Name: A severely misunderstood series with its only downside aspect being the targeted audience
Item: DARLING in the FRANXX
Rating: 99
Author: sim

Waifra

A severely misunderstood series with its only downside aspect being the targeted audience · Waifora

After watching this series for the 2nd time and truly paying attention to the plot, all I can say is that it was like I've never seen it in the first place. The number of hidden meanings this series offered that other reviewers just blankly overlooked and later called the development "unexplained" or "messy" is just ridiculous. Progressively into the episodes my opinions of the characters and the progression of the story has obviously been altering, though I never doubted that the rather weird decisions were not a result of bad direction or writing, but would be explained and followed-up later in the series. And God was I right. Let's start at the very beginning of the series, and by that I don't mean the first episode, but chronologically the very beginning of the "end" of humans (we'll get to klaxo sapiens later). In Dr. Franxx' flashback episode, there was the first encounter of APE, a team of scientists, with a goal of becoming the "Gods" of the world.

The true end became with the invention of immortality, after which traditional reproduction has been successfully and indirectly forcefully becoming the past. The government started taking measures to stop reproduction entirely so that: a) the Earth did not overpopulate, b) the number of people on the Earth would be limited and suppressed to the absolute minimum for the most ideal results of this revolution. It was around that time when magma energy was discovered, and thus a new era has begun. Mining of the magma energy caused severe desertification, and also attracted klaxosaurs. Due to that, the humanity moved to the so-called "plantations", which were built as a defense towards klaxosaurs, since they can move in the case of an emergency.

Each plantation also got themselves a squad to defend it. This squad consisted of 10 children, called "parasites", paired into 5 boy-girl duos. And here we get to the main focus of the series, the squad of the 13th plantation. The parasites for this particular squad have been chosen by Dr. Franxx as part of his special experiment. Unfortunately, Dr. Franxx did not live long enough to truly tell us the purpose of this experiment, but there were a few things you could notice that were different about this squad: 1) they lived in Mistilteinn and were monitored 24/7 by their caretakers, Nana and Hachi, 2) they had a very limited knowledge of socialization and generally the outside world, which I found particularly sad, since it made the children think they can become adults one day, when truly they were only made to protect them, 3) I suppose they also didn’t undergo emotional indoctrination? This would explain the bland expressions and behaviour of the other squads (including Nines, though those are just DNA copies of Zero Two, so there might’ve been something else going on).

It was very disheartening, seeing the squad progressively developing feelings for each other, while being so innocent and not knowing anything about love. Another interesting point was that pretty much for the entire time we thought humans are the victims in the war with klaxosaurs, so I found the plot-twist regarding them actually just wanting to take back their property (the magma energy in this case) very unexpected and nice.

Other than that, we got several other flashback episodes and scenes, such as the one with Mitsuru and Hiro and their "promise", which explained the reasoning behind Mitsuru's manner towards Hiro. Later, in the flashback episode mainly focused on Zero Two and Hiro's first encounter and their memory altering, it was right there explained why Hiro did not "forget" about the promise he made to Mitsuru, but it was a result of the memory alteration that he did not recall of it.

I also love how this series indirectly pointed out the emptiness and suffering one must experience as an immortal person. It even went to the point where two married people living in a single household cut any contacts with each other entirely, stopped living their lives "for the good moments", but only relied on the artificial methods of happiness, for efficiency. This also makes me wondering what happened to Nana and Hachi, given they were also immortal.

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Few "What if?'s" for the end to brainstorm about before going to bed:
What if Kokoro would have never found that book about babies?
What if Hiro would have never went to see Zero Two after she went to the front lines?
What if Kokoro wouldn't have switched partners?
What if Hiro would pass his initial test with Naomi?
What if Mitsuru would die in the result of getting the injection in the Garden?