This is my very first review, I'm sorry that my writing isn't particularly good. So, if I had to preface this with something, it would be a trigger warning for any fans of the series. I'm kind of mindboggled that this series has fans, but anyway. Opinion warning! I am highly opinionated and this made me very angry so I'm venting! Don't get too angry at me please. Also, spoilers for those who haven't seen the show.

Story - 1/10

Right off the bat, Franxx seems to think it has the privilege of skipping any kind of decent setup or worldbuilding that would've made me more invested in the story, and this coupled with the crap boring setting does wonders for making you fall asleep. They're just kids fighting random blob things in the middle of a wasteland, and did they give me a reason to care? Absolutely not. Not even so much as a simple explanation, hoping that makes it 'mysterious' or whatever but it's just bad writing, there is a complete lack of any direction for the whole first part of the show.

So, we get about halfway through the anime and finally they've revealed some crucial details about the setting. About time. Unfortunately, it still doesn't make much sense. So, to summarise, the adults in their (utterly dull and desolate) city look down on the children and make them fight the blobs for them in their stupid goofy mechas, many times through the first half. And then we find out the adults are just brainwashing the children to protect them, and also making their lives an absolute misery in the process. But outside of this explanation and a few standalone scenes, this isn't shown at all to be the case. It is always shown to be the children protecting their abusers, the adults, out of their own free will, with their own power, and they're putting themselves and their friends at risk to do so. Their personalities don't change when they overcome the brainwashing at the end, either, so this is just a contradiction. Are they brainwashed, or just incredibly omega stupid? Both, I guess.

These antagonistic adult abusers are hardly shown, too, which is another reason this show feels like it has absolutely no direction, and when they are shown, they're shown as faceless, generic individuals that don't inspire any feeling at all. Also- what is the purpose of needing 2 people to pilot a Franxx, and their gender specifically has to be different, and they have to be under a certain maturity level? What a strict, dumb ruleset. If this is symbolism for anything then I don't want to know what it is. What message are you trying to get across here? :/

And aha, Franxx also tries to be a romance. Sure, ok. So you have the obvious one, Hiro and Zero Two, who probably have the most obvious and uninteresting relationship I've encountered, ever, with no chemistry at all save them apparently liking each other unconditionally. The total lack of buildup in their character and of any real uniqueness means that trying to bring them together romantically when there's no depth to seeing those two happily together just means that it feels like the characters are being forced together as a plot point, and a clichéd plot point at that. Oh wow, she calls me darling and is hot so I love her!! Also we totally met as kids so its fate!!! We even got abused by the same terrible people so we have a common trauma!! ....and this brings me back to the fact that both of these people were actively fighting for the survival of their malicious adult masters at the risk of themselves, so that doesn't work. Believe it or not, the other main romance was far, far worse than just being simple, predictable and boring to watch.

So, Kokoro. At the start of the show she was one of the only bearable characters, and oh boy did she make me regret liking her, even just a little bit. It all starts when she picks up the pregnancy/childbirth book in the beach episode. (Can I just quickly mention they live in a total wasteland surrounded by evil monsters, with adults keeping them there, and they just randomly once let them vibe on a beach for an episode. Makes sense.) Then she makes moves on Mitsuru and gets herself pregnant. Remember that up to this point these characters have been purposefully shown to be extremely childish, for example the whole boys vs girls "war" only a few episodes previously, so this sudden total reversal made me feel extremely uncomfortable, especially since yet again, there was no buildup or development up to the event, it felt like a completely unnatural character change and a giant leap in logic to reach the decision to do anything like that. The few episodes that took place over were genuinely sickening and were the worst episodes of anything I've watched in my life. Watching Kokoro's non-reactions to Futoshi's feelings for her was actually miserable, and he just seems to discard them at some point afterwards with no problem, rendering those earlier scenes with him entirely useless. Then they had a whole wedding scene which is fine in theory, to show their feelings for each other are real and they're maturing etc. Except even that got ruined by unwatchable character interactions and also the plot catching up with them, which was almost a relief at that point, just to get out of this hellish arc.

I don't feel I really need to address the ending very much, except to say I don't think its much of a downgrade from the first two thirds, although I don't think that's too surprising given my opinion on that. Basically they just throw random disconnected plot points at you and hope that something sticks, which nothing does because, in contrast to the first half which has little to no development whatsoever, they suddenly think of the most outlandish stuff possible and completely change the tone. The conclusion episodes, bizarrely, I thought had a rather fitting ending, if you only think of where they got to from the start of the show, completely ignoring Hiro and Zero Two though, what the fuck was that development. I'm not even gonna waste time thinking about that one.

My overall opinion on the story is that the premise, or lack of such, is a huge flaw, and a contradiction with many other elements of the show, making it completely arbitrarily very frustrating for me to watch all the way through. You might notice I haven't mentioned the fights once, and that's because they serve no purpose whatsoever. As I said, if the show isn't going to make me care what happens, then I won't, and that includes the outcome of fights, which were boring to watch and predictable for the most part anyway. When there were plot elements at all they were usually really bad, and in the flashbacks, which I concede were pretty interesting for the most part, were completely ruined by knowing how unbearable the characters are later in their lives, and they just suddenly remember these flashbacks when they are shown - despite the fact that they have been brainwashed into forgetting - out of convenience more than anything. Feels very much like something that was (poorly) made up as it went along.

Characters - 0/10

DitF probably has the worst cast I've ever seen. Of course, just like the rest of this review, this is just my opinion. They are very 1-dimensional characters that barely have anything to them except basic trope attributes (being a horny teenager is not a character trait! thank you!) and they often change dramatically when the plot needs them to. And they're just... extremely irritating to watch. All character interactions in the first half, minus the boring Hiro/Zero Two stuff, was essentially just kids being horrible to each other. And, call me weird but I don't wanna watch that for 6 hours, or at all to be honest. To create an action-centric anime where I care about what happens to the characters there has to be at least some kind of positive chemistry going on, otherwise it's just painful to watch. All the main cast are extremely selfish and clearly don't care much about what happens to anybody around them, which just creates such a toxic, unpleasant atmosphere.

The unbearable cast is also another reason why the fights were so pointless. I was supposed to root for them, right? I don't see any valid reason why. I didn't care at all about any fight outcomes, especially since they weren't interesting or spectacular to watch or anything, and because I would rather the characters not stay alive for any longer so I don't have to watch them any longer, and because I knew that wasn't going to happen anyway - it was all so unbelievably dull and predictable.

The side characters were pointless and boring, which I would say is actually an improvement over the main characters but bruh. The 2 characters I actually thought were interesting were Dr. Franxx and 001, who were both ruined by the ending of the show being how it is, and not really developed at all, which is a huge shame, and a waste of a chance for the show to redeem itself slightly. Also this isn't really a character thing but that lady who oversaw the kids or whatever, she... relapsed into puberty? and that meant she had to use a wheelchair? what? Even this anime's fucked definition of puberty doesn't remotely explain that.

And here is the crucial point - the depiction of the main characters as pubescent horny teens. And yes, also as total children with no knowledge for the first part of the anime. I've mentioned this in many other points already, so I don't need to repeat myself but... what the fuck. If anything could've happened to make the character interactions even worse to watch from the start, it would've been an extra dynamic where they're sexually awakening and talking awkwardly with each other and developing clumsy, failed attempts at adult relationships. So the cast, which like I said I think is the worst I've ever seen, somehow gets twice as bad in the second half of the show. There is no relief from the cringe and general discomfort. Any real-life portrayals or parallels they were trying to draw with the characters are in extremely poor taste and just repulsive to think about. This part could have actually been done well, I think... if they didn't try to do this in a goofy mecha action show where it doesn't fit at all. And like I said, if the characters weren't so unbearable to begin with. The characters, to be honest, are the main reason I think this is the worst TV anime I've ever seen. They would ruin any show, let alone something with as weak a foundation as this one.

Visuals - 3/10

I don't really have much to say here, the scenery as a whole was just grey and really boring to look at, all the enemies for the first parts where just like, unexplained blob things that didn't exude any particular appeal, or, conversely, any animosity - very poor design choice. Speaking of design in general, trying to put on serious airs and have the atmosphere, minus most of the characters, be super serious contrasts starkly with the childish, goofy design of the franxx mechas they were using, which in my opinion doesn't look nice at all in the first place. I'm giving a little credit to the visuals because I guess CloverWorks had some kind of idea what they were doing but every kind of stylistic/design choice was fairly miserable and just not visually appealing. Admittedly, because it's them, the animation was the one thing they were OK with. It's average.

Enjoyment - 0/10

At the end of the day, to me this kinda feels like a crappy review because I keep goddamn repeating everything. Well, that's because it's genuinely comical how little happens across the two cours until the last few episodes, which are bad because too much happens so they never really seem to find that balance. But to be frank, this show, in addition to everything else I've said, is extremely boring. Which is why, despite wanting to rant so much about this show that impacted me in a considerable negative way, there's not a huge amount of things I can criticise that much because... there isn't much at all. This anime is an empty, soulless abyss of grey. Covering emotions from total apathy to genuine revulsion, this is how I felt watching Darling in the Franxx. Hope you enjoyed reading - and if you didn't, then you probably liked this garbage so I'm not sorry.

RATING - [story + characters + visuals + (enjoyment x 2)] x 2 = 8/100