So, it’s January, which apparently means it’s time for me to do something long and different. This year, I’ll be looking into Darling in the Franxx, going through it not as a whole show in a single go, but arc by arc to try to really go a little deeper. And you may be inclined to ask “Why?”. What makes Darling in the Franxx worth an extra level of effort?
Well, let me answer the question with a question. What’s your favorite anime? And what qualifies a show for that vaunted status? Honestly, go ahead and answer in the comments, I’d love to hear what people think about that. For me, it’s not a matter of quality alone. I recently covered Haibane Renmei, and said then that if I was put on the spot, that would probably be the show I’d name “best” of those I’ve seen. But, I also commented, it’s not really in contention to be what I’d call my “favorite” I made somewhat similar comments regarding Madoka Magica and Made in Abyss, stressing that there is, at least in my case, a disconnect between recognition of quality and favoritism.
For me, what places a show among my favorites is when it captures the imagination, meaning that it’s something I come back to and think about a good deal after – even long after – I’ve finished watching. Favorite shows are ones I return to, either for rewatches or just in terms of thought. These are often flawed shows, though they tend to have at least some great strengths. Memorable characters and creative scenarios are, generally the order of the day, as apply in shows like Robotics;Notes or Mekakucity Actors (Part of what’s probably my favorite franchise, the Kagerou Project, but which suffers some when viewed in isolation as an anime). And those elements certainly appear in what I’m willing to call my favorite show, Darling in the Franxx.
And I know I probably just had some
readers recoil in horror. Darling in the Franxx is (unless I miss my
mark) a very divisive show. It got a ton of hype at first, and
between the backlash and the trend of the show during its run has,
I’ve been led to believe, a significant hatedom as well as a fandom,
and the presence of the latter tends to embitter and embolden the
former. But I will say, part of why I’m taking extra time to go over
Darling in the Franxx is that I don’t want to approach it just as a
fan. This may be my favorite show, but it’s not really of value to
simply gush about something. Rather, I want to go into detail on not
just what worked for me but why it worked, and at the same time would
like to expose and examine the show’s many faults. A lot like
Mekakucity Actors, Darling in the Franxx has some very deep valleys
of quality to go along with the high peaks, and understanding where
each occurs is fairly important to comprehending the reactions both
positive and negative to the show as a whole.
So, in the interest of looking at both
what’s great about Darling in the Franxx and what’s terrible about
Darling in the Franxx, let us begin.
So, if you start watching the first
episode, there’s something you’re liable to notice in the first
couple of seconds: somebody set the production to “pretentious”
in a big way. Mercifully, while the style seen in the opening scene
will return at various points in the show’s run, it’s not really used
throughout. I think the show is stronger on the whole when it’s not
going all the way pretentious and is instead more “in the moment”.
There are a couple places where the style is acceptable or arguably
even used well and the opening (by virtue of being an opening) is one
of those places, but it’s still something that the show could have
used less of.
It also introduces us to one of the
show’s more persistent metaphors (possibly the only one that remains
a metaphor rather than literally existing): the Jian, a fictional
creature known as the “bird that shares wings”. It’s described
as a bird that only has one wing, and thus can only fly when a male
and female (having opposite wings) come together. We get not one but
two voice over narrations about the Jian, with different
perspectives: one finds it beautiful in its own way, the other –
from our main character Hiro – sees it as pathetic, while clearly
also associating with the story as we learn more about his situation.
After a brief moment of Zero Two, grumpy to arrive on scene, we
follow him more.
It seems Hiro is a “Parasite”, a
child raised for the purpose of piloting the Franxx mechas, which
require a male and female pilot working in concert. Hiro has washed
out of the program (his reason for existence) but is being granted
special permission to continue living with the rest of his
team/friends since he’s somehow of interest to the brass, while his
erstwhile partner is scheduled to be shipped off. He is quite
reasonably sulking about this, hanging out in the cultured indoor
garden that the Parasites have. At the glass wall to the ruined
desert world outside, he finds a dead bird, visually reinforcing the
idea of the dead-ended partnerless Jian. In the meantime, his
friends mull over his situation (as well as rumors of a “partner
killer” parasite with monstrous ability and nature), but they’ve
got a big day ahead of them, while Zero Two ditches her handlers.
All of this leads up to Hiro following an apparent trail to the
site’s lake and his first encounter with our leading lady.
Before I get into that encounter, some words about Hiro in general, and the construction of the show. In Revisions I recognized that they tried to make the lead character the antithesis of Shinji Ikari, and over-corrected by making him insanely grating in his self-important gung-ho nature as opposed to Shinji’s depressive reticence. Hiro, in my opinion, is the Anti-Shinji done right. He’s decisive, eager, and active – qualities his famous predecessor has the opposite of by far – but he also remains a reasonable character in his own right, rather than allowing the interest in not being Shinji to eclipse his entire persona. And, rather than being presented as a delusional maniac, he’s challenged with regards to his strengths and weaknesses. The fact that we start with him at his lowest point and a legitimate lowest point at that, the bottom of a multi-year slide in which he basically had his reason for being stripped away from, helps capture some of the pathos that Shinji had while still leaving Hiro’s journey distinct.
Talking about Hiro this way gives us one of the things that has to be addressed about Darling in the Franxx though: it may be original, but it’s also clearly a show where the creators took in other media and put a lot of that into their works, sometimes essentially unfiltered. It’s got Gurren Lagann’s environment, Mechas kitbashed from Eureka Seven and Star Driver, some Final Fantasy 7 vibes, and a deep and abiding interest in Neon Genesis Evangelion that I’m just going to come out and say is downright unhealthy. Darling in the Franxx isn’t trying to be a remix of Eva the way that RahXephon was, but there are places where it blatantly copies even more than RahXephon did, lifting iconic shots and even the occasional episode plot directly from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Franxx may “steal” from a much broader spectrum of shows than just Evangelion, correcting RahXephon’s mistake in that regard, but boy does it ever know how to steal from Eva.
Now, the material lifted from
Evangelion, especially when it comes to writing rather than a shot
that could be a legitimate homage, comes off as training wheels for a
show that doesn’t need them in the least… but I will actually
defend, to an extent, the general level of “bits and pieces from
everywhere” that you see in Darling in the Franxx.
First, most of those pieces are fairly fully remixed, with Darling in the Franxx bring its own new spins to old ideas. True, you could say that Hiro and Zero Two are kind of like if Dominic and Anemone had leading roles rather than Renton and Eureka – down to their status as a young soldier and experimental super-pilot paired up for much of the show’s run time as well as their hair colors – but that frankly does a grave disservice to the characters. It’s easy to point out the Evangelion parts, but for better or worse even the biggest and worst cases of cloning in that regard are seen from different angles. Second, there’s a degree to which I have to ask… is there even really a problem? OK, obviously you can’t have one work straight-out plagiarizing a predecessor and passing it off as original content, but even strong inspirations can be healthy if they’re used well. Evangelion had its real copycat in RahXephon, which worked out surprisingly well all things considered. Yuki Yuna is a Hero quite obviously flowed pretty directly from Madoka Magica, but the different scenario and focus of the show gave it a feel that really belonged only to Yuki Yuna and not Madoka. Hell, it’s not just modern work or anime that does this: Dracula (the Bram Stoker novel) is the much better known (and longer) take on themes and even specific images that were present in the earlier Carmilla. It’s less about the parts you use and more about how you use them.
In a sense, Darling in the Franxx
reminds me on a constructive level of the original Star Wars movies,
as both works cannibalize just about everything that came before
them. Star Wars took bits from Kurosawa films and Flash Gordon
serials and modern-era war stories and stitched it together with some
basic if timeless philosophy and a hell of a lot of great acting to
create something new and captivating. Star Wars, however, has the
advantage of its sources being more obscure than its results, so the
average viewer won’t necessarily notice how much came in whole or in
part from here or there. Darling in the Franxx made more mistakes in
its handling of inspirations and how to express them, but I still
don’t think that it’s right to judge it just for those inspirations
existing.
There will be plenty of judging for how
they were used later, just not on that they were used at all.
In any case, a fateful meeting. At the
side of the lake, Hiro finds some discarded clothes. He then notices
motion, as Zero Two surfaces briefly and then dives below the water.
Having realized someone is there, and noticing she’s not coming up,
he rushes into the lake, fearing that the person might be drowning.
Zero Two, however, erupts from the water in front of him, naked and
having caught a fish in her mouth, affording Hiro an embarrassing
(exhilarating) good look not just at her body, but also the fact that
she has horns, which catch his attention very well.
The conversation that follows is… not
as awkward as you might expect. Hiro is embarrassed, but Zero Two
seems largely unfazed, and takes things with good humor, getting
dressed quickly so they can really talk face to face, and despite
teasing him about being a ‘pervert’ understanding and respecting that
his motivation rushing in was pretty wholesome. She bonds a little
and gives him some advice about making a place for himself in the
world rather than just being handed one before her handlers
(including her current co-pilot, who’s not in great condition) arrive
and usher her off. During this time, we also start to get a sense of
just how odd she is, as her mannerisms go beyond quirky to kind of
nonhuman and strange. She sniffs Hiro like a wary animal at first,
and eventually licks him and comments on the taste as though it’s a
natural thing to her. Despite her physical differences from human
being extremely minor in terms of visuals (her eyes are a little
different, she has her iconic horns, and her teeth are sharp when
they get detail. I guess you could count the pink hair, but this is
anime, I kind of take pink hair in stride.) she really does end up
set apart. Not so much that you can’t find it relatable or
endearing, but enough that you absolutely do notice that she’s not
acting how a person acts in a lot of ways.
From there, we follow Squad 13 (Hiro’s
friends and classmates) in their ceremony, activating their mechas
for real and receiving a speech from the enigmatic masked leader of
their society, a figure they only know as Papa, before events call
for a stall to that ceremony.
Meanwhile, Hiro is on the outer wall,
preparing to head out with his former (also flunked) partner, but she
doesn’t let him, shoving him out of and away from the transport pod
as it heads on its way. It takes seconds to bring us to the next
event, but I’m going to pause here to mention that a summary of
events does not do justice to the weird dystopian vibes that we’ve
gotten with this opening.
The world we’re presented with is one
that’s quite mysterious. We seem to have an authoritarian cult of
personality centered around Papa, a dead desert world (We don’t even
strictly know it’s Earth at this point) where humans live in domed
“Plantation” cities and giant kaiju monsters that need big robots
to fight roam the wastes, and a society that raises children for no
other purpose than to be soldiers. We don’t know what the ranks of
the “Adults” are like but we do know that there’s something
special about them and that even the average handlers don’t seem to
have or be willing to give all the answers. And, crucially, we’re
starting with a cast that’s totally indoctrinated into this strange
way of living. For them, there’s nothing wrong about any of this:
they exist to pilot Franxx mechas, and that’s just the way it should
be. It’s a very different take than the look at a screwed up system
in most other shows, because usually we default to following the
rebels and outcasts, those who know, either rightly or just in their
heart somehow, that their world is wrong.
And there’s a huge degree to which we,
the audience, don’t have the answers about this world. Darling in
the Franxx, at least early on, does a good job at showing you things
that make you feel and I think makes the right choice when it doesn’t
exposit anything about its reality, instead immersing you in the
scenario and letting you figure it out for yourself. This works in
large part because the characters are fundamentally ignorant
themselves. The audience has the perspective, knowing what a
“normal” society looks like, to know that the characters are
clearly ignorant, but we don’t have the evidence to put together what
the true answers are to the questions that the characters aren’t
asking, allowing us to experience both the dramatic irony of the
situation and the mystery of it.
In any case, I mentioned the giant
kaiju monsters? Those are Klaxosaurs, and one of them shows up,
attacking first the transport that Hiro’s old partner was in, and
then the Plantation as a whole. Doctor Franxx (inventor of the
mechas, ancient cyborg and part-time dirty old man) marvels over the
creature as it wreaks destruction. Hiro runs onward, hoping against
hope to do something while giving us a great sense of scale at the
same time, and wouldn’t you know it, he gets the chance. A Franxx
mecha, looking like a predatory animal, comes out of the mist and
dust to fight the Klaxosaur, and gets thrashed, crashing into the
outer wall of the plantation and nearly squishing Hiro in the
process. The cockpit opens, and two figures seem to emerge: Zero
two, bloodied, and her co-pilot, deceased. She and Hiro have a brief
conversation. He tries to insist that she should stand down, since
she’s hurt and alone, but that doesn’t take since she has her duty
and ‘is always alone’. Failing that, Hiro may be a dropout but he’s
better then nothing, and he offers himself to ride with her. She
warns him that he might die, but the way he sees the world he was
basically already a dead man walking for being unable to pilot, so
that settles that. In one of the biggest anti-Shinji moments, Hiro
loudly fights and pleads to get in the robot, and sure enough, Zero
Two likes the cut of his jib. She pulls him inside with a kiss,
embrace, and declaration that he’s now her ‘darling’… and what
follows in that cockpit we don’t see.
Outside, however, the result is clear.
The mecha, Strelizia, transforms – practically magical girl style –
into a humanoid form to swelling, operatic music, and it’s time for
round two against the attacking Klaxosaur.
Now seems as good a time as any to
highlight one of the good things about this show: the music. Now,
I’m not an extremely musical person, and often don’t notice the BGM
and sound design in a show unless it’s got problems, like how certain
shows (such as RahXephon) could be overscored. Musical numbers are
one thing, but usually general background music is fairly ‘invisible’
to me. Not so for Darling in the Franxx. Favorite show or no I
can’t recommend the production entirely without reservation, but I
can offer that distinction to the OST, especially since, for its own
sake, it ended up being one that I looked up to listen to on its own,
finding the superlative OP and ED songs, the swelling operatic tracks
used in scenes like Strelizia’s transformation, and hours more
including a number of memorable tracks ranging from quiet pieces to
uneasy techno-scifi ambiance to bombastic themes. It really is worth
a listen to.
In any case, we get a pretty good
action sequence where Strelizia, presumably with Hiro and Zero Two in
tandem control, takes down the Klaxosaur. When the dust settles,
Hiro’s unconscious but alive and Zero Two is introduced to Squad 13
as a member of the special defense force and a Klaxosaur-Human
Hybrid… by all indications the storied Partner Killer that they
were talking about earlier, who now says Hiro is her ‘darling’. Thus
ends the first episode.
As openings go, the first episode of
Darling in the Franxx is a good one as it shows off many of the
show’s strengths and conceals its weaknesses. It gives us a window
into the world that’s been build, and works to make a quick
connection that makes the viewer want to see more – because as much
as you understand Hiro’s motivations and the immediate stakes of the
action on screen, there are a lot more questions that you’ll have to
watch on to get answers to.
In a sense, this opening (episode 1 in
particular and the first arc that this week’s entry is concerned with
in general) might actually be too good; it sets some extremely high
expectations that, in a lot of ways, the show can’t ultimately pay
off on. It’s easy to make a bad show, but to really disappoint
people requires first establishing high expectations. And while I
may not have been totally disappointed with the show as a finished
thing, I do very much understand those who were.
Episode 2 sees us spending some time
with the rest of Squad 13, so let’s take a moment to talk about them,
as is a fairly big deal.
Darling in the Franxx is not an ensemble the same way that KagePro is, but there are some deep similarities between the casts. I doubt Franxx looked at KagePro the way it looked at its in-genre predecessors, but knowing and appreciating both it’s hard to not draw comparisons. The most important comparison though is not one of the ones between individual characters, but sort of a compare-contrast in how the shows treat and regard their casts. In both cases, the characters you encounter have an immediate surface character that makes them loud and memorable, but will go on to, at least for the most part, play more subtle notes when given time to really grow. But, again, Franxx is far more focused on its leads for better or worse. On one hand, this means that the top three characters get better individual study than the characters in Mekakucity Actors (KagePro as a whole has a lot more material across its versions, letting its characters grow more than any character in a 24-episode anime could), but on the other hand this means the secondary characters do spend actually quite a lot of time reliant on their gimmicks. So, we’ll get to their growth arcs when we get to them, but for the time being, let’s sound off their archetypes.
Ichigo isn’t exactly one of the
“support” characters. She’s basically our third lead character,
and she gets the screen time and emotional complexity that comes with
such a title. I dare say we learn at least as much about her as a
person as we do about Hiro. Ichigo is the squad leader, and she
tries to take her responsibilities seriously despite being, when we
get down to it, a kid who’s probably not ready for the degree of
authority she’s given. She’s very serious, hard, and uncompromising,
but it’s also easy to see that she does care about the wellbeing of
others… just more on her own terms than on theirs, with a sort of
feel that depending on the exact scenario can come off as a genuinely
caring commanding officer trying to do her best or, at her worst, a
controlling narcissist. On the whole she sifts out much more on the
positive end, but she’s got a lot of growing to do, especially when
it comes to having conflicts of interest.
Because, critically, Ichigo has a very
clear and very deep crush on Hiro. If she were to be confined to an
archetype, she’d be the Childhood Friend – a romance stock
character more than an action one, but that’s the angle that drives a
lot of her behavior throughout the show, as it causes her to (not
without reason) hold both concern and jealousy very deep.
Ichigo’s partner is Goro, and his type
is very much the voice of reason. He’s calm, collected, observant,
and wise. He carries a torch for Ichigo, but he doesn’t let that get
in the way of trying to make the best of the present, both in terms
of his relationship with his partner and in terms of the missions and
reality they face. If the show ever needs someone to be rational and
kind, it’s down to Goro rather than the handlers.
For our next pair, Zorome is tiny and
arrogant, a comical Napoleon. Basically, whenever something goes
wrong and somebody needs to be the victim for comedy, you can expect
it to be Zorome. Beyond that, though, he has a secondary role that’s
apparent from early on: Zorome is the loyalist. Remember, we’re
dealing with a dystopia story as well as an action show and a
romance, and Zorome is more at home in that side of the show, playing
to type as the “normal” individual who buys all the promises and
lies hook, line, and sinker. He loudly believes in Papa, and looks
forward to the day when winning accolades (as he is “sure” to;
recall comically prideful) earns him the status of Adult. His
partner is Miku, who is a bit of a tsundere if her visual design
wasn’t enough of a hint. Out of all the characters she’s probably
the one who gets the least screen time, and that’s kind of a shame:
I’d actually have liked to see more of what Miku is like underneath
her short fuse and continual frustration.
Less initially impressive is our next
pair. Kokoro comes off as the “sweet girly girl” to begin with.
She’s soft-spoken and kind and more traditionally feminine than the
other girls, since she doesn’t realy feel like a fighter. She comes
more into her own late in the show. Her partner is Futoshi, who is
fat. You all know the “fat kid” stereotypes, and he does kind of
live them. When food isn’t in question, though, he’s sort of the
bargain-bin off-brand Goro: generally nice, empathetic, and even
generous, but with none of Goro’s suave cool. Futoshi isn’t
beautiful in his earnestness, but there are a few points where you do
at least have to give him credit for trying. I guess he’s at least
jolly fat rather than greedy fat.
Finally, we come to our last pair.
Ikuno is sharp, no-nonsense, and doesn’t talk much, and at least
early on she’s kind of in the same “Where’s my character?” boat
as Kokoro, just with an archetype that gives her fewer lines.
Essentially, she comes off as being kind of like Ichigo if all of
Ichigo’s empathy both good and bad was surgically removed. Her
partner, Mitsuru, is even more unpleasant. At the start of the show
he’s set up as a spiteful, envious bully driven by a petty desire to
see Hiro fail. His venom comes off as very much unjustified; he has
less reason to dislike Hiro than, say, Goro does, and despite overall
not having Zorome’s glory-hound attitude, he outdoes Zorome when it
comes to getting aggressive about such matters. If you come to hate
Mitsuru’s guts as the show goes forward, don’t worry, I did as well.
As a matter of reference, the Franxx
units seem to be tied to the girls of the pair, and are named after
flowers. In addition to Zero Two’s Strelizia, Ichigo pilots
Delphinium, Miku has Argentea, Ikuno has Chlorophytum, and Kokoro has
Genista.
I’ve tried to not spoil later
developments for any of these characters, in part because none of
them really start to come into their own until the first arc is done.
The opening six episodes are all about our leads; Episode 1 was
about Hiro and Zero Two, Episode 2 more belongs to Ichigo, especially
in its second half.
Starting off, we learn that Hiro has no
memory of anything that transpired once he was inside Strelizia,
essentially being left exactly as in-the-dark as the audience, and
there’s a legitimate question as to whether he actually piloted or
not. Zero Two shows up for breakfast with the team, expertly
disdaining anyone but Hiro, deflecting questions, drowning her food
in honey, and using Zorome as a towel when he gets boastful. After
she leaves we follow her and find that much like her bath that led to
the first meeting with Hiro, having breakfast with her darling was
essentially a case of her flaunting the rules because she seems to
know she won’t be punished for at least this level of willful
disobedience. Certainly, given the rumors of the “Partner Killer”
and her being said to have Klaxosaur blood, she’s something special
and not easily cast aside, as humanity’s high council (APE, a bunch
of robed and masked goons who spend most of the show being the same
sort of vaguely ominous as SEELE).
After Squad 13 conducts some real
start-up tests of their own, Ichigo confronts Zero Two for the first
of what will be many times. Now, I don’t exactly hold this against
the show; each time Ichigo has basically this same talk with Zero Two
it is in a different context with different information and some
subtleties in the emotions… but we do get a few of these
conversations that basically amount to Ichigo telling Zero Two to
stay away from Hiro and Zero Two essentially telling Ichigo to sod
off and mind her own business. This first one is, if you can believe
it, the most cordial of the lot: Ichigo knows that Zero Two is both a
rival in affections (whether she admits that or not) and the Partner
Killer who will, if the rumors are true, end Hiro’s life the third
time he rides with her if not sooner (a fact Hiro seems all too
willing to accept)… but her Partner Killer status is at the rumor
level, she hasn’t really entrenched herself with Hiro, and she did
save their bacon by dispatching the Klaxosaur in episode 1. Zero two
first challenges Ichigo on what her stake is, and then tastes her the
same way she did Hiro at first. (For the record, Ichigo tastes sweet,
which Zero Two likes) Lick is super-effective and leaves Ichigo
stunned in shock long enough for Zero Two to exit the scene.
After a scuffle between Hiro and Zorome
(the latter goaded on by Mitsuru), we get the “main event” of the
episode: a mock battle trial will be held to see just how well former
washout Hiro can really pilot an ordinary Franxx. Naturally, Zorome
volunteers to stand as Hiro’s opponent after their fight, while
Ichigo steps up to be his partner. Things… don’t go terribly well.
Hiro is briefly able to connect with Ichigo, but the connection soon
falters and breaks, leaving them in the darkened cockpit of Ichigo’s
Franxx, Delphinium. Zorome gloats over his disabled foe, but his
savage arrogance causes his connection with Miku to break at a
critical moment. In Delphinium, Ichigo struggles to get Hiro going
and, grilling him on what little he remembers of his ride with Zero
Two, ends up kissing him… to no avail. As Zorome tries to
reassert, Ichigo manages a moment of solo control over her Franxx
(something that Zero Two seems to do fairly effortlessly but here and
elsewhere we see other female pilots can do for a second with great
stress and supposedly risk) and gets a hit in. With both machines
disabled, the battle is declared a draw, and Ichigo mopes about just
how badly her ride with dear Hiro went. Zero Two, who was watching,
leaves seeming quite smug, and why shouldn’t she be? This episode
went a long way to prove (fully proved, in the context of the first
arc) that Zero Two is the only one for Hiro.
Which takes us along to episode 3, the
point of which seems to be proving the opposite statement: that Hiro
is the only one for Zero Two. Like the previous episode it’s sort of
first half character-building talking, second half character-building
action. It starts with a flashback where we learn that the kids all
got their names from Hiro’s wordplay. Yeah, something I hadn’t
exactly addressed yet is that Parasites weren’t normally given names;
rather they have code numbers. Zero Two is of course Code 002, while
Ichigo is 015, Hiro 016, Goro 056, Kokoro 556, and so on. Their
names are all plays on the numbers of their codes, and aren’t
officially recognized. Learning that this is to the point of coming
from Hiro, rather than any actual caretaker, is an extra window into
the degree that these kids are abused and manipulated even if they
don’t seem like it at first.
In the present, there’s a good deal of
fallout from the mock battle, including both Hiro and Ichigo now
having an awkward secret with regards to their kiss (though it weighs
more on Ichigo) and serious doubts all around about Hiro’s ability
and whether or not riding with Zero Two was a fluke. Importantly, we
also have a scene between Hiro and Zero Two where she takes him to a
balcony overlooking the “Plantation” city they protect (for the
record, the Plantations appear to be mobile sealed domes, with the
glass-topped Parasite dwelling on top, so it looks like a glowing
golden cityscape in a dark cave from that perspective) and they have
a brief philosophical exchange.
This little sequence may actually be
the best single non-action scene in the show. It’s only a couple
minutes at most, but there is a lot going on and I’ll have to take it
down. The scene starts with Hiro finding Zero Two napping, and being
again enthralled by her horns. Whether she was playing possum or
just woke up as he approached, she calls him a pervert again, but
also reveals that’s probably a good thing for a Parasite (with the
authority for that information apparently coming from Doctor Franxx).
They walk and talk a little bit, but Hiro is unable to pass through
an automated checkpoint that Zero Two’s S-rank clearance allows her
to walk through trivially. Hiro is resigned to his fate, but Zero
Two just steps back through and walks him in, crossing the barrier
for both of them. That brings them to the balcony.
And, honestly, to call it a balcony
might be generous. It’s practically a ledge, with a long beam
extending from it, out over the abyssal depths surrounding the
glowing city. The inhabited portion of the Plantation looks
practically unreal, almost like something out of TRON (but in a
honey-gold that said film would never use), a hologram or a mirage.
The scale, though, is very real a vast and yawning gulf, leaving us
on a jetty of reality over a golden dream, assuredly not one that it
would be pleasant to literally fall into. The view, both beautiful
and intimidating, wows Hiro as well as the audience.
In that setting Hiro offers to think up
a proper name for Zero Two, but she’s fine the way she is. She goes
over the railing and out on the beam as this talk continues. She
laments both that the city is, to her, lifeless, and that their own
fates (hers and Hiro’s) are also caught in something of a dead end,
destined to some day be forgotten – no name will matter once they
inevitably die. Hiro tries to call her back, his experience with the
balcony having turned from wonder to worry as she stands out there on
a perilous foothold over nothing, and in return Zero Two asks if he’d
like to run away with her. Before Hiro can really answer, she hops
back over and says she was kidding, and the scene ends.
There is a LOT to unpack here,
especially in the few lines that Hiro and Zero Two have out on the
balcony. Recall, at this point we don’t know what’s up with Adults,
and really haven’t seen any folks identified as such except the High
Council (the handlers and Doctor Franxx seem to be special cases), so
Zero Two’s perspective on the plantation city, both the beautiful
vista she shows and the words she offers about how lifeless and
stifling it is, are our first real views of what the Plantation is
like, which given the dystopia and mystery is very intriguing.
Then there’s Zero Two’s statements on
death. There are several points where Zero Two seems to express a
deep lack of empathy saying things like “weaklings die” and
refusing to have any real pity for those in mortal danger. There’s
even a particularly pointed moment of that later in the same episode
here. However, we’re primed for that with her statements about
herself: she doesn’t even seem to rate herself as worthy of a name, a
perspective that goes a long way towards excusing her coldness to
others. It’s asking a lot to expect her to have sympathy for someone
else when she can’t have sympathy for herself, a moment that also
serves as our first real view that Zero Two is herself wounded and
hurting beneath her usually zany and chipper exterior, in ways much
more profound than childish tantrums when faced with unpleasant
stimulus.
This is part of what I think makes Zero
Two herself such an effective character: She’s fun to watch, and her
fun moments are very legitimate and earnest rather than forced, but
she also has a much deeper and more tangled story that’s revealed
only in bits and pieces, hints and scraps. We follow her for much of
the show not entirely because we empathize with her (which is
normally a good way to follow along with a character) but because
she’s a mystery that we dearly want to see more of the solution to.
It’s a character writing strategy that is tried far more often than it works. Inori is probably a prototypical example of one of the more common failures of trying to write a mysterious character: Inori is too mysterious, and leaves us with nothing to latch on to and get invested in for far too much of the show, so that the eventual picture we get of her inner self, while good, is too little and too late to really salvage her arc. A lot of this comes down to the fact that she tries to express her mysterious nature through having a flat affect, so that you can’t tell what she’s thinking or feeling most of the time. Zero Two is the exact opposite. I don’t think she delivers a single word with a flat affect, and you can often tell what she’s thinking and feeling in the moment. When she’s happy, angry, or depressed ,she shows us how she feels. When she tries to hide something, we don’t necessarily see right through her to what she’s hiding, but we can tell that something is bothering her. The big mystery with Zero Two is not what she thinks or feels, but why she thinks and feels the way she does. Because of that, we can connect with her as a likable, enjoyable character while still having a mystery to draw us deeper. And this little scene overlooking the Plantation’s city is basically a kickoff for really studying her at depth, rather than just watching her do her thing.
For the second half of the episode, we
get Squad 13 sent on a real mission, clearing Klaxosaurs (expected to
be small and weak ones) out of an underground site. In the leadup,
Mitsuru and Ikuno fail to connect properly, causing them to be
benched for the mission, while Strelizia is not called on to launch
into battle, so Zero Two and Hiro are watching from the command
station as well. At first things look pretty good, but the numbers
and abilities of their foes are such that the squad is soon
overwhelmed and forced into a retreat, a proposition that’s easier
said than done as Miku is knocked unconscious, taking Argentea out of
the fight and leaving the rest struggling to hold the door against
the Klaxosaur menace.
Hiro, eager to save his friends, offers
to ride out with Zero Two, but is denied by the authorities on the
grounds that he’s not a properly registered pilot, even as Zero Two
reminds the people in charge that the defense force could be wiped
out without her (as little as she personally cares). Mitsuru,
naturally given his envy, volunteers to ride in Hiro’s place since
he’s a registered pilot, a notion that Zero Two is initially quite
opposed to. She relents when Hiro begs her to go so that the others
can be saved. Mitsuru mocks Hiro like the horrible person he is at
this point, promising to take his place with smug satisfaction even
when the people he’s closest to are in mortal danger, and Hiro
doesn’t fail to feel the sting of wishing he were headed out with
Zero Two himself.
Strelizia arrives on scene just about
as Miku (and Argentea) comes to and Delphinium falters (thanks to
Ichigo getting mentally hung up on her ride with Hiro, hurting her
connection with Goro) and clears out the first wave effectively.
Mitsuru revels in the feelings of power but then, as the rest of the
squad retreats successfully, Zero Two takes the kid gloves off.
We don’t see a lot of what she does
before being retrieved, but by the end of it only Zero Two is well
enough to walk out of Strelizia under her own power: Mitsuru is
half-dead and unconscious, to which Zero Two makes the episode’s
statement: no one but Hiro is suited to being her darling.
Mitsuru got what was coming to him and
more. In the next episode, he starts to recover… but not really.
He’s bedridden for a time and shell-shocked, left raving about how
Zero Two is a demon, who was out to kill him, destroying flesh and
soul alike with a smile on her face. The account practically turns
Mitsuru from a smug and envious bully into your typical Lovecraft
narrator at the point where the monster has taken a bite, but it’s
still hard to feel sorry for him under the circumstances.
What’s not hard is seeing how this
gives Hiro pause. Zero Two is, recall, known as the Partner Killer.
It’s Mitsuru’s experience, not Hiro’s being undamaged if amnesiac for
the event, that’s more what you’d expect based on her reputation. It
seems like it might not matter though, as Zero Two is ready to be
recalled to the front line with no consideration for Hiro. She’s not
happy about this, caring about little other than her darling.
There’s also the fact, as Ichigo
acknowledges (if for a very different angle) that right now piloting
with Zero Two is looking like an upgrade to life expectancy compared
to the rest of the squad, who are kind of 0 for 1 on real missions
without a near-death experience.
Later, Zero Two corners Hiro as he
tries to work matters out, again (and more seriously) asking if he
wants to run away with her. In a low state, she takes his stunned
silence as possibly seeing her as a monster like ‘everyone else’
does, but the tense scene is interrupted by an alarm. Squad 13
launches to intercept a burrowing Klaxosaur, which once again gives
them trouble.
As an aside, every other fighting force
in this show kind of jobs for Zero Two in Strelizia, but I’ve
actually found that to kind of be okay? Squad 13 going 0 for 2 on
the “not needing to be rescued” score isn’t great, but on the
other hand they are still just starting out, and do get better as the
show progresses, which goes a long way to forgiving the baby steps
they take right now. It also helps that though they get overwhelmed
in both of their first two outings, the action choreography, which is
top-notch, does a lot of work to convince the viewer that it’s
essentially through no fault of their own, with the enemy getting a
moment of surprise or displaying powers that no one was briefed on.
More importantly, while it’s nice for
the hero to be mortal and take a loss every now and then, Zero Two’s
invincibility on the battlefield (at least when properly paired with
Hiro) helps reinforce that her worst enemy isn’t any Klaxosaur, it’s
herself.
This ties in to one of my more
overarching thoughts about the show, one that I’ll probably come back
to throughout these reviews: Darling in the Franxx may have some
really good action, but at its core it’s not an action show.
Essentially, it has the Evangelion formula entirely backwards.
Evangelion, which was at its core more of an action show if one with
some very good character drama, framed most episodes around a big
set-piece battle with a particular angel, giving us an action problem
that had to be resolved through both the well-executed combat and
occasionally some sort of personal growth or sacrifice on the side of
our heroes. Darling in the Franxx is instead a character drama with
some compelling action, and the way it’s structured support this:
Action moments serve as punctuation, the lead-in or more often end of
a statement that’s made in the talking scenes, by the characters and
about the characters.
In an action show, the lead character
has to be challenged by the action. Weak or strong, they have to
fight foes that they can’t just brute force their way through, since
that’s what keeps the drama and the interest of the audience going.
In a drama, the characters need to be challenged by their emotions or
thoughts, and placed in situations where they suffer some sort of
heartache or strife and need to work to overcome it. Since Darling
in the Franxx works more as a drama, Zero Two can chew up all the
Klaxosaurs she wants. The drama is coming from how she struggles
with concepts of love, friendship, and humanity, not whether or not
she’ll be able to take down the screaming lizard of the week. Since
there is a blend, this is a generalization to which you can find
exceptions (and in fact we’re cruising for one this review-week) just
like you can find exceptions where the drama carries the day in a
dramatic action show like Evangelion, but on the whole I do think
that’s the point. In that way, Darling in the Franxx is more similar
to RahXephon or Eureka Seven than it is to Eva or Gurren Lagann.
In any case, for now Squad 13 is in
trouble. Zero Two seems ready to help again, this time with her
Darling like she wants, but she’s rather directly informed that she’s
grounded. And, for good measure, that she’s been taken back out to
the true front lines, with an armed escort to show her out. Hiro
doesn’t manage to speak up before she’s marched out of the room, and
there has a brief conversation with one of their caretakers, Nana,
who gives him a little insight into the unfortunate side of Zero
Two’s fate as the “Partner Killer” and a special fighter. He
runs out of the room in pursuit and catches up to Zero Two in the
halls, shouting to her from the wrong side of a barrier he can’t pass
that he’s finally worked it out: he doesn’t care that she’s not
human, and when the chips are down it’s not even that he wants to
pilot a Franxx: he wants to pilot with her, and begs her to stay.
And that is enough to snap Zero Two out
of her funk. She kicks the ass of the guards, gets over to Hiro with
some fancy acrobatics and brute-force gunplay, and takes him out to
Strelizia literally dancing through the security checkpoints in a
bigger and bolder callback to the previous episode. Hiro’s a little
nervous to pilot for real, but he’s determined and Zero Two offers
him some very earnest encouragement as they set out, connecting and
flying out to the battle site, spewing enough innuendos along the way
that I think the show used up its entire supply in a moment that
wraps around from cringe-inducing to funny several times.
Say what you want, this girl is a ton
of fun to watch.
Which, to an extent, brings me to my
next aside. A lot of the time, how you approach something can color
how you see it. Typically, if you go into a work angry, you’ll find
every minute imperfection and use them to paint a picture to yourself
of failure. If you go in with a more accepting or forgiving mood,
you’ll probably be more pleased despite problems. This applies to
elements of shows as well. For example, I feel like viewers who go
into the famous ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion primed by being
told that it’s a masterpiece will probably not just express but feel
better about it than people primed by being told that it’s a mess.
Of course, this effect only goes so
far. Careful analysis and long consideration will allow you to get
over whatever starting bias you came with, and if something’s really
bad, or really speaks to you, that will probably cut through any
primed point of view you might have. You’ll see this a lot in the
negative, especially out of me: look for phrases similar to “I
wanted to like this” or “I tried to like this” when talking
about how a work squandered the goodwill and benefit of the doubt
that I gave it at first. That’s sort of my default: in the absence
of other influence, I would generally rather find some degree of
enjoyment in what I watch than not. Why do I bring that up now?
Because against the laundry list of “I wanted to like…” there’s
one sample of the opposite that really stands out, in large part for
how utterly I was forced to do a half-circle on the topic: I wanted
to dislike Zero Two.
There are a few reasons for this.
First off, I initially started watching Darling in the Franxx at a
point where it was, I would say, just past the crest of its
popularity. The backlash had no doubt begun in some quarters, but by
in large the show had exploded out of the gate… and the face at the
forefront of all of that was (and still is) Zero Two. She was
everywhere, with a tide of fanart and appreciation that didn’t fail
to reach me even as I stood ignorant of the show’s actual content.
You might think this would prime me to think more fondly of the show
and its leading lady, but anyone who’s seen a really hyped fanbase in
action knows that it can be embittering to watch, and that’s kind of
where I landed. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to hate her, but I
was certainly in an unforgiving mood. Go ahead, character that
everyone seems to love, show me why you’re so special. Put on
display the reason why you’ve strode onto the scene like a colossus
and captured so many hearts and minds. It had better be bloody good,
though – if it’s just your figure than into the trash you go.
Second, I have a massive personal
weakness for Childhood Friend characters. I know they ‘never’ win
but I root for them all the same, time and time again. I always get
my hopes and usually get disappointed and left cheering for that poor
girl even as she has no chance. And Darling in the Franxx has
Ichigo, who opens up with the exact plea for my sympathy that every
childhood friend character has and that I keep falling for every
time.
Combine the two, and you have the recipe for a significant spite motivation to see the worst in Zero Two at just about every turn. It didn’t last long for me, and this moment in episode four was where I had to admit to myself that for me, there was no disliking Zero Two. She had depth and complexity, and beyond even that she had an extremely magnetic screen presence. Every moment the camera is on her through her she makes the most of – whether she’s being bitter or cheerful, she’s enjoyable to watch, and that’s a pretty tall order for any character, to be able to ace dramatic scenes and funny scenes and even switch between them on a moment’s notice. A lot of characters that do great drama (like Shinji Ikari) can be unpleasant to spend time with. It’s worth it, but it demands some work on the side of the audience to accept them. A lot of characters that bring a smile in a reliable way (like Chika Fujuwara) would fall apart if they had to carry heavier material. They’re still good characters and important for the story they’re in, but they can only take so much. That Zero Two manages both core strengths with none of the flaws of an over-specialist puts her in a truly rare category. Not one all her own – Akiho Senomiya and multiple Miyazaki characters manage off the top of my head – but one that’s always worth sitting up and taking note of.
In any case, once Strelizia flies in,
all the episode’s problems are soundly resolved: Extra muscle with
actual teamwork this time takes down the Klaxosaur, and the records
of the flight prove that Hiro is compatible with Zero Two and
Strelizia, including to the brass, which sees the orders that would
have split them up quietly rescinded. All is well… except for the
fact that if the Partner Killer story is true Hiro has only one ride
left, and a much larger battle looms on the horizon.
The next episode is all making that
sink in. At first there are the fluff elements: Zero Two being given
the tour since she’ll be around with the other Parasites and hopes
for Hiro’s elevation to full Parasite status and Mitsuru’s recovery
(he was limping his way to the cockpit last episode, and is taking
pills to deal with the fallout of his ride in this one). We expand
on the world more when, as part of the upcoming (and
Klaxosaur-attracting) operation to transfer fuel between two
Plantations, we meet up with the Parasites defending the other
Plantation – ones that embrace uniformity, having numbers rather
than names and not understanding how Squad 13 can act as such
individuals. They know who Hiro is, however, apparently being
something of a legend among the kids at the Gardens that raise them
all, and that seems to explain some of it to them. They also know
who Zero Two is, having fought alongside her before, and lost friends
to her reckless style, leaving the other squad deeply concerned about
the upcoming mission and the potential for more friendly fire.
On the darker side, Goro starts to
notice that Hiro isn’t doing as well as he looks to be. Hiro may put
on a show for everyone else, but Goro’s perceptive nature along with
the fact that they’re roommates lets him find out that Hiro has
suffered – a blue cyst or tumor has grown on his chest, and is
causing him deep pain. There’s little doubt this is the result of
riding with Zero Two, but Hiro manages to convince Goro, as his
friend, to not report it or spread it about.
The fact that Goro is someone we can
trust to keep his word lends dramatic irony to a following scene:
Ichigo confronts Zero Two over Hiro again. Unlike the last time,
things don’t go very well. Ichigo starts with a mild request that
she clearly wants to make more forcefully: asking Zero Two to go easy
on Hiro. Zero Two notes that Hiro chose his own path, at which point
Ichigo loses her temper and slaps Zero Two, calling her an inhuman
monster. Zero Two, quite naturally, doesn’t take it very well, and
looks every part the feral beast as she responds, demanding to know
just what Ichigo finds ‘human’. Ichigo clearly abandons the
conversation after that, unnerved at what she’s facing.
Here’s the thing. We, as the audience,
know that Ichigo is right to be worried for Hiro. Hiro, Goro, and
possibly (probably) Zero Two know it as well… but Ichigo doesn’t
know it at all. Goro never told her that Hiro was in trouble, and
outside his own room (shared with Goro) Hiro seemed to an excellent
job at hiding it to everyone, to the point where Mitsuru was left
raving about why only one of the two of them should suffer
consequences. Ichigo’s logical reasons for believing she needs to
make a statement here aren’t nonexistent, but they are fairly weak,
and she certainly steps out of line with how and how quickly she
escalates the situation.
There’s also the fact that Ichigo goes
to Zero Two in the dead of night, when everyone else is supposed to
be asleep, to make this request. She doesn’t talk to Hiro, or ask
what he wants, so Zero Two’s initial defense does kind of hold water.
This is especially true since we see a later scene with Hiro and
Zero Two together in confidence. He lets her see the scar, and she
says sadly that it must be painful, but also that she finds it
beautiful. She also gives him an out: “If you want off this ride,
now’s your chance.” Even on the eve of battle, even with her own
fate tied in, she lets Hiro knowingly choose the path he wants and
respects his choice; there’s no indication she would have ‘insisted’
in any way if Hiro had backed down then. She wouldn’t necessarily
have been ‘fine’ with that outcome – it would almost certainly put
her an extremely bad mood, somewhere in the spectrum between deep
depression and black rage, just like she’s elated when he says he’s
ready to ride with her again – but the framing and context tell us
that she would have accepted it.
And this is the basic contrast between
Zero Two and Ichigo that underscores their reactions for a long
stretch in the show: Zero Two wants what her darling wants. Ichigo
wants what she feels is best for her beloved. They’re both
expressing affection for Hiro, but they do it in very different ways.
Zero Two and Hiro have a relationship of equals, so she respects him
and resolves things with him directly, while disregarding Ichigo as a
‘bossy’ interloper. Ichigo places herself in a dominant position,
and rather than worrying about what Hiro thinks or feels takes the
situation to the subject she sees as having agency in the matter.
It’s odd to think about it, given their visual designs and other
character traits, but when it comes to interpersonal and especially
romantic relationships, it really is Ichigo that stands out as the
more dominant-type of the two main girls.
In any case, that largely rounds out
Episode 5. No battle today. The first four episodes each had their
first half being talking, character-building, and the establishment
of stakes while their second halves held the fighting and fallout.
Episode 5 and 6 have the same pattern as a unit; they’re two halves
of the same story within Darling in the Franxx. So, on to the
battle!
The episode is largely concerned
approaching the battle in waves, with the incoming consisting of
swarms of little Klaxosaurs as well as a truly gigantic (far larger
than any we’ve yet seen) hulk revealed to be a colossal Klaxosaur (as
though it could have been otherwise). Initially, the second
plantations regular squad fights the swarming little ones, showing
off their ordinary tactics – efficient, effective, but with little
ability to improvise. As the swarm advances, Klaxosaurs start
getting through, and Squad 13 takes them on. For once, the squad
doesn’t do terribly, even impressing their more orthodox peers with
their strength.
In all this, Strelizia is waiting in the wings, held in reserve by Ichigo’s order (made selfishly to shield Hiro) and out of some degree of good sense. Riding with Zero Two, Hiro’s condition continues to deteriorate. Zero Two asks him if he’s able to continue, which he repeatedly answers that he is, and even briefly questions why he fights, to which he gives a rather poor textbook answer… at first. They eventually leap into the fray, helping take the heat off of Squad 13. Ichigo orders them back, in this case even when the gigantic Klaxosaur transforms into its combat form and begins to make a scene. Even her squad-mades start to get cross with the absolute insistence in holding Strelizia back, but they do their jobs and immobilize the monster for the kill… which, after a moment of looking like a triumph, fails. Hiro falls unconscious, dying, while the Klaxosaur surges with renewed strength. Their link broken, Zero Two takes over fighting solo in a berserk rage (Strelizia devolving to its beast-like “Stampede Mode”). She doesn’t manage to do much, though, ending up in the way to be hit again and again as the enemy hammers into the Plantation’s armored wall. Ichigo also breaks, going dark as she’s overcome by the grief of assuming Hiro dead.
Then, we see the world from Hiro’s
point of view. For a time, he seems lost in memory (represented as
the send-off of his former partner), realizing that he’s dead or on
his way there. His vision of his old partner calls him a liar when
he says he’s content with this ending, and a vision of Zero Two walks
away in sorrow, with a framing calling back to an enigmatic scene
from episode 1.
Then, slowly, he comes to, seeing the
real world. Zero Two fighting on, bitter and hurting, and hopeless,
the battle not as finished as he thought it was. As she screams in
pain, the deep need to be there for her… seems to cause Hiro’s
physical condition to improve. The creeping blue veins that had been
taking him over recede, and he’s able to move more and more freely.
I… don’t really have an explanation
for this. He comes back from death’s door to embrace Zero Two and
really connect with her purely through the power of heart. I don’t
exactly mind this, per say – the scene is well paced and well
executed, with powerful visuals that really sell both the pain and
Catharsis. When Hiro is halfway across the Styx, so to speak, you
get the sense of loss and regret. When we see Zero Two fighting on
alone, and Hiro realizes that this is what she’s always had to do
when a partner leaves her, we understand the pain. And when Hiro
finishes reviving and lets her know that everything’s going to be
alright and that she doesn’t have to be alone, it’s written and shot
and acted perfectly to make the audience experience that powerful
catharsis.
But, as good as the scene is, it’s one that really does fall apart if you take a closer look at it, out of the moment. I suppose Hiro’s ailment was fairly poorly defined to begin with, so it’s not completely beyond the pale that it might be able to be overcome with a powerful will, but that’s not the universe or scenario that Darling in the Franxx had largely established. That kind of thing works in Sailor Moon and it works in Gurren Lagann, but Sailor Moon was operatic and fanciful and largely based in feelings having power, and Gurren Lagann was bombastic and irreverent and ran on rule of cool pretty much from the beginning. Darling in the Franxx felt – and feels from this point on as well – much more grounded. At least in some ways.
I don’t reject it utterly, especially
since it’s not the only moment that goes to this level of
dramatization where one’s emotions and bond can say “screw the
rules” to physical reality and it does it least tie in a little bit
to the connection needed to operate a Franxx to begin with and how
everything the characters do is to an extent predicated on their
mental state… but it is head and shoulders above the rest of the
arc and most of the show in terms of what’s goofy.
Hiro also gives a new answer to the
question from earlier: he’s found a new reason to fight, now wanting
to be Zero Two’s wings, so they can truly soar together, connecting
us back to the image of the Jian that the two of them narrated
opposite views on in episode one. And sure enough, he does it. When
Strelizia awakens, back in humanoid form, they spear the titanic
Klaxosaur and sprout giant wings of light to take it up into the sky
as they drive through the core of the monster. I’d complain here,
but if you accept Hiro resurrecting himself then you accept what
follows, it’s no less earned.
And that’s pretty much where we end. With the boss monster defeated, the fight is over. Doctor Franxx watches with proud wonder, hoping Zero Two’s wish can come true. After the battle, Ichigo gets weepy and embraces Hiro while the rest of Squad 13 offers their congratulations. Zero Two speaks aside and says she has to kill more Klaxosaurs still, and some mysterious blonde kid appears, looking over the battlefield from a distance, to declare that things are just getting interesting. The show wants you to know there’s more, but it’s also very clearly closing the book on a meaningful ‘chunk’ of material that, from Episode 1 to Episode 6, told something of a complete story. I feel like you could watch through just these episodes, stop here, and come away no less satisfied than many other shows would leave you at the end of their entire run. For an exact example, Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka had a less profound climax and wasted a ton more time – almost an entire episode as opposed to a minute or two tops – setting up for a followup that, in that show’s case, was not guaranteed to be coming down the pipeline (and as of this writing doesn’t look likely to ever emerge in anime form).
This is the point in the review where I
would normally give a pithy summation of a show and assign it a
letter grade. The letter grade, in this case, would be premature.
As much as episodes 1-6 watch like a short show or long movie on
their own, they are only the first 6 episodes of a 24 episode anime.
All of that is Darling in the Franxx, I don’t get to separate out
bits and grade them separately.
I will do the summation, though: This
is the sequence that really captured people the first time around,
myself included. It’s big and operatic, with already three quite
compelling leading characters, full of mystery and action. The
mecha-versus-monsters fighting is great. The emotional drama is
heavy and well-considered. The setting is intricate, beautiful, and
strange. You have enough questions to want, even need to go onward,
but also enough answers to be fully invested in the present. If
somehow you watch the first six episodes of Darling in the Franxx
unspoiled as to what’s coming down the pipeline and find that you’re
not engrossed… I strongly counsel you to cut your losses and end it
here, because this opening is so well and carefully crafted that I
can’t really see not liking it and then somehow turning around to
like what comes after. More likely, it’s just not your cup of tea.
It’s not strictly all of the show’s best material – there’s some
real dynamite stuff later – but it is the most consistent entire
package, showing off the majority of the show’s strengths without the
weaknesses that later come alongside them.
In short, it’s a tough act to follow,
and I’ll be looking into what they do in order to accomplish that
next week.