DARLING in the FRANXX

Episode 23

Seeing as last week spent all of its time getting the Parasites up to speed and into space, episode 23 has been stuck with the unenviable task of cramming the rest of DARLING's Humanity v. VIRM conflict into a single episode. This was never going to go smoothly, but even I was caught off guard by just how bad this penultimate episode turned out. Even with limited options, the show manages to make almost every wrong decision possible in its eleventh hour, and it even invents a few new hurdles to trip over before it's done. Consider this review a post-mortem, as I explore how “DARLING in the FRANXX” (the episode) might be the worst thing that DARLING in the FRANXX (the show) ultimately produced.

From the moment the Parasites arrive at the battlefield just outside of Mars' orbit, it's clear that any semblance of premeditated storytelling has been tossed aside. The FRANXX have all been equipped with modular extensions that make them ready for space-combat, which happened to conveniently be stored in the Klaxosaur ship, ready to equip without a hitch. Hachi and Nana are also aboard that ship, but they just spend the whole episode delivering hackneyed explanations of the episode's themes. At one point, after yelling into the void about the Parasites' will to deny the VIRM's vision of paradise, Hachi takes a fatal blow in an explosion and decides to just give up and die. When Nana tells him that he can't do that, Hachi swiftly agrees and walks it off, rendering the whole sequence moot.

This is especially baffling because just last episode, DARLING in the FRANXX made a huge deal about Nana and Hachi being the new guardians of the surviving Parasite children. They could have just stayed on Earth; nothing about this episode indicates that their presence contributes to the battle in any way. A decent amount of this already rushed episode is completely wasted on these two conversing, because DARLING in the FRANXX is easily distracted from plots it laid down only the previous week.

The core cast isn't treated any better, unfortunately; the space combat animation is shockingly weak for the most part, so the group's few action beats make very little impact. By the episode's halfway point, Goro, Ichigo, Miku, Futoshi, and Zorome have little to do beyond just floating around and watching Hiro struggle to reach Zero Two (and then do whatever-the-hell happens after that). There's also a brief scene that Hiro shares with Ichigo and Goro, but it only backpedals on Hiro's dressing-down from last week even further, emphasizing that even when DARLING manages to stumble into a decent bit of character development, it fails to follow up well. At the very least, fans need not worry about Daiki Hamano filling in for Yūichirō Umehara as Goro; he does a fine job, and the changeup is hardly noticeable.

With everyone else left sitting on the sidelines, Hiro must pair with a sickly Nine Alpha to pilot a FRANXX. I don't know if the crew had a different plan for Alpha's character arc originally, but his final appearance is yet another disappointment. After weeks of never being given a character beyond "vague antagonism", Alpha becomes nothing more than a convenient way for Hiro to pilot the FRANXX without “cheating” on Zero Two, since he's technically her clone. It's an awkward development that goes nowhere; after a brief (roughly animated) action scene, Alpha gets Hiro inside of Star Apus before sacrificing himself to blow up the VIRM horde. He tosses off a line about learning the true nature of humanity from the Parasites, which is confusing because before last week, the 9s never had a single conversation with the main characters that wasn't aggressive and antagonistic. Thus, with a halfhearted explosion, every scene featuring the Nines in this entire show is rendered mostly pointless.

Speaking of “mostly pointless”, Kokoro and Mitsuru get a side-plot on Earth where they have to care for Zero Two's body while Kokoro deals with not being able to pilot the FRANXX anymore. There's nothing to say about what follows except that it's odd for DARLING to go through such trouble to erase their memories and indulge all this baby-making melodrama if Kokoro and Mitsuru were just going to end up back together anyway. As is the case with many other elements of DARLING's endgame, it feels like an awfully convoluted way to arrive at such a simple conclusion.

At last, we arrive at the meat of this episode and the core pillar of DARLING in the FRANXX's entire run: Hiro and Zero Two's relationship. I found the pair's chemistry cute enough in the show's early days, though my feelings eventually soured when I realized that DARLING's ideal vision of romance is one of complete codependence, the kind of unhealthy obsession that only works out in lame YA fiction. Once Hiro works his way into Star Apus's core, the episode shifts its art style to mimic the couple's treasured storybook, which might be charming if the sequence even tried to seriously explore the nuances of these characters' feelings, or better yet gave a clearer reason for Zero Two's mind to be stuck inside this giant robot. Instead, we get tacky dialogue like:

HIRO: “I want to be with you.”

ZERO TWO: “I can't be with you.”

HIRO: “Why?”

ZERO TWO: “I just can't.”

I could go on about how poorly DARLING in the FRANXX handles the rest of this scene, but I haven't even gotten to the part where Star Apus's brain-cables literally eat Hiro, which reunites him with Zero Two and transforms the entire mech into a giant, floating, half-naked Zero Two, complete with a wedding veil.. Mecha-Two comes equipped with skin, hair, and makeup, and she uses her Horn Laser and a bunch of missiles to explode all of the VIRM to death. If I'm being perfectly honest, this is one of the most bone-headed things I've seen from an anime in a long time, and that's before Mars's two moons spit out prongs that open up a convenient warp-gate to VIRM, leading the rest of the Parasites to cheer Mecha-Two off as it marches down the space-aisle into the unknown. Because it's like a wedding, do you get it?

The only reason this episode isn't getting an “F” is because there's a certain amount of entertainment to be had in watching a series implode so thoroughly. I have no idea what the finale of this show is going to bring, but I cannot imagine that any single episode could rectify what DARLING in the FRANXX has done to itself. This series once had potential as a well-produced riff on classic mecha anime tropes, but that time is long past. The VIRM arc has been rushed to the point of incoherence, and episode 23 only cements how unsalvageable this story has become. All I can really hope for now is that the end of DARLING in the FRANXX will be swift and merciful.

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.