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EP. REVIEW: DARLING in the FRANXX

HIs part of society is exactly fitting into all of the propaganda that supposedly comes from Papa. Whether he lives in the city or not, him fulfilling the mission given by those who rule it. But there is also this specific line that has popped up a few times about being human, that Ichigo specifically called Zero Two inhuman, with Zero Two saying "what is even human to you people". We know that Zero Two wants to be human, and that she does see her Klaxosaur traits as something inhuman, that separates herself from everyone else, that she is a part of the monsters that are destroying humanity.

Our assumption has been that the adults are pure humans, and that the parasites could have perhaps be altered to not be quite human themselves. Although, matching the theme, we have seen what the adults live like, and there is something quite inhuman about it, that they have separate themselves from natural pleasures. They only thing they have left is an appearance of being human, things like partners because that was in the past, or there were snacks but they don't need it and can get the good feelings elsewhere. Hiro is going to lose that appearance, he will get his own horns or something, and all the other humans might think him looking at a monster makes him a monster, clearly some of the humans do think that about Zero Two.

But in transforming, Hiro will likely still have exactly what makes him human, that the adults lack, and it is actually something that this society turned its back on.

I would push back, that it is not something that she does on purpose, it is an inherent effect of riding with her, which put the blame more on those who have got her to pilot in the first place.

I really like the OP for this show. it's so uncommon to hear sultry, lower-register women's voices in anime songs, especially with the trend to having the seiyuu perform the songs in their character voices like in the ED's by "XX:me" (aka "Kiss Me").

Hiroki not Takuya wrote:

Also, there will be a Code116 who is Hiro's clone. "02" was in love with 9-Kappa (if the order is right) before Hiro.

Where did the 9-kappa stuff come from? I'm definitely curious on that theory.

These reviews are making me like ANN less and less. Violet Evergarden gets consistent B's and now even the stronger episodes of Darling in the FranXX are getting bland reviews. Episode 13 is an objectively amazing episode, so we'll see if these reviewers just have bad taste if they give it a low score.

Scherzo wrote:

I mean, to be honest it's less about me seeing them as like a particular viable pairing so much as wanting to avoid Ikuno being punished for being gay, as James has worried will likely be the case.

However, she's most certainly not being punished for being gay if that doesn't happen, and the idea that she has to have her feelings returned by Ichigo or else it's anti-gay is incredibly insidious.

Mojave wrote:

Scherzo wrote: I mean, to be honest it's less about me seeing them as like a particular viable pairing so much as wanting to avoid Ikuno being punished for being gay, as James has worried will likely be the case. However, she's most certainly not being punished for being gay if that doesn't happen, and the idea that she has to have her feelings returned by Ichigo or else it's anti-gay is incredibly insidious.

I find that point of discussion especially misguided if you look at the other discussion from the SAME episode. When Kokoro basically decides that she wants a different partner from Futoshi, that's deemed as empowering for Kokoro. But When Ichigo (who also failed to properly pilot with the MALE Hiro) decides SHE doesn't return Ikuno's affections, well that's homophobic.

I still don't get why some people are so hung up on the homosexuality aspect when it's obvious it's not really important. Mitsuru's not even gay. His interest in wanting to pilot with Hiro comes from his admiration of him, not from an sort of sexual attraction. The only one who's gay is Ikuno and even that isn't set in stone until we get a better look at her later. Honestly, people are way too eager to jump on this as representation when it's only tangential at best.

It's not a question of being homophobic so much as setting up Ikuno to suffer because of her sexual identity. It all depends on how it plays out of course, but it sort of feels several decades behind the times wrt handling gay/lesbian things.

Now supposedly Hiro and 02 met as kids and fell for each other but somehow they didn't remember any of that until now, so maybe there wasn't another "darling" before Hiro (?).

There's also an interesting question to ask about 02's previous partners. The only one we see is CLEARLY older than the current cast.

It's actually one of my big problems with "dystopian setting" stories, how MOST of the populace is suffering and miserable simply as a baseline of existence, so again, I don't see why Ikuno's particular brand of "suffering" should be elevated.