly, but as he could be expected to), the 9’s make their move, questioning the squad about the book. Kokoro steps up, and we get something of a debate between her and the 9’s (led by 9 Alpha).

On Kokoro’s side, she’s learned about biological nature: that humans aren’t normally made by Papa, but breed like any other animal. She’s enchanted by the idea that there’s more to their lives than piloting Franxx units, and deeply desires to have a child of her own, and a hand in creating the future and hope therefor. 9 Alpha, though somewhat arrogant and preening, has points of his own: first that Papa has banned such behavior, and then that it’s needless, humanity having evolved to the point where they’ve cast reproductive function aside, and gender is more of a nuisance, allowed for relative normals to pilot Franxx units only (Seeing as the 9’s can ride whatever position, Alpha himself typically taking the girl’s role in a Franxx, it’s clear that Papa’s elite don’t have to conform). We get the gist more clearly than in episode 10 that “Adults” are immortal but sterile, and that this and heavy conformity is what APE aspires to see as the norm. Ikuno of all people slaps his smug face, but Alpha only uses that to take the opportunity to deride emotion as another thing humanity has grown past.

Nana and Hachi enter to break up the scenario, and in the meantime explain what had been happening for the last month, and how it was their ‘final test’ by order of Doctor Franxx. Kokoro challenges Nana about what she’s learned, and this results in Nana ending up out of sorts as the seal on her emotion starts to break down, leaving 9 Alpha smug. The 9’s promise to report what they’ve learned to Papa and leave, with Nana also seemingly taken off the board.

After the confrontation, Mitsuru and Kokoro end up finding each other. Mitsuru tries to comfort her and, wouldn’t you know it, between his new resolve in the relationship and her desperation and reproductive instincts, this ends up with their relationship skipping straight to consummation.

I’m sure no mass of trouble is going to come from that decision. Well, that’s for another time. For now, accept the sweetness and the fact that one couple actually went there.

Meanwhile, we actually get some progress on the Klaxosaur princess front. Two of the APE council go down with troops to confront her and demand her surrender, but she’s able to paralyze all but one with a psychic scream, quickly eliminating them. The unaffected council member is also no match for the Klaxosaur princess, who rips off his mask to reveal that there’s nothing underneath, causing her to scoff that the would-be assassin is nothing more than an impostor.

Spelled out like that, this makes the twist of a later moment blindingly obvious, but watching your first time through it is, I promise, nowhere near as clear. The Klaxosaur princess is an enigmatic figure, and her line doesn’t make it clear that she’s talking only about the little man who wasn’t there, rather than the whole of (non-reproductive, emotion-locked, “evolved”) modern humanity, given the episode’s earlier discussion about what makes an authentic human and the fact that her line is pluralized (‘Human wannabes’ I believe the sub uses as she scoffs at her foes). And, while the fact that there’s nothing there when she finishes off the one council member should be a flagrant hint, we’ve never pointedly seen an Adult, at least not a council member die (they could crumble to dust or what have you naturally) or the Klaxosaur Princess kill (she could sublimate people) before. If you’re not paying close attention, her offhand line isn’t going to stick as well as it needs to in order to actually function as the foreshadowing it clearly is.

In any case, Papa in his council chamber declares that the Klaxosaur Princess has chosen annihilation (as if there was ever a choice) and the 9’s arrive to tattle on Squad 13. So, we’re probably going to get some action in the next episode, right?

Not quite. We’ve got one more episode to round out the Mistilteinn arc. The kids want to give the place a sendoff before they abandon it, and decide that the way they’ll do that is to hold a wedding for none other than Kokoro and Mitsuru. Even Futoshi gets invested in it (as long as he can be the priest) because he ultimately wants Kokoro to be happy, so he’ll be the first to congratulate the happy couple. Once again, Futoshi’s a good guy.

In any case, with the sakura trees in bloom (something Zero Two dearly wanted to see) and time short, the kids use all their ingenuity to set up an actually kind of nice wedding, making dresses out of curtains and the like, including some improvised rings for the happy couple.

To an extent, this is the episode where the traditional ‘pretentious’ filter, that I mentioned in episode 1, returns in force. There are hints of it in episodes 13 (the flashback) and 15 (the battle for Gran Crevasse), but it’s the small moments here that get the treatment – soft focus, blackspace, words on screen, slow-mo, all for things like the squad’s unity and Zero Two and Hiro have a little fun among the falling sakura petals.

I get why they did it. This is both a major climax, and an overall more quiet moment, so something has to be done in order to highlight it… or so the thinking goes. I’m not entirely sure. In a sense, small moments are beautiful when they’re allowed to be small, rather than making them melodramatic in their poetry. I remember very fondly the conversation overlooking the Plantation in episode 3 – how they got there, what was said, and how the emotion and flow went. I remember Zero Two’s prank that kind of brought an end to the fight between the boys and girls, and the impish moments as she led Hiro on a merry chase. I remember Kokoro and Mitsuru talking in the greenhouse several times, steadily in more human and then affectionate tones.

Technically I do remember the moments under the Sakura (I have a good memory for this show) but they don’t stand as tall, feeling more forced or artificial. I think if we were allowed the same indulgence but invited, rather than shoved, into the moments, there would be a stronger connection.

Further, the wedding scene itself, unlike taking a group photo or especially Hiro and Zero Two enjoying themselves, doesn’t use the same technique. Because of that, there’s a way in which it gets overshadowed when it should be and in many ways is the biggest and boldest moment of the episode if not the entire Mistilteinn arc. That’s a bit of a gutterball. I actually do get when they didn’t use it there, but for the sake of balance it needed to at least be turned down in the rest of the episode to compensate.

We do get two character moments in there that feel more authentic. One is where Zero Two suffers a nightmare of all the former partners she’s killed trying to drag her down into hell or something… which is a necessary acknowledgment of the fact that her deeds don’t just go away, but doesn’t otherwise “belong” to the rest of the episode other than the fact it really needed to get out before departure from this environment. The other is with Ikuno, who confesses her feelings… for Ichigo. Which is something that Ichigo quite reasonably has no idea what to do with that. She actually handles it quite well, better than she did Goro’s confession, probably because she at least has no conflict out of what she wants, and affirms that she’ll stay friends with Ikuno (Ikuno did basically already know her suit was hopeless, so it’s more about softening the blow).

The wedding comes, and actually goes very beautifully at first. Mitsuru and Kokoro say their vows and exchange rings after all the needed beats, emotional and technical, up to that point. However, before Futoshi’s “you may now kiss the bride” can be carried out, the 9’s crash the party with armed goons, declaring that Papa has judged and found the couple dangerous, and sentenced them to be hauled off to re-education. Zorome gets bludgeoned to the ground just for trying to ask a question, and all hell breaks loose. Futoshi does his honest best trying to protect the couple, taking his lumps for it, and even Zero Two is overpowered: she’s probably an approximate match for 9 Alpha (though he can avoid her attacks pretty easily) but the rest of their squad is able to wrestle her to the ground. In the end, no last-minute flight manages to save the day, and both Mitsuru and Kokoro are hauled off while the rest of the squad is left in emotional shambles at the ruined wedding.

Weeks later, after Squad 13 has been transferred to the general rally point under the watchful eye of APE, Mitsuru and Kokoro are returned. While they initially seem to be in good health, it quickly becomes clear that their memories were destroyed, the pair knowing nothing of what transpired between them. They don’t even know each other, and have to meet as total strangers despite the fact that each managed to hold onto the ring from the wedding… a trouble that Hiro and Zero Two know all too well, and this time it seems to be a more refined and surgical procedure. Kokoro does seem to have some phantom memory, but it’s also blindingly obvious that everything’s not going to be OK, to audience and characters alike, as they now realize exactly the dystopia they’ve been living in this whole time and how “kind” Papa can really be.

So, that episode had its ups and downs. The next one… The next one is going to be one of my big “problem” talking points, so we might as well get started.

The episode starts innocently enough. Well, you might think it’s innocent for an episode: Doctor Franxx confronts the APE council about what was done to Kokoro and Mitsuru, and the fact he wasn’t consulted about it. His concerns are dismissed, especially since he has the rest of the squad unaltered, in respect for his desire for his experimental subjects. Remember this, I will have a whole tangent on it later. As the conversation closes, our mad scientist starts to think about how this all began…

Yeah, we’re in another flashback episode. It’s a different flashback this time, and in a kind of different style, so that’s not a problem. What is a problem is the content of it and to an extent the construction.

I’ll get into the construction first. Like Episode 9 (“Triangle Bomb”), Episode 19 (“Inhumanity”) is lifted very heavily from an episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion. In this case, the episode bears a striking similarity to Episode 21 of Evangelion, “He was aware that he was still a child”, aka “The Birth of NERV” or the endgame flashback episode that gets us the history of Gendo, Nerv, SEELE, and the Evangelion project through the eyes of someone who was involved but not exactly the top dog. It even comes with the exact same number of episodes left before the end, given that Evangelion is 26 episodes while Darling in the Franxx is 24, this long flashback interwoven with a little present tense cloak and dagger maneuvering that actually tells us where our mysterious dystopic leader came from.

And, OK, since the backstory of APE and NERV aren’t that similar as backstories for weird monolithic para-governmental control schemes go, you could say that this might be a case of convergent evolution. It’s about the right place in the show to really get answers, and using a touchstone character having flashbacks to show us how things came to be, rather than relying on someone or something telling us is the more immersive option. There’s a fairly similar moment placed at about the same point in the show’s run (adjusted for length) in Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet when Ledo views the files that contain the secret histories of his people and I never complained about that being a copycat of Evangelion, or even a problem.

First, Darling in the Franxx already did it once before. I am (as you should be) primed to recognize deep similarities and stolen moments by the fact that a basically full episode lift was already done once. Second, the tone of the episodes are almost identical. “Inhumanity” hits the same notes of bitterness, melancholy, and threat that its Eva partner does, with approximately the same flow. Third, even if you say it isn’t lifted but rather a case of a structure being reused because it’s a good structure independent of its history, the comparison provides a good reference with which I can hopefully shed some light on some of the less obvious reasons why “Inhumanity” doesn’t really work.

So, let’s get on to some of the more obvious notes. Since it’s the meat of the episode and the meat of my complaints, I’m going to handle all the flashback moments in one fell swoop, without worrying about where scenes belonging to the present are woven in.

And to start that out, allow me to introduce you to the concept of the “C Answer”. The credit for the term comes from one of my High School History teachers, who had a focus in his class less on memorizing names and dates (though you still had to do a share of that) and more on understanding the patterns and flows of history, and being able to answer in depth not just what happened but why things happened the way they did. In a sense, that is what the episode is trying to do, giving us the history of the fictional world with both what and why answered. That’s neither here nor there though. The idea was, when he called on a student in class and that student provided an answer that was technically correct but simply a bare-bones summation without thought or effort put into it, he would call that a “C Answer” and ask for the “A Answer” instead. Thus, “C Answer” entered my personal lexicon as a sort of shorthand for “this answer is correct, but it only does the bare minimum to be correct and should be improved and expanded upon rather than being allowed to stand.”

“Inhumanity” as a whole is at best the “C Answer” to what happened in the past of Darling in the Franxx. Almost every twist and turn that occurs is one that we could have guessed from the end state. Outside one or two elements, it says and does nothing interesting, recounting only the most bare-bones look at how we got to where. We learn facts, but very little that bears on any emotional investment we have in the present, and the facts are mostly a pastiche of other source elements, with some very loud similarities to Pacific Rim and Final Fantasy VII.

In the past, we meet young Doctor Franxx, then called Werner Frank, who is something of a mad scientist, repeatedly getting in trouble with things like cloning because he goes places that haven’t thought to outlaw his work yet in order to conduct his work. In this state he’s introduced to the Lamarck Club, which will one day become APE, a group that’s something of a rising star, gaining international political power thanks to having tapped the “Magma Energy” that we already know future society runs on and that it bothers the Klaxosaurs (which haven’t appeared yet) very much to use. They give Franxx (I’m just going to call him that throughout) all the funding he could want and set him to work on biological immortality, alongside a junior lady scientist who quite looks up to his reputation.

Within a few years, they’re successful in creating the first immortals, though the treatment comes at the cost of removing the person’s reproductive function. We get a quick overview of how this intensifies class division (with the wealthy being, at first, the main recipients of the treatment) and combined with Magma Energy leads to a boom in standards of living and material civilization that chains into massive levels of overpopulation. How a ruling elite granted arbitrarily elongated lives at the cost of reproductive ability results in overpopulation I’ll never know. It’s also revealed that massive desertification is beginning, and that some link it to the extraction of Magma Energy only to be ignored. That’s probably the most realistic thing in this backstory.

Later on, human immortality hits 70% with the rest (less holdouts like, oddly enough, both inventors of the procedure) scheduled to be treated in the next two years. And this lets me talk about one of the biggest problems with this backstory: the timeline. You see, we’re actually given years for all of this; the future APE recruits the future Doctor Franxx in 2025. His project bears fruit in the form of the immortality treatment in 2030. That’s not too bad. But then we get the Gilded Age of mortality and wealth inequality coupled with high industrialization, the decline in resources to desertification, and overpopulation that prompts government responses, before ultimately the process (which, recall, removes reproductive ability) is democratized and expected to be rolled out to the entirety of the human race.

The year given for the scene where 70% adoption and two years to 100% is 2036 – just six years after the first successful human trial. The entire turmoil of the gilded age, immortality driven social change, and tangentially related ecological disaster takes place in six years. Some of those things could happen quickly, but others would take generations. For reference, it was nearly 200 years from the development of the smallpox vaccine to the disease being eradicated. The first modern Polio Vaccine was developed in 1954 and while on its last legs globally Polio remains a thing today. Providing a medical procedure to every human on the planet is neither cheap nor easy. But that’s actually one of the things that I could accept being accomplished in a six (eight, I suppose) year time frame. We know APE becomes a world government, so if they had enough muscle and flexed it, maybe they could manage. What can’t be excused is the flow of society. The changes that Doctor Franxx describes between the focal scenes; the world that burgeons due to a renewed zeitgeist and free energy, becomes a bitter portrait of inequality as the rich and powerful never die while the common people suffer, overpopulates to the point of needing drastic intervention, and THEN turns around and renders everyone Immortal/Sterile… does not happen overnight. That doesn’t happen in six years. These are issues that fester for time and rise to prominence over decades; in order for immortality alone to prompt class issues, it needs to be divided on class for long enough that a substantial portion of mortals perish when immortals don’t. The overpopulation I suppose could be a pre-existing issue, but that’s not how it’s framed. And Darling in the Franxx wants you to believe that this both happened and then thereafter un-happened in six years.

It’s said a lot that scifi and fantasy writers have no sense of scale. You write a work set in space and some asteriods that shouldn’t be an issue are… what, a few thousand kilometers away? That should be kinda far? (It’s not. Space moves fast.). Next planet over, the homeworld for alien neighbors… sure, a million light years sounds good, interstellar space is big (Not that big, a million light years gets you out of the Milky Way in any direction). Scifi/Fantasy does the same thing with time too, but usually only in one direction: things take too long. Cultures in scifi and fantasy frequently stagnate for hundreds or even thousands of years as writers blithely assume that the entire history of long-standing empires of antiquity like Egypt was spent in a monolithic existence, not in constant turmoil as society evolved and changed continually. Or you have a long-lived race like elves in the setting and just sort of dictate all the timetables of history by multiplying human ones to match generations, ignoring that you still included humans as historical driving forces. Or maybe you just wanted to quote a big number, like “A thousand generations” for some order or magical what have you to have been in place, ignoring the absolute abyss of time that would be required. We just sort of accept that. Darling in the Franxx is truly baffling in how it misestimates its timeline just as badly, but in the opposite direction. Instead of everything taking ten times as long as it should, it probably does honestly take at most a tenth the time it should.

I guess part of the reason for that is where they go with Doctor Franxx. As I alluded to earlier, neither he nor his assistant have taken the procedure nor intend to. Franxx is just sort of grumpy, commenting he’d rather have a mechanical body, but when he throws it back to her and her reticence she points out she’d like to have a kid. With who? Franxx asks, and takes embarrassingly long (in character – he is called out as dense after missing one obvious and one brick-to-the-face obvious hint) to figure out that the dense guy who hasn’t noticed her feelings is none other than the one sitting across from her. Once he gets the message he comments, sad but flattered in his acceptance, that she has bad taste. It’s a fine scene, somewhat heartfelt as we see these two people looking at the world they’ve helped build slowly turning dark, capped off with a little humor and an actual look into how a younger Doctor Franxx handled the very interpersonal stuff he’s been sticking his nose into with the kids. This scene, at least, had to happen early enough in the timeline that Franxx and his assistant/girlfriend are still biologically viable, but I don’t think it had to be paired with the massive immortality progress – it could easily have taken place at the start of the era of deep inequality (as the inventors of the process, they’d probably be under some pressure to take it), giving us a chance to see how they looked at that.

And, another problem is that Doctor Franxx doesn’t have a consistent character, either in this episode or in this show. In this scene and maybe one other he’s a kind of downer, thoughtful and socially inept, but kind of sensitive and afflicted by low self esteem. In his first scene he’s got the spark of brilliant madness, being a guy who wants to do good, but damn the ethics and the simpletons who keep legislating against him after he does something nobody thought to outlaw. Later, he’s the full-on cackling mad scientist, callous and cruel, and then at times the reasonable and kind (if a bit pervy) father figure for Zero Two, the good mad scientist strongly implied to be scheming humanity’s salvation against APE’s soul-crushing ways.

It wouldn’t be impossible to transition between these characters even in a way that suggests real character growth, but there is nowhere enough time and focus to do so, and we’re missing some key transitions. We don’t see how he loses or reassigns his spark from the first scene to the second. We see something of how he reaches full madness later, but we have nothing, absolutely nothing at all, for how he became a harmless good guy. He presided over some of Zero Two’s worst experiments, torturing her just to observe how she’d heal. When did he decide to take care of her like she was his own daughter instead? Did Papa just start slipping anti-psychotics into his drink? There are a lot of points in the development of Doctor Franxx as a character that don’t add up… which is pretty darn bad in an episode that, because it only gives a C Answer for what happened, exists primarily to develop Doctor Franxx.

And that brings me to the point that needed the Evangelion comparison. In the Neon Genesis Evangelion entering-the-endgame flashback episode about how the dystopic scientific military organization gained power, built big robots, and started fighting enemies, we’re also heavily focused on character development. Though it’s still through the eyes of others, we get at last a picture of Gendo Ikari, a mysterious figure who cast a long shadow over the entire show and who both characters and the audience have been trying to understand. It’s not a clear or perfect picture, but it is one we absolutely needed painted. Here, the only character who gets much development, scattered and ineffectual though it is, is Doctor Franxx. And he’s not a bad character to develop in abstract. I would kind of like to know more about where he stands, given his odd relationship with both Squad 13 and the APE council… but he’s not Gendo Ikari. Doctor Franxx alone doesn’t carry nearly enough weight in terms of the broader story to justify burning an episode on him, at least not like this. There’s a point that I think shows how this could have been salvaged, but I’ll get to that when it comes.

In the meantime, our next time of reference is 2037, when Pacific Rim breaks out. We’re told that over 2036/2037 the Desertification got bad enough that APE rolled out its plans for the mobile “Plantation” arcology, essentially seizing control of the world by being the only force presenting the promise of salvation (which is also at odds with the nice dinner we saw and no mention of the world being in flames or mankind forced to retreat into moving dome cities, but I’ve complained about the timeline enough). This proved just in time for the emergence of the first Klaxosaur. I say Pacific Rim breaks out, because the images given of the first Klaxosaur’s rampage are pretty similar when compared to the first movie’s opening and the long shots of the devastation wreaked by the early Kaiju. Like the first Kaiju we see it rampage out of the sea and onto land, eventually and at unthinkable cost killed by existing war machines. The plantations are retrofitted into anti-Klaxosaur fortresses and humanity retreats entirely within. Eventually, Doctor Franxx (after getting a chance to inspect a Klaxosaur corpse and marveling at its blend of biological and mechanical) devises his big robots. After five years working on it, it’s discovered that treated immortals can’t operate the core system; it needs to be someone with a functional reproductive system. Franxx’s wife (as she is by then, despite the fact he seemed to be right about her taste in relationship material) is the pilot for a startup trial, but if you’ve seen Pacific Rim you know there’s the shot where it’s discovered by the death of a test pilot that it takes two? This is that scene – the prototype Franxx mecha turns on but has a vicious little seizure (probably related to Stampede Mode based on what we know now) and there’s not a lot of her left.

I guess this isolates Doctor Franxx and means he has nothing but his work left to him, but it’s never addressed just how much this affects him as a person. Call it a missed opportunity on a lot of scores, even if not the big missed opportunity of the episode: on one hand we could have really studied the character by seeing his reaction to grief and loss, perhaps the contrast of his general job-focused coldness before (Density at the dinner, leaving her to submit marriage paperwork to go check out the klaxosaur corpse) with what he feels when he’s lost what he took for granted. Or, on the other hand, the desire his wife had to have a child might have been used to feed in to his treatment of Zero Two in specific and the Parasites as a whole, and his resistance to APE and schemes to restore human dignity. Sadly, none of that is done: Franxx’s wife is forgotten as easily as she was introduced. I suppose she’s not really the leading lady of the flashback in any case…

After that, we get the basic overview of what we could already guess: Humanity needs reproductively capable (or at least non-immortality-treated; Zero Two once or twice over the show claims she’s sterile so if that’s true and not just a matter of her being her own species, it’s clearly not the reproductive function itself that’s needed) individuals but no longer has them naturally, so they turn to creating test-tube babies, the first generations of Parasites, to fight while the Adults retreat into the depths of the Plantations and forget the outside world in a supreme indolence that disgusts Doctor Franxx and causes him to turn his focus outward, away from the dead-end of adult humanity. At that point, a rumor begins to circulate that the Klaxosaurs have a leader, and that APE could find where it was. Franxx (with some goons) gets to go underground, investigating the ruins of an ancient pre-human civilization, where he finds the Klaxosaur Princess.

She talks telepathically to Franxx, demanding to know why humans kill her kin, and quickly slaughters the goons and takes him prisoner. Once she has Franxx at her mercy she sniffs his hand, says she smells the blood of her kin, and then bites his arm off (impressive given that, when seen opposite Franxx, she’s on the small side, not exactly a child but not with the height and mass of an adult human either), but declares that his sins are too grave to be punished with mere death, resulting in his eventual return to APE, clutching a few strands of the Princess’s hair in his remaining hand; the genetic sample from which Zero Two was created, finally explaining how she can be “half Klaxosaur”

Throughout this, Franxx reacts to the Klaxosaur princess in a very interesting way: he finds her fantastically beautiful, to the point where meeting her is practically a religious experience, something that’s especially pointed as Franxx has throughout the flashback several times been an avowed atheist. His reaction to the Princess surely informs many of his later actions, such as his renewed marvel at the Klaxosaurs themselves and in some ways the creation of Zero Two and the promotion of her interests.

The problem is that despite the pivotal role this encounter has, it’s terribly short. Unless he was hit with some sort of psychic whammy, it’s hard to see how Franxx could be so utterly twisted by the encounter or to empathize with his stand when the Klaxosaur Princess comes off, frankly, as a blue loli with no social skills capable largely only of brute violence.

This brings me to the point I mentioned earlier, how I think a good deal of this flashback could have been salvaged: the Klaxosaur Princess should have been involved more, and as more of a character. As I mentioned, the rise of APE, adoption of immortality, ruin of Earth, and first battles against the Klaxosaurs are all given C Answers. They’re shown in depth, but because Franxx isn’t consistent and his wife never comes up again, the close focus on those topics is largely wasted. I already compared this to the opening montage/narration of Pacific Rim, and that gets its information out in two minutes. Make it five at a fairly ‘zoomed out’ status and you could trivially cover everything about APE and immortality as well as “Monsters show up, humans build giant robots to fight them, and with some difficulty it’s discovered you need two particular pilots.” Or, if I may be so bold, you could drop that era entirely. Since nothing better than the simplest connect-the-dots is done with that material, just leave it at the dots. We don’t need to see or hear how Franxx is recruited to get that he’s an avant garde weirdo, his reactions to the APE council and theirs to him tell us that. We don’t need a flashback to know that becoming immortal cost humans their reproductive ability and that it’s necessary for Franxx pilots to not be so altered, 9 Alpha already told us that in his argument with Kokoro. If you’re not going to add anything, use the time better for what does add material: the meeting with the Princess.

As it stands, the scene isn’t the worst, but comes off a little hollow because it doesn’t have a good flow to it. It’s all very abrupt. So think of this: the Klaxosaur princess takes Franxx captive. That’s already in the text. What if she held onto him for a little bit, rather than just ripping his arm off and kicking him out? Through that, we could see his mania grow, learn more about both of them as individuals, and have a better understanding of where Franxx stands as opposed to APE. We could better see the origin and growth of a powerful obsession, as well as perhaps empathizing with it more if the Klaxosaur Princess actually gave us some reason to believe on an emotional angle that she’s wise, ancient, or god-like. The sequence might even get fairly trippy; Darling in the Franxx is no stranger to non-literal imagery and mindscape dives, having a couple in connections between Zero Two and Hiro, so how about getting one for Franxx and the Princess? By tightening the focus, you would quickly and effectively form a better connection between the viewer and the material in this case, especially since it would also incidentally nix the strange roller coaster of Franxx’s attitude: we see him as an obsessive maniac, and understand that he must have mellowed out somewhere between there and now. It’s still not an explained change, but at least it’s only one unexplained transition that we were already dealing with. And considering that the Klaxosaur Princess is set up to be a huge part of the oncoming arc, knowing her a bit better would help the show overall.

But, of course, that’s not what the show did. We got what we got, and it’s kind of lame.

That material was woven with some scenes in the present, at least. We get a good scene where we see the tail end of a fight between Futoshi and Kokoro where she reveals, hurt, that he “doesn’t want to be her partner any more”, insisting that he’ll ride with Ikuno and leave Kokoro paired with Mitsuru Given how much Kokoro meant to Futoshi (as we saw over many episodes) I think he can get a pat on the back for directly and emphatically not taking advantage of the mind wipe. Kokoro and Mitsuru talk briefly, expressing doubt regarding what the rest of the squad has been telling them, including that they could develop feelings for each other, but some ring-gazing casts a little doubt on that much.

Later we see that Zorome is not coping well. He tries to insist that Papa must have a good reason, and that Papa must be kind, but his own tone and look even more than Miku’s scorn for the idea suggest he’s cracking by the time Hiro suggests that they ask Papa directly for things to be put back as they were.

Later, they actually do get an audience (if one by telepresence). Papa stands firm, unrepentant and heartless in the face of their pleas, and Zorome finally breaks in full. He steps up, demanding to know how many klaxosaurs they have to kill, how many battles they have to win, in order to finally be made adults. Papa’s silence is its own answer, and it’s impossible to not feel for how utterly crushed Zorome is finally having to come to ugly terms with the fact that the being he regarded his whole life as his benevolent creator is nothing more than a lying abuser. The squad, through Hiro, demands to be set free of their obligations, declaring they can’t see him as their “Papa” any longer… to which Papa surprisingly (given that he didn’t lie to Zorome’s face) agrees, promising to free them after the upcoming battle before hanging up on the meeting. Our final note for the sequence is an interesting chain of interactions: Doctor Franxx offers somewhat warm regards, saying the squad will have to prove whether or not they can be real humans, but Hiro doesn’t really want to talk, having seen his worse days in Zero Two’s memories and not being able to forgive him for that. Doctor Franxx then watches as he goes to Zero Two and walks away hand in hand with her, making a remark about fate, more comfortable and pleased with the outcome than you’d perhaps expect.

In a sense, it is actually good that this episode is dedicated so heavily to flashbacks, as the pacing of the present needs a good amount of material, but not enough to hold an episode on its own, so the Franxx segments, in a sense, are just there to pad out Squad 13’s break with Papa here I just wish they had been meatier and more meaningful than that.

Moving along, the next episode’s opening sees it confirmed that some sort of super-weapon called “Star Entity” has been claimed by humanity and heavily modified, and that Strelizia will be used as a core to activate it, presumably with the stated goal of gaining a lasting victory over the Klaxosaurs. Also, Kokoro has a bad case of morning sickness.

… Darling in the Franxx, this run right here is making it terribly hard to defend you.

So, this is an absolutely insane turn, even if it leads to good material in later episodes, and it needs to be addressed how crazy it is and how easily it could have been fixed.

So, Kokoro is pregnant. Let’s set aside for a moment any preventative measures that APE could have taken. We know, from episode 8, that Doctor Franxx is subverting the standard operating procedures when it comes to Squad 13, and more plans would have been busted by the long period Squad 13 spent learning to become self-reliant at the manor. We’ll also ignore that Kokoro and Mitsuru slept together all of once, because that’s absolutely enough even if the odds aren’t great. Everything up until the wedding could easily support her having a happy little accident on the way. What I want you to consider is what comes after: Kokoro is arrested (Mitsuru too but his role in this matter is done) and taken to a facility where, over a course of weeks, APE scientists reprogram her mind like was done to Hiro before, only even worse. And yet, somehow, they miss the fact that she is pregnant. They’re not using psychic powers to accomplish this forced amnesia, they’re using medical science with futuristic technology. You mean to tell me, that with all the biometrics they’d have to take in order to ‘process’ Kokoro, nobody at all noticed one of the biggest changes that the human body can go through?

But, okay, no one has dealt with a pregnancy in a long time. The Parasites are strongly implied to not be natural births, so not many folks, especially not the awkward middle-ranked support staff, would necessarily know what they were looking at. But, counter to that, I feel like they’d know they were looking at something, some sort of anomaly suggesting that something was wrong and warranted more investigation.

And beyond that, think for a minute about why Kokoro and Mitsuru were arrested: they were brought in because they had forbidden knowledge exactly about human reproduction and an illicit relationship, the latter being important for why Mitsuru was scooped up when the rest of Squad 13 was spared. You’d think that maybe, just maybe, it would merit a quick little look for the primary result of Kokoro’s exact crime, and a chemical or physical ‘treatment’ of that result if it was found. This is pretty basic, the kind of things that you’d think would be included in Papa’s orders for cleaning up the mess, and not simply left to ignorant med techs.

But the worst part is that the show unnecessarily dodged the easiest way out of this trap. The last time there was a forced amnesia, Doctor Franxx was the one who presided over it. He knows how to do the procedure. And even if he wasn’t the one directly and emphatically wiping the memories this time out, if he was somewhere in the picture he might have been responsible for sheltering Kokoro’s child-to-be from APE’s notice. Except were were outright told at the start of the flashback episode that Franxx was cut out of the loop entirely when it came to Kokoro and Mitsuru’s punishment. He wasn’t complicit, he wasn’t coerced, he wasn’t even aware until decisions were already made. There’s not much point to those lines, except that they come back here to ruin a perfectly good alibi for this pivotal scene.

But, let’s move on. The day of Star Entity’s activation is at hand, but the Klaxosaurs won’t let it happen without a fight. Squad 13 and the 9’s butt heads verbally, but along with all the other surviving Parasites, are called on to hold the line against massive incoming while Hiro and Zero Two descend into the bowels of Gran Crevasse, along with Doctor Franxx and of course Strelizia. There’s a very good scene here while everybody is on the elevator down. Essentially, it’s the late scene that I feel proves that the heavy pretentious stuff wasn’t needed. The characters are just talking during an elevator ride, but the way it’s framed and how they quietly bring up their prospects of a future together leave a huge impact. Strelizia gets going, but the Klaxosaur Princess shows up, riding with the giant snake monster klaxosaurs that seemed to attend her, breaking through the lines and all security to come face to face with Doctor Franxx.

In a scene that would be more emotional if we believed more of Franxx’s connection to the princess and really felt it, he challenges her that even if she has come for Star Entity (which she has, regarding it as her child) she won’t be able to pilot it because she’s alone, the last of her species. He offers himself as a partner, because obsessive, an idea the Klaxosaur Princess scoffs at. She has no need of a partner, she claims… but she does remark that since Franxx has gone to the trouble of preparing one for her, she might as well take that one.

All the same, she lets Franxx live once again, with an odd note of appreciation for his perhaps unintentional service. She catches up with Strelizia while Strelizia is stopped at a bulkhead, and forces her way inside. The confrontation between the Klaxosaur Princess and Zero Two is short, brutal, and one-sided. The Princess may have a seemingly motherly affection for Star Entity, but sees her half-human daughter (as that’s basically what Zero Two is) as nothing more than a poor copy. She throws Zero Two away and then moves in to claim Hiro.

This is a scene, and really a moment, that I know bothers some people, but that I actually really enjoy, in a sense. I think part of that is that I don’t see it as a “fanservice” moment. As much as this scene includes a kiss, nothing in the framing and emotion of it really conveys anything pleasant or desirable. I’ve mentioned before how, for all the pivotal kisses in Darling in the Franxx, they manage to express a lot of different things and have their own unique feelings. A kissing scene in this show is not just a kissing scene; the kiss can be a vehicle for affection, lust, desperation, despair, catharsis… or, here, brutal domination. There’s a savagery and power to the Klaxosaur Princess, and her every movement here reinforces that. I may wish that she’d been a more regal figure, but she does come off (at least here) as a heck of a monster, leaving Hiro powerless, his struggles in vain.

A scene doesn’t have to be pleasant to be good, and this one is extremely effective and expressive. It made me feel the threat the Klaxosaur Princess presented, both in terms of her personal power (being able to effortlessly cast off Zero Two and force Hiro to act as her booster partner) and in terms of the element of Darling in the Franxx we’re most invested in, the relationship. A lot of piloting moments, particularly early in the show, have strong sexual overtones. This has strong rape overtones with one of our leads as the victim. It also sets up a good scenario for balance. In Episode 6 and Episode 15, Hiro had to be strong, and fight his way through troubled circumstances including injury, death, and physical separation in order to reach Zero Two and ‘save’ her from the threat of the week, herself, or both. Now it’s Zero Two, beaten and bruised, who has the ball in her court to reach and save Hiro. The inversion of the dynamic is exactly something I wanted to see.

Then, unfortunately, we have to progress the plot. Over the last parts of this episode and the first moments of the next there are a lot of “twists” revealed, and some of them have serious constructive problems, so I hope you’re sitting down for this one.

The Klaxosaur Princess and Doctor Franxx, though separate from each other and speaking for their own reasons – the Princess talking to Hiro and Franxx to Hachi – tell of the decline and fall of her race: Originally, all were like her (“Klaxosapiens”), but eventually all the others diverged into one of two forms. Many descended into the Earth and became energy; the stuff known as “Magma Energy” of course, which we already got was kind of lifestream-ish. The others took up a role that used that energy: The Klaxosaurs, which are actually essentially mechas piloted by a male and female pair of Klaxosapiens, the female bonded to the frame and the male as the Core. Eventually, the individuals fused fully, and lost their intellects, becoming the monsters we now know. Further, Franxx are not exactly mechas themselves, but processed from Klaxosaurs so that humans can interface with and control them.

Now, the first time through, I was not in a charitable mood for this reveal. But, I think it has aged pretty well. Even from the start, Klaxosaurs looked fairly mechanical, while the Franxx looked more organic with their movements and faces, so you really could see the reveal coming, especially after seeing the humanoid figure in a core back in Episode 15. Having the Franxx be Klaxosaurs, though, came off as more Evangelion-shaped training wheels. But, looking back, it is kind of fitting how Doctor Franxx, who was always in the bio-sciences and not mechanical engineering, would create something tied to his branch of science rather than becoming, for a moment, an omni-disciplinary mad scientist. It still does come off as those training wheels to a degree, but it’s something that under the circumstances can be allowed to slide.

Though, and I bring this up more for humor than as a serious complaint, knowing that the Klaxosaurs are designed weapons and that it’s not just a case of somebody losing the superpower lottery on genetics, what in the world was up with the “Dissolve your clothing and nothing else” Klaxosaur from Episode 8? Was it really an anti-Life-Fiber weapon like I joked about back then? Was it just a dud design that a couple of Klaxosapiens got into and gave up their individuality and intelligence to become anyway? Were they pranked by their so-called friends in engineering with that anti-clothing spit? Most of the others I can take, but that one strains credulity more the more I think about it.

Though, honestly, the Life Fibers might not be a bad comparison for what comes next. The Klaxosaur Princess begins to awaken Star Entity, to which Papa says it’s a darn shame. He’d really wanted to take that thing to space as a shiny new weapon, but if they can’t have it, no one can.

Wait, space?

At about this point, Klaxosaurs start shooting up into the sky, as an alien war fleet descends. The Klaxosaur Princess declares that they’re her ancient enemy, fought off long ago, which she retained her mind to protect Earth against. Papa’s mask drops to the ground as he (on comms) says that Star Entity was rigged to explode – and take the entire planet with it – if the Princess took it over. To reinforce this idea, Star Entity is overtaken by alien growths.

It really is that sudden and abrupt. The episode ends showing us Zero Two is still alive and determined to get back to Hiro, and the other episode picks right back up. Papa (and one of the other council members) is an alien. This comes as a surprise to the rest of the council, who would like to know want to know what the hell is going on. Papa yanks out their souls, promising them an eternal nirvana-like paradise with the alien force (VIRM), before doing the same to all the Adults from the remaining plantations, who have been primed for the process. The Parasites on the battlefield are also left confused as monstrous VIRM-aligned troopers appear and start wrecking just about everything. Squad 13 rushes to help Hiro and save the world, while the 9’s, going a little mad from being faced with Papa’s betrayal, momentarily get in their way before the VIRM onslaught proves enough of a distraction.

In Star Entity, Hiro connects more with the mind of the Klaxosaur Princess, coming to better understand her eons of loneliness, and the desperation of her mission against the VIRM. We get her picture of a more full history – how VIRM, a bodiless hive mind, came to earth to incorporate the Klaxosapiens and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Eventually they were fought off but the Klaxosapiens had nothing left, not even a future for their species as they could no longer reproduce. As such, the weak were converted to the energy, and the strong became slumbering war-machines, ever vigilant against VIRM’s inevitable return. Even as she struggles, though, the Klaxosaur Princess despairs at the state she’s now in: ages of waiting, only to be caught in a trap, about to die. This even causes Hiro to see some similarities between them; both his former self and the Princess see their purpose as fighting and dying, but Hiro won’t give up because, in his time with Zero Two, he found a reason to live.

Zero Two, though, isn’t inclined to just let this happen. She comes to in the care of Doctor Franxx, who lets her know the history of herself, the Klaxosaur Princess, and other hybrid experiments like the Nines and unnamed failures before Zero Two.

What Zero Two cares about, though, is rescuing Hiro, and following through on her promise to be with him forever. Doctor Franxx offers to help, choosing to believe in what Zero Two, Hiro, and even the Princess potentially working together can accomplish, and the rest of Squad 13 shows to help as well. We have a pretty awesome “Everyone helps” sequence where each pair of Squad 13 makes a mark and bleeds off of the effort holding off the VIRM or taking down some barrier, until after Ichigo gives her best it’s down to Zero Two and Doctor Franxx on foot. They come to a door sealed by Klaxosaur stuff, and Franxx reveals his mechanical arm in full, showing that it hosts cultured material from the Klaxosaur Princess that he wanted to make part of himself. The door recognizes him as he sacrifices his arm, and Zero Two progresses. Finally, one of the Princess’s snake Klaxosaur pets helps Zero Two out, seemingly understanding that she can help its master, carrying her the rest of the way to Star Entity.

Before she goes with it, though, she takes a last opportunity to talk with Doctor Franxx, asking if he took her to Plantation 13 so she could meet Hiro again. Franxx deflects, saying it was a whim or a fool’s hope and Zero Two parts with him offering thanks for bringing her into being and bringing her up, closing the book on their weird unspoken father-daughter relationship as Franxx is left to ponder, seemingly quite pleased, when she became so very human.

I have a really inordinate affection for that scene The action is perfectly on point, and the emotions, both with Squad 13 all coming together to help Zero Two as one of their own and between her and Franxx, are great and dramatic and not something you see elsewhere in the show. Episode 21 here, like 15 and 6, is a huge climax that’s almost all battle, but it’s very different from either of its predecessors while still standing as monumentally tall.

Zero Two enters the cockpit, finding Hiro and the Princess both dying, almost entirely overtaken by VIRM’s corruption. With the same desperation Hiro had reaching out for her in episode 15, Zero Two reaches out for Hiro, trying to call him back, ultimately with a kiss.

The Klaxosaur Princess looks on, realizing that this was something precious her kind lost. She wills the future of Earth to the two lovers, sublimating herself to energy so they’ll have the ability to overcome the VIRM… which of course they do at the last possible second. With Hiro and Zero Two, reunited in a mindscape reminiscent of their childhood, Star Entity casts off the corruption and VIRM bomb, becoming Strelizia Apus. The VIRM decide screw that, we’re out of here, and retreat into space, taking the Hringhorni with them. Doctor Franx looks up at Strelizia’s ultimate form and finds it overwhelmingly beautiful, reveling in the evolution of his creation as the area around him collapses, causing him to be crushed by rocks in his moment of glory. I don’t think either he or I would have him go out any other way than at his maddest mad scientist peak. The rest of Squad 13 emerges into the light of day as survivors, as a new dawn rises over earth. The credits song (which played over much of the final sequence) finishes up, and the episode’s title card flashes.

Depending on how you feel about certain things, this is where you may wish Darling in the Franxx ended, right there at the Episode 21 ending title card. The world is saved, APE is gone, the Parasites are free, and we just had a big climax that finally turned around who saves whom from the last two, with stakes that seem very unlikely to be topped. It feels like a place where you could call this done. Seconds later, we get episode 21’s stinger, and the hook for the final arc: Though Hiro and Zero Two are victorious, when disconnect occurs, Zero Two is glassy-eyed and unresponsive.

Well, heck.

Before we move on into that, let’s take a moment and really talk about the whole “Suddenly, aliens!” turn, now that the roller coaster of events has come to as much of a stop as it’s going to.

To me, this is almost the archetype of a poorly executed twist. I talked a good deal about twists in my commentary on Shangri-la, as well as in other reviews, but it’s worth reiterating. A good twist is one where, after the fact, you say “I should have seen it coming.” The best twists in cinema, and in fact fiction in general, have strongly established facts that make it clear such a thing can happen in the universe that the author has created, so that when you go back and watch a piece of media spoiled, events take on new layers of meaning, and you see how the truth was always inevitable from the established facts. Bad twists rely on simply shocking the audience, revealing something utterly unpresaged on the assumption that if nobody could guess it, that makes it a good twist. And that line of thinking is dead wrong. If, at the end of an otherwise entirely ordinary story, the cast suddenly and for no reason at all turned into pigeons and it was revealed that their human lives had just been a dream… well, I certainly wouldn’t predict it, but that doesn’t mean it’s intellectually satisfying or a good twist.

And surprise villains like VIRM here are, in my mind, a kind of twist that is bound to such a rule. They are also a favorite of Trigger productions; Darling in the Franxx and VIRM are neither the first nor last show from that studio (the work of which I do generally appreciate) to have a bad guy either appear or sharply change in the final act, sometimes even the final episode. Kill la Kill, which I referenced earlier, is another example, and one I’m willing to “Spoil”: the show takes an abrupt turn from jerks with clothes that give them superpowers trying to seize power and control to living clothes that are also aliens setting up to literally destroy the world. But we had sentient clothing-beings from episode 1; when the twist happens, it’s clear that it could happen in this insane setting, so you’re not inclined to reject it. BNA (a more recent show, so I won’t drop details here) has a big change to the villain and stakes appear in just the last couple of episodes, but again it’s entirely fitting with the universe that had been established to this point. Gurren Lagann (not actually a Trigger show, but close enough for my purposes here) is probably the best comparison, both because Gurren Lagann is clearly where Darling in the Franxx starts cribbing notes from at this point the way it earlier copied Evangelion’s homework, and because it has a very similar pacing to the reveal. I’ll try to not go too much into detail about Gurren Lagann since I’ve yet to review it, but some of this has to be said.

Gurren Lagann, like Darling in the Franxx, starts out as a mecha show set on a dead desert Earth. Its themes in the first arcs are very different when compared to where Franxx goes with the idea, seeing its heroes face off against a tyrannical despot, Lordgenome. However, the later act focuses on the fight against a “new” enemy, the Anti-Spirals, an alien force that invades and attempts to destroy Earth and that the heroes ultimately face down against in the depths of space. However, there are a few key differences between VIRM and the Anti-Spirals. Even though the Anti-Spirals come out of nowhere, even more out of nowhere than VIRM (who, as Papa, had theoretically been our villain from the start), they were better set up. Lordgenome gave a very pointed (if cryptic) prophecy of their arrival, for one, and it’s a topic that characters mull over, attempting to discern the meaning of before the other shoe drops and we’re forced to learn what it really is. Further, much as Darling in the Franxx used imagery at the start of episode 1 to set up Little Girl Zero Two and Hiro having their important past under the important tree with imagery that wouldn’t make sense until then, Gurren Lagann starts with a scene in space that doesn’t make sense until you’re fairly deep in the material about the Anti-Spirals.

Darling in the Franxx tried to do something like that, but it just fell a little short. The Klaxosaur Princess takes the role of Lordgenome, but her mutterings fall on fairly deaf ears and don’t get the focus they need as relating important truths until its too late. There’s no hang time where we know where we know we should be paying attention to this until it drops. There were clues, but they weren’t really good clues. And, unlike Gurren Lagann that both set up space in its opening and was kind of an “anything goes” affair, aliens were not really something that made sense with the themes and setting of Darling in the Franxx. Everything we’d done before this point was concerned with Earth, intensely so, and thus shifting tracks to interstellar concerns doesn’t come easily.

Further, there’s a critical difference in where the aliens are deployed. In Gurren Lagann, the Anti-Spirals appear at a time and place where we otherwise don’t have a good external opponent, and thus the audience is kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop and something to happen, which is ultimately “Surprise! Aliens!”. In Darling in the Franxx we have an embarrassment of plots, subplots, and villains. The Klaxosaur Princess may have some sympathetic traits, and it’s clear she’s been wronged by APE, but she and hers are also a military danger that can and will squash what the Parasites are building before it can really grow. And APE had pretty clearly fallen into heel territory with the Parasites at this stage. Even Zorome couldn’t really back Papa up any longer. They didn’t need to be replaced by weird soul-trapping collectivist aliens, they were fine as immortal despots, and we could have had a good time with an insurrection arc, having to face down against APE and the Nines as our main opponents, perhaps with some extra layers of invention and secret weapon or perhaps just with the fact that our heroes would be largely stripped on the support they formerly relied on. This makes the drop of a new villain with a new theme and a new arc for the future especially jarring.

And talking about soul-trapping collectivist aliens, I do and don’t appreciate what the VIRM do to and for the message of the show. On one side, they are extremely apt villains. Darling in the Franxx is, when you get down to it, something of a young adult romance. It’s a story about individuals bonding with each other, embracing their emotions, and finding love in a system that actively opposes their growth as individuals. And what could be more strongly opposed to that than a hive mind that doesn’t care whether or not you’re precisely willing to be incorporated into a mental amalgam where there will be neither suffering nor individuality? This is something Science Fiction has done for ages, taking a human issue and exaggerating it into an alien threat. Classic Scifi threats have tread this ground before, including ones like the Cybermen and the Borg hitting on the exact topic that the VIRM do.

But I’ll argue that it wasn’t needed here. The Cybermen are from Doctor Who, a show that thrived on far-flung adventures in which the main characters are usually only visitors. Because of that, it’s harder there to build personal stakes, and you have to lean a little on things that are bigger picture and more visceral. Star Trek, home of the Borg, is much the same: the Enterprise has been other places and will go other places, and all throughout it is more dependent on the cast facing something external to themselves. Darling in the Franxx, by contrast, has constantly thrived on threats and conflicts that are internal. Zero Two battles with her own self-loathing and sabotaging behavior more than she does random Klaxosaurs. Ichigo has to learn how to let go, and further needs to grow into her role as leader. Zorome has to discover the world around him, and learn to take the blinders off and cope with a picture that isn’t pleasant or amenable to his world view. The struggles our characters face are ones that are entirely supported – and better supported – by facing off against foes at the human scale. In this case, the closeness of a government of fellow humans, and cruelty handed down by something and someone that is understandable, would be much stronger than the more exaggerated opposition of a hostile alien race.

Suffice to say, I’m not particularly happy with this decision. Darling in the Franxx may be a favorite of mine, even my favorite anime, because of what it gets right and the heights its story reaches, but when it gets something wrong, I need to acknowledge where it went wrong. And this last arc, the VIRM arc, is chock full of that.

So, with that said, we’ve got an unresponsive Zero Two and no clear picture of where we’re going. So, what do we do with that?

Oddly enough, what we get next is more of a sequel to the first Mistilteinn episode than anything else; we see the Parasites working together and struggling to build a new society with neither APE (save for a creepy emotionless Nana-replacement who’s holding the keys to a good deal of APE’s stuff) guiding them nor Magma Energy powering them. Ichigo really steps up as leader, organizing work shifts and making sure everybody gets what they need and the jobs that have to get done are accomplished in order to keep everyone alive. Meanwhile, Klaxosaurs continue to fly into space (the empty Strelizia Apus having lead the charge), providing a surreal backdrop to the lives of the Parasites.

Along the way, we get some very good movements. Kokoro is FINALLY diagnosed as pregnant in a way the characters understand, which comes as a great shock to her and (as he realizes the nature and enormity of his involvement) to Mitsuru as well. This really helps catalyze more of Mitsuru’s growth, and helps him turn around from the guy we all hated to one we can finally actually like.

I’ve called out fairly few “Mitsuru growth” moments, and I feel that means I’ve been somewhat remiss, because there are many and he gets a good deal of screen time. But most of the moments are short, and very few of them are decisive when it comes to redeeming his character. It’s more about the accumulation of moments shifting the audience perception than it is about any one thing overthrowing the idea that he’s a selfish jerk.

But a big part of that is how he handles the arc with Kokoro and their child. Neither his memories nor Kokoro’s come back at any point; they’re basically strangers starting from square zero with this bizarre circumstance bonding them, but Mitsuru still puts in the effort and concerns himself with doing not necessarily what he wants (though he’s a little scattered on that point) but what is the ‘right thing’ for the other people in whose lives he’s involved. This cements that the growth he experienced before his mind was wiped, learning to let go of his grudges and self-centered bitterness at the world, stuck, and that he really has turned over a new leaf, which goes a long way towards forgiving him.

In other news, the Parasites also manage a few problems. On the food front, it turns out that Mistilteinn’s environs had soil that was separated from the Earth before overuse of Magma Energy ruined it, and that this fertile soil could be used to produce good fields for crops while, with no more Magma Energy being drawn, the Earth recovers. This is especially good news as they were facing crop failure and possible starvation in the wider world.

The other major problem faced and overcome is one of population, that being that with very few parasites and no adults, not to mention the presumed loss of whatever APE was doing to make new Parasites with its Adult technicians, humanity did not have a rosy future. However, it turns out that Doctor Franxx had prepared for this eventuality, leaving instructions to be distributed in the event of his death that lead Nana (proper Nana, not the weird fake) and Hachi, along with the Parasites, to a facility where Doctor Franxx had the parasite dropouts like Hiro’s pre-episode-one partner, Naomi, stored in suspended animation, rather than disposing of them, giving the new society a meaningfully large population that they can awaken and lead the instant they have the resources to do so.

The issue of Zero Two, however, is a good deal thorny and more twisted. She seems practically catatonic, incapable of doing anything for herself, and Hiro’s efforts are taken up caring for her, which is especially relevant because she keeps manifesting strange wounds that appear with no clear cause. This is drawn out for most of the episode, and it’s particularly painful to watch, in the way that it’s supposed to be painful.

Zero Two may not have, in an objective sense, been a good person. However, she was someone that both the characters (Hiro more than the rest, but ultimately all of them) and the audience cared about deeply, and perhaps more than that, she was always an active and vivacious force. Seeing her, glassy-eyed and zombie-like, unable to speak and largely unable to move of her own volition, is a special kind of horrifying. She’s not dead, strictly speaking, but she has lost, very pointedly, what made her unique and lovable, and there’s a lot of work done to ensure the audience understands Hiro’s pain and desperation as he engages in his seemingly futile ministrations.

Eventually, though, Hiro finds her when she’s managed to wander outside, and where she stands gazing up at the stars. A new wound appears, and as Hiro, near his breaking point, holds her he has a flash that connects him to her mind – still in Strelizia Apus, far out in space, battling the VIRM and having Strelizia’s damage be mirrored on her earthly body. If you have the thought that Hiro’s not going to let that stand… yeah, it’s kind of obvious that he’s not. He intends to use a ship the Klaxosaurs left behind to go to space himself to bring her back or be with her and tells Squad 13 as much, not taking no for an answer.

The rest of the squad doesn’t take it very well at first, especially not how he doesn’t seem to care that this “mission” is probably tantamount to throwing his life away, and he seems to have no concern for the people still on Earth who care about him. Goro even loses his otherwise perfect cool for a moment and slugs Hiro, largely on behalf of Ichigo and how much this situation is hurting her when she’s already driven herself to the point of collapse from overwork once. The altercation also causes Hiro’s horns to be revealed to the rest of his friends, who then have to deal with (directly or indirectly) the distance that has been put between them.

Ultimately, they can’t stop Hiro, but they find, after some introspection, that they can help him, gearing up for one last fight, more offended that Hiro was trying to do this alone than that he was doing it at all. Also joining them will be the surviving Nines. 9 Alpha and his crew are degenerating without access to APE’s top-end medical tech and filled with spite towards their former masters now that the great betrayal has set in, so they’re all ready to die in glorious battle rather than waiting to expire on Earth. The rest of the squad is more intent, of course, on seeing the mission through and returning safely. Not joining them will be Kokoro and Mitsuru, because the former can’t pilot at her current stage of pregnancy and isn’t prepared to take the abortion that Fake Nana, standing in for APE, offered. Also not coming with them (as is revealed next episode) is Zero Two’s body. I… still don’t know why nobody thought to bring that if they were going to put her back together.

And thus we move on into the penultimate episode, and my least favorite episode in my favorite show. Which, when it’s this show, is actually saying quite a lot. Remember, the Franxx flashback episode and the episode that revealed both Kokoro’s pregnancy and VIRM still happened.

There are two parts to this episode. The first is a space battle, with team Franxx backing up the Klaxosaurs as they push through a VIRM fleet at Mars, the VIRM fighting to hold a warp gate that would take the offensive deep into VIRM space. This isn’t so bad… in abstract.

In practice, the writers that created some extremely engaging mecha battles on the surface didn’t really know how to apply their excellent choreography to a space battle. The VIRM and Klaxosaur ships are largely stationary, and the laser blasting between them feels very stiff and static. The Franxx move a bit better, and every once in a while they’ll do a cool stunt while fighting “on the wing”, but they’re both not the focus and stand stripped of a lot of their unique character by a combination of that lack of focus and a curious choice to standardize their loadouts, meaning they all fight like the same “mooks”. Hiro rides along with 9 Alpha, and there are a couple brief moments there – like when 9 Alpha remarks that Hiro has become so much like Zero Two that a normal Pistil probably couldn’t handle riding with him. And when 9 Alpha, having delivered Hiro to Apus, blows himself up with a smile to take out the oncoming VIRM, that’s a good sendoff for the character. But by in large it takes longer than it should or is less interesting than the length allotted to it.

Really, in retrospect, it’s not that the space battle is that bad, it just underachieves in an area in which the show had continually overachieved. True, the capital ships don’t have the weight to them, nor the fight the sense of distance and scale that you get in a good space battle, but it’s… basically serviceable, at least compared to what comes next.

Because once Hiro enters Strelizia Apus and connects to Zero Two’s mind, we get the worst sequence in the entire show, and the only sequence I legitimately wish could be straight-out removed.

The basic overlay is that Hiro has to convince Zero Two to come “out of her shell” and accept him, while she’s busy moping that she doesn’t deserve life or love and is isolating herself. This is all told through imagery in the art style of her old picture book.

First off, the emotions are wrong. All wrong. We already did this bit, and we did it better. In Episode 15, Hiro had to reach out to Zero Two in order to save her from the pit of her despair and reforge their connection. They’d both hurt each other, and there was a deep need for healing both of them and between them. They try to pass off the same thing here, but they do it without the emotional setup of the previous time that brought Zero Two to her lowest point. Two episodes ago, just before this mess, Zero Two was made of determination to reach Hiro and be with him forever, fighting against all odds to reach him. It was a great sequence that finally reversed their roles, and made things feel better. Sike, I guess. Her character entirely regresses, without any reason for doing so. True, the shadows of her past were haunting her after Episode 15, but never in such a way that we’d believe she’d flip so quickly from being at her best, able to forge ahead, to her worst, pushing away the people who care about her like she’s suicidal.

It gets an extra layer of insanity because she says something about wanting Hiro to be able to stay human. Zero Two knew he had turned into something like her, and that he liked that because it meant they were closer. As much as “The Beast and the Prince” leaves its mark here you’d think she’d have noticed that their story already had a different ending.

This sequence, especially since it’s dragged out extra long to attempt to give it weight, isn’t just poorly done. It’s a bloody insult to a great character. If she was going to backslide, we needed to see the slide, not leave her the way we did.

Second, the visuals. I tend to like doing weird and interesting things with visuals, but the ones here… just don’t work. We’ve done mind dives before, and they did fine with the show’s normal animation, just depicting things that weren’t necessarily literally there. The picture book art looks fine in a picture book prop, but it doesn’t look very good moving because those sorts of images were never intended for full animation.

Third, this is dragged out over a large chunk of episode. Not all of it is spend in the picture book scenes (and I much prefer the material going on outside, including a very good scene where Kokoro and Mitsuru, on Earth and caring for Zero Two’s body, have a tearful reconciliation and Mitsuru reaches out to build a new relationship with her) but there’s still quite a lot of hang time to let how wrong and annoying this is sink in.

Finally though, they get back together, mind to mind and… you should be sitting down for this one.

After Hiro and Zero Two(‘s mind) are reunited, Zero Two’s body on Earth (looking up at the sky from a hill above most of the Parasite colony) turns to stone and Strelizia takes on the form “True Apus” – which is a gigantic Zero Two, flesh tones and all, in what looks like a big, frilly, and somewhat revealing wedding dress. (It actually retains Apus’s centaur-like form, but the covering disguises it well) It’s supposed to be dramatic and beautiful and I see what they were going for, but it’s just a laugh riot.

It is difficult, in text, to do justice to just how silly True Apus looks. I sort of expect this thing from Trigger, but though Trigger was heavily involved in Darling in the Franxx (and it really has their fingerprints all over it), A1 Pictures and Cloverworks were also helping out and you’d think that maybe somebody would speak up. Maybe the fact that it doesn’t sound as goofy as it looks is what got us the design on screen. They pitched it something like “You know how the Franxx already in some way resemble their Pistils? After Hiro and Zero Two get together, this one should look like Zero Two in a wedding dress” and everyone OK’d the idea not realizing the literal nature of what they’d just signed off on until it was too late to change it.

As I said I do see what they were going for: Hiro and Zero Two are getting together for the last, definitive time (justifying the wedding imagery), and the scene of Apus transforming into True Apus very much resembles the humanizing of Stampede Mode Strelizia into Proper Strelizia after they got together the first time in episode 1, making the sequence something of a callback. And, to give credit where it’s due, the next episode works around the design of True Apus very well. But it’s still just a little bit honestly ludicrous to see a mecha, even something that’s technically some sort of bio-mech like a Franxx, showing off fancy hair and fleshy cleavage as it prances through space bopping enemies. I don’t exactly like it, but I guess it does make me smile at least.

In any case, True Apus breaks through the blockade and transits through the portal, Hiro and Zero Two intending to go fight the VIRM at their lair, while the rest of their friends have come as far as they can, and are obliged to return to Earth, moving us into the final episode.

The last episode is a little bit… different Even before the ending sequence, more time passes here than, I believe, passes in the rest of the show. You see, the Warp Gate didn’t just bring Hiro and Zero Two directly to the final battle… no, for all that Darling in the Franxx failed time scales while doing its backstory, it gets across the idea that space is big pretty well, so even though Hiro and Zero Two are in roughly the right part of the cosmos now, they still have a long way to go before they can reach the VIRM homeworld on their mission to free all the souls that the aliens have stolen from across the cosmos. It’s not an easy path, either; VIRM warships are constantly intercepting them and trying to wear them down as they progress. Oddly enough, though, we don’t actually focus on the fighting, more on the passage of time and the grim determination of our leads.

Interspersing with this and helping to really let us understand the passage of time, we get plenty of scenes on Earth, following the (former) Parasites as their lives have to move on. Much of this is actually happy, as it’s centered around Kokoro’s pregnancy, and preparing for her to become the first human to give birth in their new society. Still, though, Ichigo voices what she’s not alone in thinking when she says there’s some guilt over living relatively carefree when Hiro and Zero Two are still fighting elsewhere.

The birth finally happens, and is a pretty great scene when Mitsuru is introduced to his daughter. Children from Franxx’s storage are taken off ice, introducing Naomi to the crew once again (where she eventually ends up in a relationship with Ikuno). Goro leaves on a journey to scout out the now open world, but not before giving Ichigo a goodbye kiss that shocks everyone (Including Ichigo, who shouldn’t be quite so surprised given he did confess to her before). Ichigo finds Zero Two’s recreation of her story book, and wonders at the blank final page. All in all, they seem to be moving on.

Two years after passing through the Warp Gate, Hiro is starting to grow weak, at least momentarily. He nods off, even dreaming of their friends on Earth, and while he (and thus their bond) is weak, Papa strikes, leaving Zero Two impaled by Hringhorni, crying out in desperation for someone, everyone to help her save Hiro.

And, oddly enough, it seems to work. Mitsuru and Kokoro’s daughter, named Ai, plays near the statue that was Zero Two’s body, and voices the word “darling” which she was never taught. The former Parasites surmise from this, or perhaps just hope, that the statue can connect them to the couple struggling in the depths of space, and begin a very touching ceremony of linking hands with it and each other, speaking their feelings, sending their hope and love from Earth to where it’s needed. Day by day more humans join, and eventually their words reach Hiro, dragging him out of his morass (visualized as sinking in an ocean in space, because this hasn’t borrowed enough from Gurren Lagann already).

From this, Strelizia awakens in its full glory, even taking control of Hringhorni as its own new weapon. But the VIRM homeworld is in sight, and the situation still dire. Hiro and Zero Two make their peace with each other, reaffirming their love and swearing that they’ll be together again some day… when they have another chance to write their story, because this one can only end one way. They slam into the VIRM planet and explode, vaporizing the world and freeing the souls trapped there. The head VIRM that was Papa and the council Vice Chairman escapes and swears vengeance, vowing to see them again at “the end of evolution”, but it’s clear they’ve been dealt more than a black eye. Among the released spirits are those of Hiro and Zero Two themselves, holding to each other as they fly through space, hopefully back towards Earth.

On Earth the Zero Two statue crumbles to ash, and the destruction of the VIRM planet can be seen as a bright light that burns for days, like a supernova. (I’m not sure when they see this. I can kind of accept the statue being faster than light… I guess maybe through the warp gate they can see what won’t otherwise reach Earth for a while. Or the writers messed up their time scales again and forgot the speed of light delay on light). A seedling sprouts from Zero Two’s ashes, and the Parasites have to, once again, move on – believing that Hiro and Zero Two won, which is at least backed up by the remnants of the Klaxosaur fleet returning to Earth and to the earth, regenerating much of the damage that had been done by drawing Magma Energy.

From here, we get the sequence I talked about in my “Emotional Moments” Top 10 List. As I said, the crying moment in this ending, which is a moving ending overall, isn’t the part where our main characters up and die. That is sad, but they also go out on their own terms in a blaze of glory. Instead, you get the strange “happy but crying” time in the next scenes, as we witness the changing of the guard. Over the years, Kokoro and Mitsuru have more children (expecting their fourth when we last see them), Ikuno gets together with Naomi and becomes a doctor, curing the ills the Parasites suffer from thanks to their early treatment. Ichigo eventually caves and marries Goro (one child expected when last we see them) and Futoshi pairs off with someone we never met to become a father and the jolly big baker beloved by all, which seems to suit him really well. Zorome and Miku don’t have their relationship followed up on as explicitly as the others but they’re both teachers and still bicker just like they always did, so I get the feeling they’re going to be just fine.

All the while, the seedling grows into a sakura tree, overlooking the camp as it turns into a town, Franxx units gathering rust and moss as idols of the past, and the Parasites come to visit, thanking Zero Two and Hiro for their sacrifice, and how that allowed everyone else to live their lives.

From there, we watch the tree longer and longer, as it grows into a fine and fantastically old specimen, and civilization grows around it from where it overlooks a town of survivors to where it stands after hundreds of years in a park in the middle of a futuristic city. Two sparks of light reach earth from space as Hiro and Zero Two’s final promise to meet each other again plays in voice over, and then we see the tree again, and a boy and a girl (who look suspiciously like our to-be-reincarnated leads) meet each other there. They begin to introduce themselves (we don’t hear them give their names) and the closing title card comes up, declaring that “A New Story Begins.” And that, finally, is the ending of Darling in the Franxx.

It doesn’t sound like much but between the pacing, the music, and the roller coaster of this whole show make this sequence one of the best denouement sequences I’ve seen from an anime… even if I have some real issues with the ending.

Specifically, as much as I do love the life returns and time lapse sequence, I can’t really respect this whole package as a “good ending” so much as a “nice save”. The choices that got us to the point where Hiro and Zero Two blew themselves up to take out Planet VIRM were… a very unfortunate sequence of choices. The ending handled and mitigated them as best it could, but it still shouldn’t have gotten here. First, VIRM shouldn’t have been a thing. I’ve been over that part before in great detail, so I’ll spare you repeating my complaints over including aliens in this show.

Second, we didn’t need another “split and reunite” sequence for Zero Two and Hiro: they did it three times, and that’s about what you get for variations on a theme. So they shouldn’t really have ended up in the scenario that brought them to, since Zero Two’s separation from herself is necessary for this last mission being so long, strange and dire.

Third, we shouldn’t have removed Hiro and Zero Two from Earth. The Klaxosaur Princess willed Earth’s future not to mankind, but to that couple. Carrying through on the themes, I think they more needed to become stewards than sacrifice themselves in the depths of the cosmos to smite their enemies.

Fourth, I recognize that part of this probably went down this way because Hiro and Zero Two are “tainted”; both of them by their inhuman natures, and Zero Two by the sins of her past. It would be very hard for them to have a legitimate happy ending in the new society created by Ichigo and the others. But to that end, I feel like killing them off in the depths of space is kind of a cop-out. I think it would have been potentially more powerful for the two of them and their friends like Ichigo to have to realize that there’s no place for them in what’s being built. What do they do then? Do they fight for a place, or do they perhaps walk away from the new paradise to find one for themselves? Perhaps, in the depths of the Earth that the Klaxosaur Princess left for them, they could find their own future and their own miracles. Or perhaps it could be left up to the viewer to decide what happened to them in the end. Either way, I feel like that would be, on a basic level and not taking into account the artistry of the canon ending, a more powerful choice.

Fifth and finally, I feel like having Hiro and Zero Two have to accept that they’re going to die for their win kind of flies in the face of the themes we’d seen in the show. Hiro spat in Death’s eye back in episode six, resurrecting himself simply through the power of love. This isn’t like Gurren Lagann. In Gurren Lagann, even though the atmosphere is bold and goofy, it’s enforced fairly early that people die when they’re killed, and that consequences are real, so when a miracle isn’t made later in the show you accept it. Here, it’s more like Sailor Moon; the tone may be darker, more operatic, and more “serious” than Gurren Lagann, but it’s also been clearly established that things like mortality, death, and time are more guidelines than actual rules. Not enough to negate what I said about episode 6, but enough that episode 6 stands better than the ending does. When characters like Tuxedo Mask, Sailor Moon herself, or even characters like Sailor Pluto or Sailor Saturn lay down their lives or get killed, even fairly completely, it’s not like they actually die and stay dead, even in the context of the show itself. There can be consequences, but Death is always ultimately cheated. I guess Hiro and Zero Two get away with reincarnating in the end but… it isn’t the same. Once we got to the last episode, things had to pan out the way we did, but something needed to get us off that track somewhere earlier.

In short, when it comes to the ending, an amazing job was done by the show playing with the hand it was dealt… but those cards shouldn’t even have been in the deck.

Which brings me, at long last, to the summation of the series. Darling in the Franxx is my favorite anime. It has ups and downs, both colossal in their nature. It can be sublime in its beauty, structured with intricate interrelationships and subtle connections that help draw you deeper into the story, but it can also be absolutely grotesque in its failure, shambling along spouting nonsense that would have been fact checked or sanity checked out of a second-rate fanfiction. Between the two, it gives me endless material and endless possibilities to think about and talk about, if the tens of thousands of words I’ve spent on the show this month are any indication. That sustained engagement, being mostly on the positive end despite its faults, is what earns it its exalted position in my memory and such a massive reviewing as there has been.

And yet, at the end of it all, I have to give the show a B.

Just that, a flat B. In my opinion, the letter grade here is woefully inadequate, but it is correct. The quality of Darling in the Franxx is absolutely schizophrenic in an objective sense, there’s almost no ‘B’ work, and even if I think the high parts outweigh the low ones, the low ones still drag it down. And I completely understand people who hate this show, who feel like they were betrayed and cannot forgive the places where it went wrong. There are, I find, two kinds of people when it comes to media. On the one side there are the ones like me, who like things to be interesting, and are more forgiving of faults in the light of triumphs. On the other side, there are people who like things to be consistent, for whom a stumble or a fall ruins the experience no matter how great the other material is, and who thus prefer more level shows, even if the average is lower. Those people are going to despise Darling in the Franxx.

One thing’s for sure, though… this isn’t the kind of show you’re going to forget any time soon.