DARLING in the FRANXX

Episode 19

Generally speaking, ”Inhumanity” is DARLING in the FRANXX's Big Flashback Episode, which is meant to finally shed light on Dr. FRANXX and the genesis of the human/klaxosaur conflict. But more specifically, this is also a direct riff on the 21st episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion's original run, “He was aware that he was still a child”, where the life of Kozo Fuyutsuki was explored in a manner that revealed important thematic and narrative developments that shook up the whole series' perspective. That said, it isn't worth dwelling too much on the episode's many direct allusions to Evangelion, because they only serve to remind the audience of all the things Evangelion does right that DARLING in the FRANXX just doesn't.

It would have been one thing if this homage was equally effective as its inspiration in developing characters and fleshing out DARLING's lore, but this 19th episode fails on both of those counts spectacularly. Instead of improving what's come before it, this lore-dump actually manages to make DARLING in the FRANXX seem dumber in retrospect, shining a white hot spotlight on the series' worst story deficiencies. There's a lot to unpack here, but I'll just break down the major issues that struck me most immediately:

I'm going to ignore the ridiculous aspect of how APE just shows up out of the blue in their absurd monkey costumes to the complete nonchalance of every human government in the world. What matters more is how badly this episode handles DARLING's marriage of the “science” and the “fiction” aspects of its chosen genre. I can buy APE's revolutionary alternative energy solution, but jumping straight to “Magma also gives humans eternal life!” is a leap that requires more explanation than the handwave that this episode provides. I am usually happy to accept less-than-sound scientific concepts when it benefits a story's impact, but APE's All-Magma approach to their takeover of human society just comes across as lazy, and it undermines DARLING's core premise to make such a potentially interesting sci-fi concept so deeply ridiculous when they had plenty of runtime to deliver something more considered.

Not only is magma mining's ability to make people immortal while simultaneously destroying the Earth barely even glossed over, but we also get one of the silliest pieces of anime exposition I've seen in a long time when it comes to the invention of the FRANXX themselves. Amazingly, Dr. Frank's only explanation for the FRANXX's truly absurd piloting system is that the pilots have to be a male/female pair with functional reproductive systems. I hope I don't have to explain just how dumb it is that Dr. Franxx and his team could accidentally discover a fundamental requirement for piloting robots they designed after they had already built them. Even if this has something to do with the klaxosaurs' true nature that the scientists hadn't discovered, they were building and designing an entirely new machine, not just cloning a klaxosaur. At least in Evangelion they understood why specific children had to pilot each unit after they built them, regardless of how much they did or didn't know about Angel biology. If they didn't learn that much through the design process, the end result wouldn't be a perfectly functional robot that no one yet knew how to pilot. That's not how the manufacturing works; it would be a hunk of half-baked junk.

This kind of sloppiness has defined DARLING in the FRANXX's approach to world-building, but this episode's reveals are absurd enough to border on self-parody. Shoddy world-building isn't our only problem though, which leads us to the episode's other central focus:

2. Dr. Frank Has Some Hot Takes

The only meaningful insight we get into Dr. Frank's character is that he is not a fan of APE's so-called advancement of the human condition. Now I can definitely get behind the idea that immortality is a suspect path for humanity to begin treading, but Dr. Frank seems to draw more ire from the immortalization process' side effect of sterilizing humanity. This is where DARLING in the FRANXX doubles down on making the troubling arguments I've been picking up from the past couple of weeks the outright text of its story. The way the doctor sees it (who is an expert on cloning, by the way), the ability to reproduce and raise a naturally born family is not just fundamental to the human experience, it's an inexorable quality that straight-up defines what it is to be human.

This is the kind of political commentary that has caused such controversy for FRANXX lately, and for good reason. This episode goes out of its way to explicitly link humanity's immortality with the death of its reproductive cycle, qualifying through Dr. Frank's "scientific" assessment that childbirth and monogamous heterosexual parenting are essential qualities to being truly "human". Gaining immortality is classically linked with losing one's humanity in science fiction and fantasy, and FRANXX is no exception to this tradition. The difference is that it equates this emotional numbing not to lack of passion for life, fear of death, or empathy for the immortal's fellow man, but the loss of reproductive organs specifically

In this way, a basic reading of FRANXX's thematic intent might be “Because reproduction is such an invaluable element of general human existence, any species/culture/individual that willingly disengages from it has become less human as a result.” The first half of that thematic statement is perfectly fine, but I think the second half is abhorrent. Unfortunately, you can't have one without the other in Darling's vision of the future, because your humanity is directly tied into your compulsion to reproduce, according to "science".

Even if we were to disregard the troublesome politics underpinning this episode's central argument, Dr. Frank's backstory simply smacks of bad writing. He's such an ineffectual character that I haven't even mentioned his relationship with the woman he loves, because it absolutely doesn't matter beyond using her death to drive home why only heterosexual pairings can pilot a FRANXX. Their romance barely starts before it's unceremoniously ended with her violent death, but I guess they chose to include this unengaging material because Evangelion did something like this with its own Gendo. And even without all of this questionable nonsense, we would still have:

3. The Klaxosaur Problem

The Klaxosaurs have two X chromosomes. The doctor credits this factoid for the off-putting appreciation he has begun to develop for the monsters' beautiful forms. This information is not expounded on in any meaningful way for the rest of the episode, but I am worried about the implications of this chromosomal connection. In Evangelion, the Angels shared human DNA in a more general sense because they were sent to replace/annihilate us, but FRANXX's attempt at connecting ostensibly terrifying monsters from the core of the earth with human women is a lot more perplexing. Even if the Klaxosaurs are going to end up being sympathetic creatures in the long run, there are troubling implications that come with giving all the rampaging aliens filled with babies two X chromosomes.

Beyond that, the Klaxosaurs get the short shrift again when the Klaxosaur Princess appears. Klaxie as I like to call her is a sexy lolita girl with telepathic powers that seductively licks Dr. Frank's hand before viciously biting off his arm. It's disturbing in its own right that the widowed doctor apparently finds this powerfully arousing, but the only reason this scene seems to exist is to show that Dr. Frank stole some of Klaxie's hair in order to Clone 02. Yeah, the resemblance was pretty obvious.

For an episode that's nothing but reveals, the show spends a significant portion of its runtime communicating information that doesn't tell us anything we couldn't already infer ourselves (and in some cases, we inferred a smarter version of than "magma did it"). To me, that's a testament to how badly “Inhumanity” botches its opportunity to make DARLING'S world and history feel engrossing for once. Instead, this episode just wastes time indulging doctor's cringe-inducing monologues, when it's not taking ages to introduce characters from the past who ultimately don't matter or dancing around its present-day mysteries for the millionth time.

After all of that, I still haven't even addressed the main story of the Parasites confronting APE over forcibly altering their memories and denying them even a modicum of emotional agency. Honestly, those scenes contained enough stupid dialogue to fuel another 1500 words, and I had to stop somewhere, so I'm sure I'll get into that next week when the fallout starts happening. It's a good thing DARLING is still easy on the eyes, because that's just about the only thing the show has left going for it. This is easily DARLING in the FRANXX's worst episode yet, a tepid and awkward mess that makes the rest of the show worse in hindsight.

Rating: D

DARLING in the FRANXX is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.