

Edit Related Anime Adaptation: Darling in the FranXX

More characters Characters & Voice Actors Zero Two Main Tomatsu, Haruka

Japanese Ichigo Main Ichinose, Kana

Japanese Hiro Main Uemura, Yuuto

Japanese Gorou Main Umehara, Yuuichirou

Japanese Kokoro Main Hayami, Saori

Japanese Mitsuru Main Ichikawa, Aoi

Japanese Miku Main Yamashita, Nanami

Japanese Zorome Main Tamura, Mutsumi

Japanese Ikuno Main Ishigami, Shizuka

Japanese Futoshi Main Gotou, Hiroki

Japanese

More staff Staff Kamagata, Eiichi Producer Wakabayashi, Hiromi Producer Kobayashi, Hiroyasu Producer Nishigori, Atsushi Director, Episode Director, Storyboard, Series Composition



Edit Opening Theme "KISS OF DEATH" by Mika Nakashima x Hyde

Edit Ending Theme #1: "Torikago (トリカゴ)" by XX:me (Kiss Me; キス・ミー) [Zero Two (Haruka Tomatsu), Ichigo (Kana Ichinose), Miku (Nanami Yamashita), Kokoro (Saori Hayami), Ikuno (Shizuka Ishigami)] (eps 1-6)

#2: "Manatsu no Setsuna (真夏のセツナ)" by XX:me (Kiss Me; キス・ミー) [Zero Two (Haruka Tomatsu), Ichigo (Kana Ichinose), Miku (Nanami Yamashita), Kokoro (Saori Hayami), Ikuno (Shizuka Ishigami)] (ep 7)

#3: "Beautiful World" by XX:me (Kiss Me; キス・ミー) [Zero Two (Haruka Tomatsu), Ichigo (Kana Ichinose), Miku (Nanami Yamashita), Kokoro (Saori Hayami), Ikuno (Shizuka Ishigami)] (eps 8-12, 14)

#4: "Hitori (ひとり)" by XX:me (Kiss Me; キス・ミー) [Zero Two (Haruka Tomatsu)] (ep 13)

#5: "KISS OF DEATH" by Mika Nakashima x Hyde (ep 15)

#6: "Escape" by XX:me (Kiss Me; キス・ミー) [Zero Two (Haruka Tomatsu), Ichigo (Kana Ichinose), Miku (Nanami Yamashita), Kokoro (Saori Hayami), Ikuno (Shizuka Ishigami)] (ep 16-19)

#7: "Darling" by XX:me (Kiss Me; キス・ミー) [Zero Two (Haruka Tomatsu), Ichigo (Kana Ichinose), Miku (Nanami Yamashita), Kokoro (Saori Hayami), Ikuno (Shizuka Ishigami)] (ep 20-23)







More reviews Reviews Jul 7, 2018 24 of 24 episodes seen Overall Rating : 10 Karhu (All reviews)

1312 people found this review helpful Overall 10 Story 0 Animation 0 Sound 0 Character 0 Enjoyment 0



The actual story centers around our ten kids who are trying to find their soulmate/significant other/person with whom they share the best body compatibility with. They do this by piloting mecha in the pairs of two and fighting against these things called Klaxowhatever. Klaxosaur, just like everything and anything else, is a reference. If you remove xo from the name, you get the combination of klasa and ur, klasa standing for "class" in polish - and xo obviously meaning hugs and kisses - giving us klaxosaur as: "U R hugs and kisses class." Same thing can be said about the actual title of this series. Darling in the FranXX basically standing for Darling in the Fran hugs hugs. The whole "two parties fight against each others until one collapses" is initially just a debate over should you remain loyal to your significant other and are hugs truly enough. The robots think it is not enough, and the whole series is basically our characters realizing the same little by little. This is, indeed, the plot of this series. Pretty cool, huh.



There are in total of ten main characters here (in case you forgot what you read 17 seconds ago). By 10 main characters, I mean we have 3 actual characters and the remaining 7 are filler people. The characters are just great. Oni girl is basically a whore who is looking for her prince charming. I musn't runway guy does the opposite his name suggests. And the third wheel dude and the most potential prince charming... exists. I call this trio The Cuck Squad, by the way. Rest of the "characters" are so much filler I believe the thought process behind creating them was something like: "Hmmm. we need more people here. Let's see........ One fat guy? Yes, one fat guy coming in.......... girl who wears glasses? ...... Oh yes, f**k yes."



The production is based Trigger. Not exactly as ADHD as Kill la Kill nor a masterpiece from every aspect like Inferno Cop, but at least doesn't ruin the series like they did with Uchuu Patrol Luluko and Ninja Slayer. The OST could use some Tomatodermewhatever they called the band in KlK, and some tedious German language vocals would be great addition to put in the mix, but otherwise I was pleased to get a confirmation that every Trigger anime from now on will be the exact same thing production wise as all the rest have been.



When it comes to enjoyment, my expectations were very mixed. I heard so much praise and flaming, and after watching it, I have to conclude that this series can be liked and disliked for infinite different reasons. In one way, the series is a clusterfuck, the seasonal shitstorm, the trainwreck and sum of all wagons. This obviously makes it an obligatory watch for every critic so they can hit it with 1/10 and call the worst thing ever because once again you can criticize FranXX for thousand and one things. On the other hand, Darling is often so ridiculous that it can offer enormous entertainment value with ironic viewing. All you need is a sense of humor and some chill. The drama, the cute and comfy stuff and the happy moments will serve those are ready to take them for what they are.



As a final verdict: Critics and the likes can write thousand pages long analysis of all the things that are wrong in this one, people with sense of humor laugh their asses off, and people who approach it with more "casual" and open mindset will enjoy this show for what it is. This series has something for each and everyone. If a series like that is not a masterpiece, then I do not know what is. 10/10.

Helpful series with epic symbolism. Basically, whenever anything happens, it is a sexual innuendo about relationships, hugging, kissing and dicks. Really, thanks.The actual story centers around our ten kids who are trying to find their soulmate/significant other/person with whom they share the best body compatibility with. They do this by piloting mecha in the pairs of two and fighting against these things called Klaxowhatever. Klaxosaur, just like everything and anything else, is a reference. If you remove xo from the name, you get the combination of klasa and ur, klasa standing for "class" in polish - and xo obviously meaning hugs and kisses - giving us klaxosaur as: "U R hugs and kisses class." Same thing can be said about the actual title of this series. Darling in the FranXX basically standing for Darling in the Fran hugs hugs. The whole "two parties fight against each others until one collapses" is initially just a debate over should you remain loyal to your significant other and are hugs truly enough. The robots think it is not enough, and the whole series is basically our characters realizing the same little by little. This is, indeed, the plot of this series. Pretty cool, huh.There are in total of ten main characters here (in case you forgot what you read 17 seconds ago). By 10 main characters, I mean we have 3 actual characters and the remaining 7 are filler people. The characters are just great. Oni girl is basically a whore who is looking for her prince charming. I musn't runway guy does the opposite his name suggests. And the third wheel dude and the most potential prince charming... exists. I call this trio The Cuck Squad, by the way. Rest of the "characters" are so much filler I believe the thought process behind creating them was something like: "Hmmm. we need more people here. Let's see........ One fat guy? Yes, one fat guy coming in.......... girl who wears glasses? ...... Oh yes, f**k yes."The production is based Trigger. Not exactly as ADHD as Kill la Kill nor a masterpiece from every aspect like Inferno Cop, but at least doesn't ruin the series like they did with Uchuu Patrol Luluko and Ninja Slayer. The OST could use some Tomatodermewhatever they called the band in KlK, and some tedious German language vocals would be great addition to put in the mix, but otherwise I was pleased to get a confirmation that every Trigger anime from now on will be the exact same thing production wise as all the rest have been.When it comes to enjoyment, my expectations were very mixed. I heard so much praise and flaming, and after watching it, I have to conclude that this series can be liked and disliked for infinite different reasons. In one way, the series is a clusterfuck, the seasonal shitstorm, the trainwreck and sum of all wagons. This obviously makes it an obligatory watch for every critic so they can hit it with 1/10 and call the worst thing ever because once again you can criticize FranXX for thousand and one things. On the other hand, Darling is often so ridiculous that it can offer enormous entertainment value with ironic viewing. All you need is a sense of humor and some chill. The drama, the cute and comfy stuff and the happy moments will serve those are ready to take them for what they are.As a final verdict: Critics and the likes can write thousand pages long analysis of all the things that are wrong in this one, people with sense of humor laugh their asses off, and people who approach it with more "casual" and open mindset will enjoy this show for what it is. This series has something for each and everyone. If a series like that is not a masterpiece, then I do not know what is. 10/10. read more For the better half of my life, I have been looking for an anime series where bunch of kids --who don't know what sexual intercourse is-- fight against tensai super robot power rangers inside settings which has plot for 6 episodes, but still lasts for 24: Filling the remaining air time with b-grade melodramatic past stories, and current time with slice of life soap opera which looks like the anime version of Jersey Shore. For such a specific request to be filled, I had almost lost all hope. Then my boy Trigger arrived to town and not only did this exact thing, but filled the permalink | report Jul 7, 2018 24 of 24 episodes seen Overall Rating : 3 Yasaal (All reviews)

1182 people found this review helpful Overall 3 Story 1 Animation 5 Sound 6 Character 1 Enjoyment 2



FranXX was hyped a lot. And that's just the short of it, it



To begin with, the main part that is the reason fans gloss over this show, the characters. They are given little to no backstories and their roles to play are very less. Squad 13 mainly served as a bumbling group of teenagers (hmm… why teenagers in particular?) who don't know jackshit except for the so called “fact” that they must pilot the mechs known as FranXX and defeat these blue magma lover monsters called Klaxosaurs. Let that seep in. Why children? Most likely because they wanna appeal to the target audience of the show, teenagers. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be as fruitful as A-1 and Trigger thought it would because when you've got an idiotic group of teenagers who contribute nothing to character development, I don't think you end up with teenage viewers going crazy over a show. I mean, yes, teens in real life aren't always smart, but if given the chance, I'm sure they'd do something sensible when they need to, but we don't see such a thing at all. Why? All we see is random blushes and such stuff. I mean, these teens are acting like everyday teens, yes, that's fine but is this the premise to do so? A place where people are bombarded by the constant threat of Klaxosaurs? Kids are supposed to have fun yes, but not when you're literally guarding human lives from danger.



To move away from the characters for a moment, we move to another problem with the show, its connection. And don't you dare justify it by telling me it's an episodic anime, because it sure as hell is not. In reality, it's just mixed up completely and had too many ideas to implement together and instead of choosing one idea to go with, they probably chose all and excellently failed at all of them. Why? Poor connection. To hold up a plot you need connection, FranXX didn't offer any of that at all. It just dragged on and didn't leave any mention of what happened before and most importantly WHY the situation happened before. What could possibly be the reason behind this? Simple. Bad direction. All it takes to destroy the whole hard work of a show is bad direction. In fact, about 90% of the issues with the anime can be traced back to bad direction. If the show had a good director I suppose the show would have a direction to follow, but this being FranXX, it had to follow all the directions it could and then ended up nowhere. In the first episode I had the show at a shocking 9 and if you look at it now it's fallen pretty spectacularly. This is because of the show's bad direction; events were unconnected and an irritated yours truly almost smashed his screen onto the floor . Random stuff happening here with no explanation, and then random stuff happening there without explanation, was this anime devoid of sense or something? Because I did not find any of it anywhere. And then we've got the problem that follows that the story was unexplained. Why did this happen? Why did that happen? How did this occur? Where did this issue first occur? There were many questions asked by fans, and the answer is that it was clear both studios didn't want quality, they wanted the $$$ And that's me trying to be positive, we got zilch as in reality but eh, gotta act positive.



Needless to say, apart from a cliched mess of a story, it's disappointing in almost every other regard (read on for further explanation), serving as a reminder that it only takes one big mistake to spoil the whole effort put into an anime, or anything for that matter. Speaking of mistakes, we come to another part that had the cosplayers, fan artists and others crazy, the romance— particularly the romance between Zero Two and Hiro. First off, our two MCs. Zero Two was introduced as a waifu like character which immediately took the undeserving “deconstruction” tag which was ripped off from Eva (surprise surprise, FranXX ripped off a show) while giving us another useless MC who went by the self appointed name Hiro. Their romance was unexplained until way later into the series, an episode which even I liked, episode 13. They were largely unexplained for most of the anime’s run and it was only in the first episode of the second cour (episode 13) that tried to remedy this. Result? Thankfully good. Episode 13 was regarded as an excellent episode by even the harshest of critics since it explained a lot of the stuff between Hiro and Zero Two and obviously it was a flashback episode, yet despite being a flashback episode it was done well— surprising since this is FranXX. But the problem came afterwards; after that episode was done, we saw a lot of crap follow it in the form of the team getting “mad” at Zero Two for “hurting” Hiro for over dramatic effect and to make me sympathise with the characters. Why would you drag through 12 episodes just to see the one episode that seemed half decent and it goes back to its shitty formula? I loathed it even more.The episodes were cliched, unconnected messes with absolutely no relevance to the plot, just serving to pass time either to focus on Hiro or to make the fanboys go crazy over the fight scenes, which were nothing more than one hit kills and random dashes.



Moving on from there all we got were cheesy half hearted lines like “I wanna be with you forever” and all that teenage fantasy (severely paraphrased for ease of comprehensive analysis) and pointless romantic moments that don't have much to do with the plot. Why am I crushing the romance here even though I'm a romance fan? It's because FranXX deployed this romance at the wrong times, I can't even say I'm surprised anymore at this kind of problem. Then we go to the other cast, Ichigo is a character that served as a reminder about the stupidity of fanboys since her voice actor Kana Ichinose received death threats just because of her work as Ichigo. Anno would be proud. Ichigo’s character though wasn't fleshed out (to say nothing of the rest of the cast, especially Ikuno, Zorome and Miku) and her actions were basically “I'm jealous because I love him but can't reveal it to him because I'm shy” and that time when she DID do it, it was enough to even send non romance fans into a fit because it was done in a (dare I say it?) slutty way cause teenagers? I do not know. Then we come to the signature part which had many people divided as well, Kokoro. To delve into this horrible character we must enter minor spoiler territory so if you can't handle looking at a good character being turned into a whore please skip the marked spoiler section.



***Skip this paragraph if you don't want spoilers about this side character and want the relationship as a surprise. Spoilers begin: Kokoro was paired up with Futoshi who liked Kokoro a lot but suffered from the same problem as Ichigo. However, since he's male the fanboys didn't take or notice much issue, perhaps also because Futoshi wasn't made as a cockblocker character and instead was of the “I'll protect her” than a “I want him to love me instead”, only thing is that Kokoro turned out to “betray” Futoshi and instead go for an unlikely character who was largely ignored throughout the show, Mitsuru. She suddenly developed feelings for him and even kissed him for no concrete reason apart from taking the show into an extremely shitty direction because guess what? She wanted a baby. Why? Freakin’ teenagers… this is the worst way to relate to them. Then Kokoro went from a “I am not in love with Futoshi but he's a kind person” to an “I want Mitsuru’s @#$_ inside me". I'm not even joking. This LITERALLY happened. Why am I rambling on about this? Because that's definitely not how you make a show about teenagers because that's not at all representative of the majority. Anyway, then they suddenly want to get married (!?) and we see other crap follow as well without explanation or reason, they just wanna fill time at this rate. With what? Throwing in the notion that Kokoro is pregnant later on. Teenage pregnancy, a very common thing in teens nowadays amiright? Wrong. And you know what worse? The fact that the folks at FranXX.inc pulled the WORST cliche to go with this. Both of them are caught and are “brainwashed” and their memories are “stored” somewhere. If VIRM didn't want to let them regain their memories then why store them in the first place? Why not “delete” them into oblivion? Plot armour I say. Convenience too… this makes many viewers realise that the episode was just existing to pass time and fool the viewers into thinking their time into the episode was worth it? Spoiler end***



This brings us on to the next point, underused characters. Namely Miku, Zorome and Ikuno. Not to mention Goro but he got a little bit of a focus so I'll give him a brief look later. Miku and Zorome were shown as characters who had a rivalry-love which seemed fresh and interesting but that was pulled down along with the anime because they didn't focus on these two at all. What made them attracted to each other? Why are they paired up together? These questions were never answered and I was left hanging, which was disappointing since Miku apart from sharing the same hairstyle as the superstar with the same name (my profile picture character to those of you non-Vocaloid fans) she was one of the few characters who was believable as a teenager. Many people wouldn't notice that these two weren't given enough focus and that was sad because this fresh idea could be explored a lot more and I wouldn't be surprised if I found their rivalry-love better than the two main characters, and don't forget, I liked Miku as a character as well.



Leaving us with the last two, Ikuno and Goro. Ikuno was mainly used as fodder for Mitsuru to frown upon so that he could get hooked to the resident slut Kokoro (I don't think I should call her that because she didn't like Futoshi but considered him kind but then I'm disappointed because like Miku, I liked Kokoro, only that love turned to hate since FranXX ruined her) and Ikuno was ignored for the rest of the anime, she wasn't given lines and that one “I want a baby” episode scene where she DID say something, it wasn't explained WHY she stepped forward and did her act. My guess is because since she didn't have any lines, the show didn't want to make her look like a dumbass so they forcefully gave her lines and that was all. Then we enter spoiler territory yet again because Ikuno was given that small 5 minute focus in a later episode.



***Minor Spoiler Begin: Since Ikuno wasn't given a love interest the folks at FranXX.inc thought it's a good idea to introduce some Yuri at the worst possible time and in the worst possible way, as such, the result was never spoken of again, which pretty much explains how the “affair” went. Needless to say, this was a last ditch effort to save her character and it served as the final nail in the coffin for Ikuno. Minor Spoiler End***



We then come to the last character, Goro. Apart from being mildly explored, he served as the third wheel-ish character who was later shown as being in love with Ichigo unsurprisingly, unfortunately he as mentioned wasn't explored much and so was thrown into the sidelines to focus on our main characters, yet another character thrown aside who had a lot of potential to do great things in this mess of an anime. I haven't spoken of any “villains” yet, as this important role was destroyed by the Iotas, who were, like every other thing in the anime, unexplained, unwanted and irrelevant. They served as somewhat of a “backstory” to Zero Two despite not going into detail at all.



As mentioned above there was no proper backstory to Squad 13. Some people said it's because sci-fi shows “don't need backstories”. This is plain wrong because if you don't have backstories of your character, there won't be any depth to them (see the word depth again and imagine, if there's no backstory, there's no depth, which means the characters are shallow) and when the characters simply don't develop at all during the course of the anime, you end up with flat characters who fall on their face to the plot. Why am I saying this? Hiro and the others didn't change at all mentally from the first episode to the last. Some might say Hiro’s infatuation with 02 makes him a “developed character” but his rejection of his other members in Squad 13 proves that wrong. Others say that “characterisation is excused in a sci-fi anime”. At first it seemed as a joke to me but when people seriously started talking about this as a defense I got concerned and felt I needed to clarify this. Take arguably the best sci-fi show as an example to that statement: Steins;Gate. It definitely has development throughout the series. How? Okabe starts to realise he can't do anything, and tries even harder, Makise realises she can't do things alone, Mayuri does more tuturus because people around her are sad, or to move from the joke, Mayuri realises that she needs Okabe and he needs her, this is what development in a sci-fi is. FranXX, on the other hand, didn't have any development to the show, its characters, or anything. It felt more like characters felt less real each time they appeared, and I'm not talking about them being realistic and human-like since that's not what an anime’s main target is everytime, I'm talking about them being acceptable as a character which wasn't at all seen. No characterisation is only excused in slice of life anime since we're understandably looking at the lives of the characters and so there's no plot and therefore no development. FranXX isn't a slice of life, it's (terribly weak) progression proved that.



Moving back to the MC of our wonderful series, Hiro. I hadn't given him enough attention and will do so now. From the start he was unexplained. Why was he a prodigy? What was he doing before meeting Zero Two? What made him so special? To stand out from the rest of the cast, you need distinctive qualities that set you apart from other characters, Hiro had none of that. He was plain and boring. Many may point out that him being in love with 02 would mean that it makes him different from other MCs but that's wrong because apart from his “love” for 02, nothing else was brought into his character. Although towards the end it was shown that he had become selfish and cared about 02 more than his squad who cared about him, it still isn't the kind of development that makes you go “Oh, that changed my view of him positively” and if you read that line again you'll probably understand why too. Then we come to the point that he named everyone else, which was revealed early on. This surprisingly is a good thing I saw. He named Ichigo and named other parasites as well which gave it a child-like feeling (perhaps the only successful child-like/teenage feeling that was executed properly throughout the anime, bear in mind this flashback was 2 minutes long) although it wasn't explained at all I still felt an iota of warmth. And nothing else I suppose.



Going back to the other “villains”, the Iotas. Since they came in at random times and with random half baked reasons, unsurprisingly they served as yet another thing that was meant to be loathed in the anime. Another irritating thing is how they suddenly became buddy-buddy with Hiro and team in the final arc. I suppose now that FranXX has exhausted whatever little “creativity” they had, they wanted to end with a shounen-esque “everyone bands together to fight the enemy”? I mean, not complaining about the trope but was there any sensible stuff going on beforehand? Speaking of insane stuff going on beforehand, FranXX was said to have been in a post apocalyptic world all of a sudden which we were given hints of in the beach episode for about 20 seconds and then later shown in “detail” (I don't even know why I'm so generously awarding that word when it's meaning wasn't followed at all) in episode 19, which to FranXX’s favour, was a decent episode. But until then for the first 18 episodes, it remained largely unexplained and I don't think I can award a show a point for revealing something so important when it's finished about 80% of it's run. Not a good practice and it returns more harm than good which by now is definitely not what I need to calm myself down. Oh youth. But then wait! Youth reminds me that I should yet again cover another important part about the “juvenile” aspect of this show.



Spoiler Paragraph (or Spoiler-graph) for the final arc below. Skip this paragraph if you don't want spoilers for the final arc. If you're okay with them, then please continue :)



***Spoiler for last arc begin: The most frustrating part of FranXX is by far the last arc. After pointless teenage melodrama, the FranXX team thought of what “ideas” can be added to “save” the anime and they did what every laughable show tries to do as a last ditch effort. To take the battle into (wait for it) SPAAAAAACEEEEEE. Yes. FranXX pulled THAT trope. What an insult to Star Wars and Star Trek. Anyway back to this show, the sudden shift in tones (first a teenage melodrama, then a clone war, then a space war? Is this a tutorial on how NOT to make Star Wars ripoffs?) and extremely convenient and unexplained reveals (more on that in a bit) coming out of nowhere? I don't think that makes for a coherent plot at all. Add to that another desperate added shounen trope where the enemy suddenly becomes your friend??? And he sacrifices his life for you just a while after you rescue him??? The Klaxosaur Princess was set as the antagonist at around the third quarter of the show and she suddenly joined Hiro’s side and sacrificed her life for him? What happened to her people, the Klaxosaurs? What happened to saving the world? And then suddenly VIRM puts themselves as the villains despite the show trying to establish the Klaxosaurs as the villains and then the aforementioned Klaxosaur Princess as an antagonist? And then their boss is a Power Rangers ripoff??? What even was that last arc?! The industry can do without more Dadolf Scmitlers you know! We've seen enough of this trope! Like when they're losing Papa and the others suddenly give the order to destroy Earth? Nanja sorya??? And then if you thought all this stupidity wasn't enough, we suddenly see YET ANOTHER problem with the show surface, Plot armour. If I hadn't explained this before, FranXX suffered from yet another plot hole in the form of plot armour. The Iotas lost a few of their members but Hiro and team were left unscathed, the only “injury” being Ikuno’s hair being turned white… Throughout the course of the show Squad 13 was met with life or death situations but I was confused since no one died. It can't be a life or death situation if everyone survives, or at least when you have so many life or death situations and no one dies even once I think that's authentically bullshit. Why fill it to the brim with Deus Ex Machina crap then? In the last 3 episodes we saw Hiro and team suddenly band together and go to space, but then the pathetic dialogue in the previous episodes of the anime became even worse, when they're in space they're going “We're really in space huh?” And Mitsuru’s reason for staying being “I wanna stay because I want to”? Even the dialogues took a huge hit and fell even further… Add to that the pointless Mobile Suit Gundam I ripoff battle except FranXX’s was much worse because everyone survived??? Not to mention Zero Two eating Hiro through her teleport to Hiro fro Earth directly in front of Hiro and she eats him and takes him to the dream world only to play hard to get? If you're not understanding at all then you have common sense, because no sensible person could understand WHAT happened and WHY. Let's not add to that horrible reasons to horrible dialogues such as bringing up love when your Squadmate is suffering? And then Hiro and Zero Two immediately go leave the Solar System and the others can't tag along because “it's not possible”? This is the limit of cliches but the studios broke it long long ago. And I want to skip over that last episode since that was the only (remotely) decent (?) part of this arc, but the means done to achieve it wasn't and I spoke enough on that... Spoiler end***



FranXX tries to show us that adults are somewhat tyrants and displays the children’s “struggle” to gaining “independence” even though they're perfectly fine with their lives with no issues. But you know what they say, if you've got no issues, you make them, and that's EXACTLY what FranXX stayed true to. Trying to show us that our teenage cast is “growing” by acting “mature” with examples as “ wanting to have babies” and “doing the kitty” (don't search up on that last one) both of which are related and were attempted by Kokoro and Mitsuru. Yet again you ask. Why? I do not know why the show did it. You can't even tell anymore who they're trying to make the show relatable for. Then we have to look at the teenage drama as well that follows (that I covered above).



Spoiler Paragraph (or Spoiler-graph) about a range of questions on things that were unanswered throughout the course of the anime below. Skip this paragraph if you don't want spoilers on these questions. If you're okay with them, then as expected, read on.



***Spoiler questions begin: FranXX as mentioned tried very very hard to be edgy by leaving out some so-called “mystery” feel by not answering the most crucial questions many had throughout the course of the anime. Although episode 13 answered the questions many people had in the first half, there was no such plausible explanation for the second half’s stupidity. What makes me say that? We got weak explanations or no explanations. For example why was the enemy VIRM all along? What was their purpose? Why does Hiro not care about the rest of Squad 13 who he's lived with all his life and why is he so attached to Zero Two despite the above problem? Why are the problems for the characters happening? Who is to blame and why? Despite this being answered (VIRM) there was no proper explanation as to WHY the villains did it? What was their purpose? Why is Ichigo the leader of the group? Why is 02 not explained properly? How does she looks human and how did it happen (also why does she have pink hair when she was a clone of one with white or blue hair)? How are the rejected people treated? What happens to them? What about their memories? Although their memories as mentioned were stored in some place there's no explanation as to why they're stored. Why am I asking that question? When VIRM doesn't want their puppets to regain their memory, why store their memory? And how is the memory stored anyway? Why are teens chosen to pilot the FranXX? Don't tell me it's because their sex organs are most prominent because the teenage years is not the age when this is so. Why are pregnant girls not able to pilot the FranXX? How did the Iotas suddenly be able to join Hiro in the last arc? Weren't they broken or something? Why do Hiro’s group care and still chase Hiro despite him having rejected them for his “one true love” Zero Two? What was the bullcrap about them going to space and space being the important stuff? Like, what was that cop out explanation about VIRM and the enemies being the aliens? Who and what was the Klaxosaur Princess? Who were the Klaxosaurs? No detailed explanations were given. To cover the villains one last time, VIRM. We look again at the Dadolf Scmitler trope that FranXX.inc deployed. To viewers of Grancrest Senki who aren't familiar with the Dadolf Scmitler trope, VIRM is basically the Mage Academy, for the first 20 Episodes we were focused on only one villain but suddenly that villain changes in around the 20th episode and they tell us the real villains were someone else all along? (Surprising how both shows deploy the same cliche in the same episode number. Coincidence? I think not), Why is this bad? This is bad because it makes the viewer question if the time they spent on the first 20 episodes even worth it. I mean, if you really HAD to do this, why do it so late? And instead, why not just make an OVA of the last 6-8 episodes and treat it as the same thing? I'm sure it would get a higher score from me and other disgruntled people if they did this instead because our time was wasted… Spoiler questions end***



With all that's said, eagle eyed readers might have noticed that I haven't trashed the art or the music. That's because it isn't shit. And continue to find out. Since it was a collaboration project with A-1 and Trigger (and later Cloverworks because budget issues?) many expected the art to look amazing and it did actually. They tried to make a world that looked beautiful and mostly succeeded in doing that but you can't award points to a show for “looking good” as with what the “mainstream” gaming critics like IGN often do (“CoD a 9/10 because it looks good?” Have you even seen what they're doing now ripping off Fortnite?) so though the art looked good thanks to the colourful backgrounds and eye-catching scenery from time to time, it was in vain as the show couldn't manage to utilise it well into its plot. Another thing that the show did good was the sound. Even though I've been (rightfully) trashing the show left and right, I have to give credit where it's due, FranXX’s usage of synth tracks are rarely seen in anime and obviously serve for something really good in terms of listening especially when you're using headphones (and not streaming the show). Then we move onto the OP/EDs selection, I felt that the show went lazy and just changed the OP a bit and passed it off as an OP 2, but the EDs were great. If only FranXX used those EDs more in the second half and don't abruptly end the episode I'd have a positive opinion of the show. But I'm guilty of singing “Torikago” from the show so gotta give a point to that I guess? But oh wait, they underused all the EDs anyway.



Overall, FranXX is a mess which was over hyped and tried it's best to stay relevant by throwing in useless storylines all of which were riddled by plot holes and Deus ex machinas which were unconnected and not to mention completely unrelated events and random crap here and there (from teenage drama to Star Wars to Power Rangers? MASAKA???), to remain positive, towards the end, I only ever found the two caretakers Hachi and Nana (especially Nana) interesting and likeable since they had an aura of mystery and the 30 seconds they appeared in their few episodes were all great. Miku and Goro too were characters I pretty much liked but weren't explored well since they were thrown aside for Hiro and Zero Two unfortunately. If the show had good direction, I'm sure it would have turned out to be one of my favourite anime of all time and for many other disillusioned fans-turned-critics as well. FranXX sadly will always serve as a reminder to how one big mistake in the form of bad directing can jeopardize the whole premise of a show.



Special thanks to TheCobraSlayer for proof-reading the review.



Story: 0.5

Animation: 5

Sound: 5.5

Character: 1

Enjoyment: 1.5



Overall: 2.7 Helpful had a huge marketing campaign and had a huge amount of anticipation with people calling it the “Next Evangelion” or a “Spiritual successor to Eva” and so on and so forth. The legendary Yabuki Kentarou was signed on doing the art for the manga adaptation for this unoriginal original and as a matter of fact, that's how I found out about the show in the first place and went in expecting the amazing show the marketing had me believe. Result? Well I can't surprise you since you might have seen the score I gave it. Yes. A mess. A terrible mess.To begin with, the main part that is the reason fans gloss over this show, the characters. They are given little to no backstories and their roles to play are very less. Squad 13 mainly served as a bumbling group of teenagers (hmm… why teenagers in particular?) who don't know jackshit except for the so called “fact” that they must pilot the mechs known as FranXX and defeat these blue magma lover monsters called Klaxosaurs. Let that seep in. Why children? Most likely because they wanna appeal to the target audience of the show, teenagers. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be as fruitful as A-1 and Trigger thought it would because when you've got an idiotic group of teenagers who contribute nothing to character development, I don't think you end up with teenage viewers going crazy over a show. I mean, yes, teens in real life aren't always smart, but if given the chance, I'm sure they'd do something sensible when they need to, but we don't see such a thing at all. Why? All we see is random blushes and such stuff. I mean, these teens are acting like everyday teens, yes, that's fine but is this the premise to do so? A place where people are bombarded by the constant threat of Klaxosaurs? Kids are supposed to have fun yes, but not when you're literally guarding human lives from danger.To move away from the characters for a moment, we move to another problem with the show, its connection. And don't you dare justify it by telling me it's an episodic anime, because it sure as hell is not. In reality, it's just mixed up completely and had too many ideas to implement together and instead of choosing one idea to go with, they probably chose all and excellently failed at all of them. Why? Poor connection. To hold up a plot you need connection, FranXX didn't offer any of that at all. It just dragged on and didn't leave any mention of what happened before and most importantly WHY the situation happened before. What could possibly be the reason behind this? Simple. Bad direction. All it takes to destroy the whole hard work of a show is bad direction. In fact, about 90% of the issues with the anime can be traced back to bad direction. If the show had a good director I suppose the show would have a direction to follow, but this being FranXX, it had to follow all the directions it could and then ended up nowhere. In the first episode I had the show at a shocking 9 and if you look at it now it's fallen pretty spectacularly. This is because of the show's bad direction; events were unconnected and an irritated yours truly almost smashed his screen onto the floor . Random stuff happening here with no explanation, and then random stuff happening there without explanation, was this anime devoid of sense or something? Because I did not find any of it anywhere. And then we've got the problem that follows that the story was unexplained. Why did this happen? Why did that happen? How did this occur? Where did this issue first occur? There were many questions asked by fans, and the answer is that it was clear both studios didn't want quality, they wanted the $$$ And that's me trying to be positive, we got zilch as in reality but eh, gotta act positive.Needless to say, apart from a cliched mess of a story, it's disappointing in almost every other regard (read on for further explanation), serving as a reminder that it only takes one big mistake to spoil the whole effort put into an anime, or anything for that matter. Speaking of mistakes, we come to another part that had the cosplayers, fan artists and others crazy, the romance— particularly the romance between Zero Two and Hiro. First off, our two MCs. Zero Two was introduced as a waifu like character which immediately took the undeserving “deconstruction” tag which was ripped off from Eva (surprise surprise, FranXX ripped off a show) while giving us another useless MC who went by the self appointed name Hiro. Their romance was unexplained until way later into the series, an episode which even I liked, episode 13. They were largely unexplained for most of the anime’s run and it was only in the first episode of the second cour (episode 13) that tried to remedy this. Result? Thankfully good. Episode 13 was regarded as an excellent episode by even the harshest of critics since it explained a lot of the stuff between Hiro and Zero Two and obviously it was a flashback episode, yet despite being a flashback episode it was done well— surprising since this is FranXX. But the problem came afterwards; after that episode was done, we saw a lot of crap follow it in the form of the team getting “mad” at Zero Two for “hurting” Hiro for over dramatic effect and to make me sympathise with the characters. Why would you drag through 12 episodes just to see the one episode that seemed half decent and it goes back to its shitty formula? I loathed it even more.The episodes were cliched, unconnected messes with absolutely no relevance to the plot, just serving to pass time either to focus on Hiro or to make the fanboys go crazy over the fight scenes, which were nothing more than one hit kills and random dashes.Moving on from there all we got were cheesy half hearted lines like “I wanna be with you forever” and all that teenage fantasy (severely paraphrased for ease of comprehensive analysis) and pointless romantic moments that don't have much to do with the plot. Why am I crushing the romance here even though I'm a romance fan? It's because FranXX deployed this romance at the wrong times, I can't even say I'm surprised anymore at this kind of problem. Then we go to the other cast, Ichigo is a character that served as a reminder about the stupidity of fanboys since her voice actor Kana Ichinose received death threats just because of her work as Ichigo. Anno would be proud. Ichigo’s character though wasn't fleshed out (to say nothing of the rest of the cast, especially Ikuno, Zorome and Miku) and her actions were basically “I'm jealous because I love him but can't reveal it to him because I'm shy” and that time when she DID do it, it was enough to even send non romance fans into a fit because it was done in a (dare I say it?) slutty way cause teenagers? I do not know. Then we come to the signature part which had many people divided as well, Kokoro. To delve into this horrible character we must enter minor spoiler territory so if you can't handle looking at a good character being turned into a whore please skip the marked spoiler section.***Skip this paragraph if you don't want spoilers about this side character and want the relationship as a surprise. Spoilers begin: Kokoro was paired up with Futoshi who liked Kokoro a lot but suffered from the same problem as Ichigo. However, since he's male the fanboys didn't take or notice much issue, perhaps also because Futoshi wasn't made as a cockblocker character and instead was of the “I'll protect her” than a “I want him to love me instead”, only thing is that Kokoro turned out to “betray” Futoshi and instead go for an unlikely character who was largely ignored throughout the show, Mitsuru. She suddenly developed feelings for him and even kissed him for no concrete reason apart from taking the show into an extremely shitty direction because guess what? She wanted a baby. Why? Freakin’ teenagers… this is the worst way to relate to them. Then Kokoro went from a “I am not in love with Futoshi but he's a kind person” to an “I want Mitsuru’s @#$_ inside me". I'm not even joking. This LITERALLY happened. Why am I rambling on about this? Because that's definitely not how you make a show about teenagers because that's not at all representative of the majority. Anyway, then they suddenly want to get married (!?) and we see other crap follow as well without explanation or reason, they just wanna fill time at this rate. With what? Throwing in the notion that Kokoro is pregnant later on. Teenage pregnancy, a very common thing in teens nowadays amiright? Wrong. And you know what worse? The fact that the folks at FranXX.inc pulled the WORST cliche to go with this. Both of them are caught and are “brainwashed” and their memories are “stored” somewhere. If VIRM didn't want to let them regain their memories then why store them in the first place? Why not “delete” them into oblivion? Plot armour I say. Convenience too… this makes many viewers realise that the episode was just existing to pass time and fool the viewers into thinking their time into the episode was worth it? Spoiler end***This brings us on to the next point, underused characters. Namely Miku, Zorome and Ikuno. Not to mention Goro but he got a little bit of a focus so I'll give him a brief look later. Miku and Zorome were shown as characters who had a rivalry-love which seemed fresh and interesting but that was pulled down along with the anime because they didn't focus on these two at all. What made them attracted to each other? Why are they paired up together? These questions were never answered and I was left hanging, which was disappointing since Miku apart from sharing the same hairstyle as the superstar with the same name (my profile picture character to those of you non-Vocaloid fans) she was one of the few characters who was believable as a teenager. Many people wouldn't notice that these two weren't given enough focus and that was sad because this fresh idea could be explored a lot more and I wouldn't be surprised if I found their rivalry-love better than the two main characters, and don't forget, I liked Miku as a character as well.Leaving us with the last two, Ikuno and Goro. Ikuno was mainly used as fodder for Mitsuru to frown upon so that he could get hooked to the resident slut Kokoro (I don't think I should call her that because she didn't like Futoshi but considered him kind but then I'm disappointed because like Miku, I liked Kokoro, only that love turned to hate since FranXX ruined her) and Ikuno was ignored for the rest of the anime, she wasn't given lines and that one “I want a baby” episode scene where she DID say something, it wasn't explained WHY she stepped forward and did her act. My guess is because since she didn't have any lines, the show didn't want to make her look like a dumbass so they forcefully gave her lines and that was all. Then we enter spoiler territory yet again because Ikuno was given that small 5 minute focus in a later episode.***Minor Spoiler Begin: Since Ikuno wasn't given a love interest the folks at FranXX.inc thought it's a good idea to introduce some Yuri at the worst possible time and in the worst possible way, as such, the result was never spoken of again, which pretty much explains how the “affair” went. Needless to say, this was a last ditch effort to save her character and it served as the final nail in the coffin for Ikuno. Minor Spoiler End***We then come to the last character, Goro. Apart from being mildly explored, he served as the third wheel-ish character who was later shown as being in love with Ichigo unsurprisingly, unfortunately he as mentioned wasn't explored much and so was thrown into the sidelines to focus on our main characters, yet another character thrown aside who had a lot of potential to do great things in this mess of an anime. I haven't spoken of any “villains” yet, as this important role was destroyed by the Iotas, who were, like every other thing in the anime, unexplained, unwanted and irrelevant. They served as somewhat of a “backstory” to Zero Two despite not going into detail at all.As mentioned above there was no proper backstory to Squad 13. Some people said it's because sci-fi shows “don't need backstories”. This is plain wrong because if you don't have backstories of your character, there won't be any depth to them (see the word depth again and imagine, if there's no backstory, there's no depth, which means the characters are shallow) and when the characters simply don't develop at all during the course of the anime, you end up with flat characters who fall on their face to the plot. Why am I saying this? Hiro and the others didn't change at all mentally from the first episode to the last. Some might say Hiro’s infatuation with 02 makes him a “developed character” but his rejection of his other members in Squad 13 proves that wrong. Others say that “characterisation is excused in a sci-fi anime”. At first it seemed as a joke to me but when people seriously started talking about this as a defense I got concerned and felt I needed to clarify this. Take arguably the best sci-fi show as an example to that statement: Steins;Gate. It definitely has development throughout the series. How? Okabe starts to realise he can't do anything, and tries even harder, Makise realises she can't do things alone, Mayuri does more tuturus because people around her are sad, or to move from the joke, Mayuri realises that she needs Okabe and he needs her, this is what development in a sci-fi is. FranXX, on the other hand, didn't have any development to the show, its characters, or anything. It felt more like characters felt less real each time they appeared, and I'm not talking about them being realistic and human-like since that's not what an anime’s main target is everytime, I'm talking about them being acceptable as a character which wasn't at all seen. No characterisation is only excused in slice of life anime since we're understandably looking at the lives of the characters and so there's no plot and therefore no development. FranXX isn't a slice of life, it's (terribly weak) progression proved that.Moving back to the MC of our wonderful series, Hiro. I hadn't given him enough attention and will do so now. From the start he was unexplained. Why was he a prodigy? What was he doing before meeting Zero Two? What made him so special? To stand out from the rest of the cast, you need distinctive qualities that set you apart from other characters, Hiro had none of that. He was plain and boring. Many may point out that him being in love with 02 would mean that it makes him different from other MCs but that's wrong because apart from his “love” for 02, nothing else was brought into his character. Although towards the end it was shown that he had become selfish and cared about 02 more than his squad who cared about him, it still isn't the kind of development that makes you go “Oh, that changed my view of him positively” and if you read that line again you'll probably understand why too. Then we come to the point that he named everyone else, which was revealed early on. This surprisingly is a good thing I saw. He named Ichigo and named other parasites as well which gave it a child-like feeling (perhaps the only successful child-like/teenage feeling that was executed properly throughout the anime, bear in mind this flashback was 2 minutes long) although it wasn't explained at all I still felt an iota of warmth. And nothing else I suppose.Going back to the other “villains”, the Iotas. Since they came in at random times and with random half baked reasons, unsurprisingly they served as yet another thing that was meant to be loathed in the anime. Another irritating thing is how they suddenly became buddy-buddy with Hiro and team in the final arc. I suppose now that FranXX has exhausted whatever little “creativity” they had, they wanted to end with a shounen-esque “everyone bands together to fight the enemy”? I mean, not complaining about the trope but was there any sensible stuff going on beforehand? Speaking of insane stuff going on beforehand, FranXX was said to have been in a post apocalyptic world all of a sudden which we were given hints of in the beach episode for about 20 seconds and then later shown in “detail” (I don't even know why I'm so generously awarding that word when it's meaning wasn't followed at all) in episode 19, which to FranXX’s favour, was a decent episode. But until then for the first 18 episodes, it remained largely unexplained and I don't think I can award a show a point for revealing something so important when it's finished about 80% of it's run. Not a good practice and it returns more harm than good which by now is definitely not what I need to calm myself down. Oh youth. But then wait! Youth reminds me that I should yet again cover another important part about the “juvenile” aspect of this show.Spoiler Paragraph (or Spoiler-graph) for the final arc below. Skip this paragraph if you don't want spoilers for the final arc. If you're okay with them, then please continue :)***Spoiler for last arc begin: The most frustrating part of FranXX is by far the last arc. After pointless teenage melodrama, the FranXX team thought of what “ideas” can be added to “save” the anime and they did what every laughable show tries to do as a last ditch effort. To take the battle into (wait for it) SPAAAAAACEEEEEE. Yes. FranXX pulled THAT trope. What an insult to Star Wars and Star Trek. Anyway back to this show, the sudden shift in tones (first a teenage melodrama, then a clone war, then a space war? Is this a tutorial on how NOT to make Star Wars ripoffs?) and extremely convenient and unexplained reveals (more on that in a bit) coming out of nowhere? I don't think that makes for a coherent plot at all. Add to that another desperate added shounen trope where the enemy suddenly becomes your friend??? And he sacrifices his life for you just a while after you rescue him??? The Klaxosaur Princess was set as the antagonist at around the third quarter of the show and she suddenly joined Hiro’s side and sacrificed her life for him? What happened to her people, the Klaxosaurs? What happened to saving the world? And then suddenly VIRM puts themselves as the villains despite the show trying to establish the Klaxosaurs as the villains and then the aforementioned Klaxosaur Princess as an antagonist? And then their boss is a Power Rangers ripoff??? What even was that last arc?! The industry can do without more Dadolf Scmitlers you know! We've seen enough of this trope! Like when they're losing Papa and the others suddenly give the order to destroy Earth? Nanja sorya??? And then if you thought all this stupidity wasn't enough, we suddenly see YET ANOTHER problem with the show surface, Plot armour. If I hadn't explained this before, FranXX suffered from yet another plot hole in the form of plot armour. The Iotas lost a few of their members but Hiro and team were left unscathed, the only “injury” being Ikuno’s hair being turned white… Throughout the course of the show Squad 13 was met with life or death situations but I was confused since no one died. It can't be a life or death situation if everyone survives, or at least when you have so many life or death situations and no one dies even once I think that's authentically bullshit. Why fill it to the brim with Deus Ex Machina crap then? In the last 3 episodes we saw Hiro and team suddenly band together and go to space, but then the pathetic dialogue in the previous episodes of the anime became even worse, when they're in space they're going “We're really in space huh?” And Mitsuru’s reason for staying being “I wanna stay because I want to”? Even the dialogues took a huge hit and fell even further… Add to that the pointless Mobile Suit Gundam I ripoff battle except FranXX’s was much worse because everyone survived??? Not to mention Zero Two eating Hiro through her teleport to Hiro fro Earth directly in front of Hiro and she eats him and takes him to the dream world only to play hard to get? If you're not understanding at all then you have common sense, because no sensible person could understand WHAT happened and WHY. Let's not add to that horrible reasons to horrible dialogues such as bringing up love when your Squadmate is suffering? And then Hiro and Zero Two immediately go leave the Solar System and the others can't tag along because “it's not possible”? This is the limit of cliches but the studios broke it long long ago. And I want to skip over that last episode since that was the only (remotely) decent (?) part of this arc, but the means done to achieve it wasn't and I spoke enough on that... Spoiler end***FranXX tries to show us that adults are somewhat tyrants and displays the children’s “struggle” to gaining “independence” even though they're perfectly fine with their lives with no issues. But you know what they say, if you've got no issues, you make them, and that's EXACTLY what FranXX stayed true to. Trying to show us that our teenage cast is “growing” by acting “mature” with examples as “ wanting to have babies” and “doing the kitty” (don't search up on that last one) both of which are related and were attempted by Kokoro and Mitsuru. Yet again you ask. Why? I do not know why the show did it. You can't even tell anymore who they're trying to make the show relatable for. Then we have to look at the teenage drama as well that follows (that I covered above).Spoiler Paragraph (or Spoiler-graph) about a range of questions on things that were unanswered throughout the course of the anime below. Skip this paragraph if you don't want spoilers on these questions. If you're okay with them, then as expected, read on.***Spoiler questions begin: FranXX as mentioned tried very very hard to be edgy by leaving out some so-called “mystery” feel by not answering the most crucial questions many had throughout the course of the anime. Although episode 13 answered the questions many people had in the first half, there was no such plausible explanation for the second half’s stupidity. What makes me say that? We got weak explanations or no explanations. For example why was the enemy VIRM all along? What was their purpose? Why does Hiro not care about the rest of Squad 13 who he's lived with all his life and why is he so attached to Zero Two despite the above problem? Why are the problems for the characters happening? Who is to blame and why? Despite this being answered (VIRM) there was no proper explanation as to WHY the villains did it? What was their purpose? Why is Ichigo the leader of the group? Why is 02 not explained properly? How does she looks human and how did it happen (also why does she have pink hair when she was a clone of one with white or blue hair)? How are the rejected people treated? What happens to them? What about their memories? Although their memories as mentioned were stored in some place there's no explanation as to why they're stored. Why am I asking that question? When VIRM doesn't want their puppets to regain their memory, why store their memory? And how is the memory stored anyway? Why are teens chosen to pilot the FranXX? Don't tell me it's because their sex organs are most prominent because the teenage years is not the age when this is so. Why are pregnant girls not able to pilot the FranXX? How did the Iotas suddenly be able to join Hiro in the last arc? Weren't they broken or something? Why do Hiro’s group care and still chase Hiro despite him having rejected them for his “one true love” Zero Two? What was the bullcrap about them going to space and space being the important stuff? Like, what was that cop out explanation about VIRM and the enemies being the aliens? Who and what was the Klaxosaur Princess? Who were the Klaxosaurs? No detailed explanations were given. To cover the villains one last time, VIRM. We look again at the Dadolf Scmitler trope that FranXX.inc deployed. To viewers of Grancrest Senki who aren't familiar with the Dadolf Scmitler trope, VIRM is basically the Mage Academy, for the first 20 Episodes we were focused on only one villain but suddenly that villain changes in around the 20th episode and they tell us the real villains were someone else all along? (Surprising how both shows deploy the same cliche in the same episode number. Coincidence? I think not), Why is this bad? This is bad because it makes the viewer question if the time they spent on the first 20 episodes even worth it. I mean, if you really HAD to do this, why do it so late? And instead, why not just make an OVA of the last 6-8 episodes and treat it as the same thing? I'm sure it would get a higher score from me and other disgruntled people if they did this instead because our time was wasted… Spoiler questions end***With all that's said, eagle eyed readers might have noticed that I haven't trashed the art or the music. That's because it isn't shit. And continue to find out. Since it was a collaboration project with A-1 and Trigger (and later Cloverworks because budget issues?) many expected the art to look amazing and it did actually. They tried to make a world that looked beautiful and mostly succeeded in doing that but you can't award points to a show for “looking good” as with what the “mainstream” gaming critics like IGN often do (“CoD a 9/10 because it looks good?” Have you even seen what they're doing now ripping off Fortnite?) so though the art looked good thanks to the colourful backgrounds and eye-catching scenery from time to time, it was in vain as the show couldn't manage to utilise it well into its plot. Another thing that the show did good was the sound. Even though I've been (rightfully) trashing the show left and right, I have to give credit where it's due, FranXX’s usage of synth tracks are rarely seen in anime and obviously serve for something really good in terms of listening especially when you're using headphones (and not streaming the show). Then we move onto the OP/EDs selection, I felt that the show went lazy and just changed the OP a bit and passed it off as an OP 2, but the EDs were great. If only FranXX used those EDs more in the second half and don't abruptly end the episode I'd have a positive opinion of the show. But I'm guilty of singing “Torikago” from the show so gotta give a point to that I guess? But oh wait, they underused all the EDs anyway.Overall, FranXX is a mess which was over hyped and tried it's best to stay relevant by throwing in useless storylines all of which were riddled by plot holes and Deus ex machinas which were unconnected and not to mention completely unrelated events and random crap here and there (from teenage drama to Star Wars to Power Rangers? MASAKA???), to remain positive, towards the end, I only ever found the two caretakers Hachi and Nana (especially Nana) interesting and likeable since they had an aura of mystery and the 30 seconds they appeared in their few episodes were all great. Miku and Goro too were characters I pretty much liked but weren't explored well since they were thrown aside for Hiro and Zero Two unfortunately. If the show had good direction, I'm sure it would have turned out to be one of my favourite anime of all time and for many other disillusioned fans-turned-critics as well. FranXX sadly will always serve as a reminder to how one big mistake in the form of bad directing can jeopardize the whole premise of a show.Special thanks to TheCobraSlayer for proof-reading the review.Story: 0.5Animation: 5Sound: 5.5Character: 1Enjoyment: 1.5Overall: 2.7 read more ***Caution:*** This review contains spoilers for this predictable show. I have specifically and very clearly marked the spoiler sections (there aren't as many as you think, only 3 paragraphs’ worth) so you can still easily read my review and do not need to worry. As for the fans of the show, enter at your own volition since you will not find this review to exalt it in any manner, so to those who consider FranXX a 10/10, keep your temper in and let's begin. If you're a regular reader, please carry on :)FranXX was hyped a lot. And that's just the short of it, it permalink | report Jul 7, 2018 24 of 24 episodes seen Overall Rating : 1 RebelPanda (All reviews)

802 people found this review helpful Overall 1 Story 0 Animation 3 Sound 3 Character 0 Enjoyment 0



(Long spoiler-filled review ahead. Spoiler-free TL;DR at the end.)



With the declining birthrate in Japan, people are living longer, but fewer babies are being born; there aren’t enough young people to take care of the elderly. The Japanese government is spending more money on health care, the workforce is shrinking with less young



Then there’s Darling in the Franxx, a shoddily written clusterfuck of a mecha series that attempts to inform it's audience about Japan’s declining birthrate. Yet when it does address the issue of birthrate, it only manages to conjure the most asinine, idiotic, and offensive answers possible. While it’s animation, storyboarding, and fight choreography are exceptional for at least half of the show, it’s writing fails on every conceivable level. Beginning as a subpar and predictable character-driven drama with a vague sci-fi setting, it gradually fell into incoherence and the lack of information was a trick used to mask the nonsensical lore.



Part 1: [Hiro & Zero Two]

The first indication that something horribly wrong with A-1 Pictures/Trigger’s dystopian mecha series Darling in the Franxx appears in the first scene of episode one; a monologue by the monotonous protagonist Hiro and his soon to be wild waifu Zero Two.



“The Jian, also known as the bird that shares wings, only possesses one wing. Unless a male and female pair lean on each other and act as one, they’re incapable of flight.”



This metaphor is symbolized throughout the series, it can be found on the characters’ uniforms and on the futuristic infrastructure, yet there is no such thing as a ‘Jian’ bird in real nature. There is no species of bird that only has one wing, even implying a bird like that wouldn’t die out through natural selection is ridiculous. This metaphor has two meanings; the literal: the mechas the kids pilot known as Franxx cannot fly without a male-female pair, as the series demonstrated in Partner Shuffle when two girls were explicitly unable to pilot together (ep. 11). The theme applicable to the audience: that every human has a physical for need another person of the opposite sex, throughout the show we see the characters experience this. Franxx mistakes relying on another human for survival as love, it’s not. That’s just codependency.



Never does the show attempt to refute the message that codependency is necessary for survival, it only romanticizes toxicity by building Hiro and Zero Two’s relationship on nothing but things they need from each other, never actual love. He needs her because he has no one else he can pilot with, she needs him because he’s the first partner she hasn’t killed. Any struggles they face are caused by plot contrivances pulling them apart then putting them back together with fanfare to trick you into thinking they actually overcame something. Yet, they’re framed as the happiest and most exemplary couple in the series. This isn’t love, it’s codependency! They both NEED something from one another and that’s what is tying them together, not a bond! They’re like two snakes wrapping around each other until one of them suffocates first.



At the beginning of the series, Hiro is wallowing in self-pity because he was just too good for his last piloting partner, she was a lame normal girl and the show decides he needs a wilder girl. He’s just a potato self-insert protagonist, everyone loves him for reasons that aren’t nearly compelling enough to the viewer. Seeing all of the characters in love with or admire Hiro feels so unnatural, it’s so obvious that they’re deliberately written to like him regardless of how little charisma he has. All of Hiro’s struggles are rooted in him being better than everyone else. He just perceives himself as being worse because of his frustratingly low self-confidence. The show reminds us of this at every chance it gets with self-pitying inner monologues, but no matter how much he annoys us he never gets anywhere near believability.



Once his wild waifu Zero Two shows up and they start piloting with one another, he finally feels fulfilled. She’s a half-monster/half-human hybrid and she has horns. That's the single flimsy explanation we get for her craziness, not nearly enough to find her personality believable, but at least she didn't have the same generic design as all of the other characters. She’s known as the ‘partner killer’ because anyone who pilots with her dies after three times, keep in mind this was back when she was allowed to have interesting character traits. This conflict gave the show chance to discuss how Hiro felt physical pain when he piloted with her, but as we would come to see, the show had no interest in delving into its characters in any meaningful way. Zero Two spends the first half of the show wallowing in angst because she’s not a human or whatever, which is moderately intriguing because she develops PTSD and in hallucinations sees the past partners she killed. It gave the show a chance to actually develop her in a meaningful way, but this was dropped entirely for the sake of making her relationship with Hiro seem as saccharine as possible.



The Beast and the Prince (ep.13), their backstory episode more or less existed solely to contribute to the cloying tone. Zero Two began as a test subject for the creator of the partner piloting system Dr. Franxx himself, and he’s a really evil guy so the episode spends a fair bit of time on her being tortured. Genericness and predictability aside, the episode itself is decent enough upon first inspection; Hiro became friends with Zero two as a kid while in training, he taught her what it’s like to be a normal kid, they tried to escape Dr. Franxx together but were eventually caught, and then their memories of each other were erased. I personally didn’t care for the episode considering it was more or less a copy of a climactic scene from Yuri Kuma Arashi; it directly ripped storyboards, narrative beats, but it had none of the thematic implications. Franxx copies so many great anime like this to craft a hackneyed story that’s less interesting than even one of its parts. The only reason anyone will have to remember this anime is for the climactic moments, and I can’t give it any credit for those knowing how much worse it is than the material it plagiarized.



The travesty that was Punishment and Confessions (ep.14) was the turning point in the series when it lost any chance to develop the two leads beyond their one-dimensional starting point. In this episode, Hiro’s squad separates him and Zero Two because their last time piloting together left him in critical condition with her simply remarking something like ‘if he can’t handle it then he’s not worth it.’ Hiro’s squad, in spite of being mostly cardboard-cutout non-characters, are always in the right when they call out Hiro for his bullshit. The major cause of conflict between them is when Zero Two goes to visit Hiro but when she arrives at the infirmary, by some coincidence Hiro happened to have snuck out of the room and went looking for her. When she noticed he was missing, she went into psycho girlfriend mode and tried to murder his friends to find him. Then through another coincidence Hiro returned and see this brawl, convincing him to break off their relationship.



This isn’t a conflict that arises due to their difference in personalities, it’s a lazy ass plot contrivance. It only existed for them to be able to have a reunion a single episode later and act like they actually overcame something, they did not learn ANYTHING from this. Hiro and his friends all forgive Zero Two with no discussion whatsoever in the next goddamn episode, no apologies for her beating the crap out of all of them. The show treats this like the grandest climax so far; for the last time in Trigger's fantastic sakuga is on display, then it’s pure mediocrity for the following nine episodes. Their reunion had virtually no impact narratively because it contradicted what we just saw in the previous episode and it nullified all of Zero Two’s emotional baggage. After episode 15 the whole partner killer thing is forgotten, her PTSD is not discussed again, her being half monster is barely an afterthought, all because somehow being in a codependent relationship helped her. After episode 15 they were still very much relying on one another to survive, they didn’t develop in an organic way. Eventually, their parasitic relationship led to Zero Two sacrificing herself, becoming a rock, and also turning into a giant space robot lady.



In the beginning, Zero Two was the most interesting character in the series; she was defined by her unpredictability, she had intriguing emotional hang-ups, she had potential to be a good character. Then by the end, she became a rock, both in physically and metaphorically. She lost any edge she had because her wildness was tamed by Hiro. As we see throughout the series this is the case with all of the pairings, their relationships stunt character growth. For the rest of the show, Zero Two had no agency over the story other than sacrificing herself for her darling's sake.



Part 2: [Story & Setting]

In the early episodes of Franxx, little emphasis is put on the setting, it’s purposefully left vague for the majority of the show. Post-apocalyptic Earth is mostly deserts, a council of powerful adults issue orders to the various squads of kids to protect the plantations containing adults unfit for battle. Kids pilot mechas to destroy oncoming attacks from giant alien creatures known as Klaxosaurs.



What began as a standard premise rapidly descended into nonsense. With each big reveal and twist the show gradually lost what the main story was even about. At the start of the series the creatures the kids fight are aliens, then it’s revealed to be an older form of humans, then it’s revealed the council of adults were the real aliens all along, because why the hell not. Then it’s revealed that all of the adults are immortal because they injected molten lava into themselves. There are so many conflicting pieces in the lore of Franxx, it's total illogical nonsense. The best way to look at the writing in Franxx is from a thematic perspective because that’s all the show seems to care about.



Rather than competently crafting a story Franxx puts more emphasis on is its characters, themes, emotions. Similar to the mecha classics that it copies incessantly, like Evangelion and Gunbuster, this is an emotional narrative. Except, they don’t know how to make characters feel like believable humans and the themes attempt social commentary without actually commenting on a person/group of people that exist in the real world.



The story progresses in a semi-episodic structure similar to Evangelion, episodes typically do not pick up right where the previous ones leave off plot-wise. Instead, they follow the squad of the ten main characters as they experience becoming pilots and overcoming drama amongst one another, all while delivering small details on the setting to keep you intrigued to where it may go. If Franxx were actually good, this plot structure could work just as well as the shows it’s imitating, but it’s so much worse. Despite being relatively well animated, its story beats are mind-numbingly generic and it almost never surprises. It feels like the script was generated by a soulless corporation, ticking off a checklist with each generic story beat, cliched character archetype, and seemingly important themes used cheaply as window dressing.



While watching Franxx, you are always ten steps ahead of the characters. They’re shocked by the most mundane tropes found in any sci-fi dystopian stories. Like when the main cast discovers they aren’t the first squad of kids who lived in their dormitory, it was information hinted at us many times over with the kids constantly saying “oh I can’t wait to be an adult someday…” Wow, what a shocker, the menacing council of enigmatic hooded figures leading an army of child soldiers are actually evil. Who could have guessed?? Apparently none of the characters. This is an issue all throughout the series, the story beats are so standard yet the show feels the need to present it with arbitrary foreshadowing as if it’s not obvious enough already. Franxx is the kind of series that doesn’t believe it’s audience is capable of thinking beyond the level of a toddler, so at every chance it gets it spoon-feeds us information, making it even more unbearable to watch. Expecting us to be brain dead idiots or very young children is also what lead Franxx to create some of the most hilariously stupid metaphors in anime.



The mechas and how the kids pilot them are very obnoxiously a metaphor for sex; the boy mounting the girl in a doggy style position, complete with sex terminology to describe the mechas and seating positions. As if it the sex analogy wasn’t clear enough, the characters’ piloting banter always sounds like they’re talking about sex rather than I don’t know, fighting aliens. The mechas themselves are for some unexplained reason female, with over-sexualized features so there is always fanservice right in the middle of fight scenes to distract you from the action. They're a mishmash of ugly colors and random accessories that make no sense, the designs are hideous desperately trying to look attractive. And the thing is, the kids have been raised in a sterile environment devoid of any information about sexuality, so they don’t even know how perverted the act of piloting is. First of all, that’s kind of creepy and only adds to the layer of sleazy fanservice covering this whole mess, secondly, it presents the themes of procreation in such a painstakingly literal way that there is no room for analysis. If Franxx had even a little self-awareness, this tonal whiplash could have been at least partially avoided if it were framed as humorous, instead, it’s unknowingly parodying itself by being as stupid as possible.



That leads us to the fact that the world of Darling in the Franxx makes no goddamn sense. It’s full of contradictions. We’re constantly told that the kids don’t know anything about sexuality, they don’t even know what a kiss is, yet they for some reason they view nudity as inherently sexual. Clearly, the writers did not consider what a culture would look like if boys and girls are raised alongside each other without any real contact with adults or exposure to sex. The boys ‘ogle’ the girls pervertedly which makes no sense whatsoever because they should not know to view them as sexual, and the fact that the girls feel shame, in turn, makes no sense either. If the show hadn’t forced that pointless beach episode in, these issues wouldn’t have been as noticeable. In a better written dystopian story, the characters' puberty would be free of expectations that would typically be passed onto them by society. However, rather than carefully considering the dynamics of the sci-fi setting they were attempting to create, the writers simply gave us cliched romantic comedy hijinks seen in any generic anime.



Part 3 [WHAT THE FUCK IS FRANXX EVEN ABOUT?]

The world-building in Darling in the Franxx is flat out awful, which is what makes the vast majority of the story feel incredibly shapeless. It takes seventeen episodes for Franxx to actually clarify what the hell it is actually commenting on in the real world. If Franxx wanted to be a good reflection of the birthrate decline in Japan it would have had to actually make use of its sci-fi setting beyond just stupid sex-powered mechas. For starters, a lack of kids being born would be an explicit conflict in the story to reflect the birth rate decline in modern-day Japan. However, there are a TON of children in Franxx! So many that they are able to throw them into cryosleep as we see in episode 22. There is a surplus of kids in Franxx if discussing birth-rate was the real goal of the show then they failed from the start. The issues the heroes in Darling in the Franxx face is not that there aren’t enough children. They want to have children the normal way with the boy-girl pairs they were assigned to, but the aliens in control of their system do not allow that.



Episode 17 is the moment that the series lays down its themes clearer than it ever had before. Kokoro voices that she wants to have a baby in order to feel fulfilled, then the evil Squad Nine comes and takes her book on pregnancy and they tell her humans have cast away their reproductive organs because they cause too much unnecessary drama. He further clarifies by stating the firm belief of APE, the council of aliens leading the anti-reproduction regime.



This is simply connecting a person's fertility directly to their emotional depth. The world of Franxx says you don’t need to reproduce OR have emotion, and that’s what the main characters are trying to break away from. Of course, why wouldn’t they want to break out of a system like that? But why? What does it represent? What person or group in the real world is preventing people from having kids because they want to be shallow, genderless, and without children? No one! It's social commentary written by someone who is out of touch with reality.



In the awful backstory of “Inhumanity” (ep.19), Dr. Franxx voices that he believes humans are only truly beautiful if they can procreate, which is why he puts faith in Hiro’s squad to become “real humans” and create children in his designated forced piloting system. The piloting is just pseudo-science that very obviously has no reason for existing outside of serving the show’s message and trashy fan service. The show takes this message even further by portraying any person or group who doesn’t procreate the Franxx way as a threat to humanity.



Franxx is very much able to say a traditional family is good; mother, father, procreating, that is a good message for tackling birthrate. But for some reason, it chooses to frame anyone who chooses not to adhere to the traditionalist family setup as a threat to mankind. Franxx just ignores the fact that there are many other ways people can have a family, and still live fulfilled lives. There can be same-sex relationships, people can adopt kids, or even to not have children at all, but Franxx says these are all signs of inhumanity. That hilariously stupid wedding episode served only to convey this message but in the most hamfisted way possible. In episode 18, the makeshift wedding between Kokoro and Mitsuru gets raided by the alien SWAT team led by APE. The bride and groom are torn apart, then their memories of one another are erased.



The entire wedding arc was unnecessary to the story and boring as hell, it was just crammed in there for the sake of pushing these themes even more. APE is just the idea of diversity but overblown to ridiculous proportions. It antagonizes anyone who opposes traditionalism to an absurd degree, but it also portrays traditionalists as insanely hysterical in their beliefs in an offensively stereotypical way. Both sides of the political spectrum are written in a way that is so overblown to an alienating degree that very few people will want to agree with it. When the purpose of a piece of art is to change the audience's political views, it is fitting to label it as propaganda. However, assuming that level of thought and consideration was put into the story would be giving the moron who wrote it way too much credit. Regardless of your stance on the themes in Franxx, this is all it has to offer in terms of in-depth analysis, other than that it's boring teenage drama between underdeveloped characters.



Part 4: [The Squad]

How could this have happened?! The voice actors were good enough to mask a lack of depth, the animators were talented enough to make them look like lively pieces of cardboard (at least in the first half), but nope instead they are unavoidably awful and no icing will make this pile of shit resemble a cake. At best they’re forgettable, but at worst they’re horribly portrayed archetypes that will make you feel sorry for how badly the show treats them. There was so much potential in most of these characters, but without writers capable of crafting cohesive or satisfying arcs, all of them remain flat cardboard cutouts only existing to support Hiro and Zero Two’s efforts to be the most obnoxious couple in the show.



Ichigo:

All this poor girl did was have a crush on the potato protagonist, and that caused people to send her voice actress death threats. They’re children, who gives a shit about who likes who? Her reason for actually liking him is so vague and petty, they were friends as children. And per Franxx’s idiot logic, your first affectionate interaction with a person will decide who you’re attracted to when you're older. Ichigo had a few interesting moments of standing up to Zero Two for the sake of protecting Hiro, it went how you expect, with the two parasites wallowing in codependency and nothing developing. She does very little throughout the show aside from looking pouty whenever she sees the two leads acting lovey-dovey around her. It was impossible for me to sympathize with her because I can’t comprehend why she would feel so strongly towards a potato. Regardless of her love, by the end, she does not change at all despite being the most prominent supporting character.



Goro:

Occasionally Goro calls Hiro out on his bullshit in some of the most satisfying scenes of the series, then in the most disappointing moments of the series, he immediately apologizes and acknowledges Hiro’s superiority. Goro is allowed to be a character for a few seconds once every few episodes, but for the remainder of the show, he has no stakes in the story.

Goro’s main attribute is that he’s a nice guy who feels unrequited love for Ichigo. He respects her and acknowledges that she has feelings for Hiro and doesn’t overstep his boundaries. He’s the most likable member of the whole cast, but sadly there is truly nothing to him than his unrequited love for Ichigo. His whole character arc culminates very early on in “Triangle Bomb” (ep. 9) when he confesses his love to Ichigo in the best way he could, explicitly stating he doesn’t want to pressure her but wanted to clear the tension between them because he is a nice and respectful guy.

Then Ichigo shrugs off his confession with “I don’t know how to respond to that,”

...

...and then she doesn’t...

...

FOR THE ENTIRE SHOW.



Kokoro:

Ok, I was bracing myself by talking about Goro first because Kokoro is by far the worst member of the squad. Not only is she the source of many plot holes, but she is also more or less a vehicle for the show’s creator to preach the themes. In the totally 100% necessary beach episode (ep.7), she finds her bible, a book on pregnancy, and for the remainder of the series, she preaches it like scripture. She uses it to learn about sexuality, weddings, and childbirth. In “Boys x Girls” (ep.8) she references the book to explain why the boys were ogling the girls, she says ‘we have to put up with their perviness in order to pilot together and to eventually have a family with them.’ Kokoro believes that girls are supposed to ignore any problems they have with the boys because they have to make a baby regardless of how they feel. Not only is this a harmful message for viewers, but it also causes even more stagnant character writing because the pilot pairings never have arguments over their differences. Nothing is ever overcome because Kokoro perpetuates this outdated rhetoric. All that comes from her character is bizarre teen pregnancy propaganda.



Kokoro does very little throughout the show, mostly sitting passively until she gets the baby craziness and demands to be allowed to have a child. After promising she would stay with her piloting partner Futoshi, she immediately kicks him to the curb for a new guy in episode 11 for no other reason than he’s fat and she doesn’t want her kid to have the fat genes. So needless to say she’s kind of a monster and I felt no sympathy whatsoever.



That leads us to the makeshift wedding they come up with which was one of the stupidest moments in the show; for some reason, right before she is wed to Mitsuru they’re raided by APE with their SWAT team. It’s totally ridiculous to think that a futuristic advanced society of aliens could kick down the door at any moment, but they chose to wait just as the two are about to kiss. And seeing them waving around guns at a wedding full of kids is so unbelievably over-the-top. That whole marriage episode was a trudge to get through, and I was honestly relieved when the alien SWAT reproduction-abolitionists ended it early.



But wait, there’s more. APE erases Kokoro and Mitsuru’s memories of one another, but this opens even more plot holes:

1. APE forgot to remove their wedding rings after the memory removal procedure, genius.

2. All of the other kids knew about the memories getting erased so they just told her and that’s how she remembered.

3. She was still pregnant after being captured by the anti-marriage alien SWAT team. They’re pretty bad at being an anti-reproduction regime if they can’t even figure out this basic shit.

4. Kokoro and Mitsuru regain their memories a few episodes later on their own, they overcome literally nothing because they return to how they were just before getting married.



Zorome/Miku:

They’re the most forgettable members of the squad, simple one-note personalities with no impact on the story. They do have a brief bit of ‘development’ if you can even call it that abhorrent in “Boys x Girls” (ep. 8). They clash briefly when Zorome ogles Miku (we’ve discussed how this doesn’t make sense) and she reacts by dividing the dormitory with tape in the most sitcom-y episode in the show. For a mecha series that tries to take itself seriously, throwing a proverbial wrench in the tone does not make the characters seem more human and relatable, it was such an unnatural tonal shift that it made them feel like aliens. Other than this one fanservice episode, they just hang around the squad and offer a few inconsequential reactions and quips that add absolutely nothing to the show but background noise.



Futoshi:

This poor chubby kid is just bullied by the show whenever he is onscreen, his whole character arc is one big fat joke. At first, it was just a few offbeat jokes along the lines of “Hey, don’t take any of my food while I’m gone.” His humor was just as unnatural and stereotypical as the rest of the cast, but then the show takes it a step further from a poorly written annoyance into offensively awful. His piloting partner Kokoro ditches him during “Partner Shuffle” because he has the fat genes and she wants a good baby to further the species. Understandably, this causes him to become insecure about his weight and form an eating disorder. This is a very sensitive topic with plenty of potential for good discussion, but this is Franxx so they flushed any potential down the toilet. Franxx approaches this real-world issue that affects plenty of people with the sensitivity of a sledgehammer.



The writers were too incompetent to deftly handle a serious topic like an eating disorder, so they just ignore it. Most of episode 16 is dedicated to his struggling with not wanting to eat any food, with Zorome confirming that Futoshi is throwing up his food. Yet even though they confront him about his insecurity, the episode ends with Hiro giving one of his bullshit speeches about friendship with sad piano music playing, cue the whole cast crying. Futoshi’s turmoil was glossed over and never resolved, likely because none of the corporate drones that manufactured this knew how to sensitively handle real-world issues. The director goes out of his way to show us how unhappy he is with himself in minor ways throughout the rest of the show. Whether he be playing with his food or sadly staring down at his full plate, even by the end it’s obvious he’s still struggling with his disorder yet Franxx couldn’t give less of a shit about his turmoil. Rather than addressing his issue, they choose to force him to be the de facto-priest at Kokoro’s wedding, it’s so cruel and horrible that I might actually have felt bad for him if he had actual character traits beyond “he’s fat lol.”



Ikuno:

Throughout the show, she is very blatantly hinted at being in love with Ichigo, which gave the show a huge chance to backtrack on the message that anyone who isn’t in a heterosexual relationship is actively part of the birthrate problem. But because Franxx is the anime of disappointments, her character arc was handled appallingly. One of the most egregious moments in the series was in "When the Sakura Blooms" (ep. 18) when Ikuno confesses her love to Ichigo and she wrote it off by saying “oh I was the same when I felt unrequited love for Hiro, but now I am doing what's necessary for the greater good and hooking up with someone else.” It’s the passive-aggressive type of homophobia I've seen plenty of in real life from people who are only accepting of gay people as long as they become straight eventually. What Ichigo says to Ikuno sounds more like ‘oh how sad that you’re defective, someday you’ll grow out of that phase.’



And it doesn’t end there, Ikuno is perpetually shown as the least able member of the squad. Like I mentioned previously, this show dives into some dark dehumanizing themes of eugenics. It is explicitly stated that in the world of Franxx, your life force is directly connected to your fertility, if you’re not having a kid your hair will become gray and you will die faster than those who chose to further the species. Whether or not it was the creator’s intention to dehumanize LGBT people, he threw these pieces on the board and they landed unnervingly close to hate-speech.



Mitsuru:

At the start of the series, Mitsuru is the ‘rival’ archetype who has an inferiority complex to Hiro, but through subtle coding is indicated to actually be in love with him. Mitsuru received his name from Hiro when he was a child, therefore per Franxx idiot logic, he is gay. With this character, Franxx approaches the topic of homosexuality as a developmental mistake, something you are born with then eventually grow out of. Which is just not true on any level. Sexuality is biodiversity, you’re born that way or you’re not. A person does not need ‘a reason for being gay,’ they just are. The fact that Franxx framed it as a discrepancy in Mitsuru and Ikuno’s upbringing and that they have to grow out of it regardless of how they feel is appalling.



His turmoil over being in love with Hiro is swiftly brought to a close with him being forced into a relationship with Kokoro. She projects her desire to have a kid on him until he tepidly reciprocates because they are both convinced that unless they have a child they won’t be fulfilled in life or ensure the future. Of course with no resolution for his unrequited love. The show goes out of its way to frame his marriage to Kokoro as an obligation rather than a choice. Similar to Futoshi, through subtle character direction you can tell Mitsuru’s still pining for Hiro even in the episode he starts his relationship Kokoro. And there’s never the same coding for Mitsuru being in love with Kokoro. Hiro flat out tells Mitsuru “you ARE in love with Kokoro” and he accepts that hesitantly. It’s as if the writers were trying to indicate that Mitsuru actually wanted to be with Hiro, but needed to suppress his feeling in order to prevent the metaphorical birth rate from declining.



Even if these messages were unintentional, the creators of Franxx are playing with serious issues just for the sake of window dressing to make the sex-robot alien stuff seem less stupid, which is in my opinion just as offensive.



Part 5: [Dr. Franxx, APE, “Inhumanity,” and the scienceless sci-fi]

“I’m an atheist, you see ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)”

-Dr. Franxx while licking his lips at the sight of the loli-monster-girl-princess.



Our first introduction to the eponymous Dr. Franxx is him delivering his half-breed experiment kid Zero Two to Hiro’s squad. One of his first lines is him uncomfortably sexually assaulting Nana, the squad's parental-type overseer, and telling her to loosen up. The assault is framed as a joke because of course a show as inane as Franxx thinks workplace assault is comedy gold. That’s how he’s characterized for most of the series, as a guy who does explicitly bad things like torturing Zero Two during “The Prince and the Beast,” but he is framed as sympathetic towards the end. They really expected us to think, “he’s done bad things, but he really had some good ideas!” He has no value for human life, but somehow designing the awful sex-powered mechas absolves him? It’s like a crazy person trying to defend Adolf Hitler. I. Don’t. Care. He tortured and experimented on a kid, why are we expected to feel bad for him when he ‘sacrificed himself’ so everyone could survive at the end of episode 21. I stood up and applauded when a plot contrivance caused him to get violently crushed by tons of falling rocks.



APE is just a bunch of aliens that came down to Earth and pretended to be an organization of scientists, they gave the government a new form of energy, magma, and took over the world more or less. It’s a very silly twist, but this is Franxx and it’s a stupid show, magma could technically be used as a form of energy and greed could lead the government to trust mysterious scientists. But the magma is somehow also the key to unlocking immortality? How? Magma is molten rock, hot rocks! How the hell do you make the logical leap between a form of energy and DNA mutation? It makes no goddamn sense! APE was just a bunch of random aliens that had so little to do with the main characters, it added nothing to what had been built up in the prior episodes. The magma energy constantly shown in background details supposedly caused the Earth to become deserts? Taking molten lava from the Earth (below the crust) would in no way affect the soil, it might lower the temperature of the surface but that would cause it to become cold, not hot. I'm not sure who thought coming up with scientific-sounding words and a vaguely futuristic aesthetic would make good sci-fi, but it doesn't. Even I, someone who knows very little about science can tell this show is brain dead stupid and no effort went into researching its concepts.



Then after Franxx spends twenty-two episodes building up this illogical science, it throws in a giant twist in episode 20 that nullifies everything that came before it. Oh no! APE was actually aliens 