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DARLING in the FRANXX At Crunchyroll Expo 2018

How were Kokoro and Mitsuru's gender roles seen as controversial?

How were Kokoro and Mitsuru's gender roles seen as controversial?

Writes the most homosexual male and female character in an anime.
Male character finds closure in suppressing desires and becoming the most heterosexual character in anime.
Female character is never given closure and dies early in a from a disease so that others can live better (and maybe gets a partner in last episode)
Character with eating disorders never clears up his state of mind grows a moustache and has kids.
Two characters experience no growth whatsoever.
One character just leaves and comes back to become a dad.
Main couple live forever together in their heterosexual love.

Yeah seems like logical writing. Be straight and be happy or be homosexual ( or obese) and give up on yourselves.

In a lot of ways, I find the plot developments that you frame as illogical to be fairly similar to something like Shakugan no Shana, in the sense that people behave out of character in order to move the story towards the author's desired endgame.

Not saying the plot was illogical just saying in terms of a story attempting philosophy it broke down into a show about conservative ideals.
It all made sense in the creators mind but not in the audience who were left angry about how all the build up since episode one was meaningless.

I think one of the weirdest thing, thematically, to me is the sort of bait-and-switch of the heterosexual pairings seeming to be mandated by a totalitarian regime, only for it to half way through decide 'no actually heterosexual relationships are transgressive'. It's such a weird deal, IMO, and hard to characterize other than clumsy.

Fukushima spoke about the harassment he faced on social media after the airing of episode 14. “My Twitter account exploded halfway through the series, but for better or worse I learned that a whole lot of people watched this series, not just in Japan. I kept hearing all the voices from Japan and overseas – it made me feel like people are actually watching what I'm doing, so it was actually a good feeling in the end. I can't go to sleep when the Twitter notifications are going off, though, so please hold off on your passion for a bit.”

Well, the reaction for episode 14 was unexpected. Episode 13 created a little hubbub, but episode 14 just exploded – mostly it was from overseas. Not many Japanese people expressed hatred, but we got plenty of hate mail from America and Europe. We were taken by surprise, but it isn't going to change how we do things. Besides, all that feedback died down by episode 15.

Q: The gender politics of the show were quite controversial, particularly the relationship between Mitsuru and Kokoro. What message were you trying to communicate and what sort of response did you expect?

I really don't get what's the big deal with gender and romance in media nowadays. If the creator wanted to make a media that focuses on het romance then that's it, period. Why do people feel the need to harass the creators for that? It's their creation, it's how they wanted things to be.