DARLING in the FRANXX

TV (24 eps)
3.926 out of 5 from 30,066 votes
Rank #1,351

Set in the distant future, the land is ruined and humanity establishes the mobile fort city Plantation. Pilots produced inside Plantation live in Mistilteinn, also know as the "birdcage." Children live there knowing nothing of the outside world or the freedom of the sky. Their lives consist of battling to carry out missions. Their enemies are mysterious giant lifeforms known as Kyouryuu, and the children pilot robots called Franxx to face off against them. For the children, riding the Franxx proves their existence. A boy named Hiro is called Code:016, and he was once known as a prodigy. However, he has fallen behind, and his existence seems unnecessary. Not piloting a Franxx is the same as ceasing to exist. One day, a mysterious girl known as "Zero Two" appears before him. Two horns grow out of her head.

Source: ANN

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Alone and Lonesome

Episode 1

Alone and Lonesome

What It Means to Connect

Episode 2

What It Means to Connect

Fighting Puppet

Episode 3

Fighting Puppet

Flap Flap

Episode 4

Flap Flap

Your Thorn, My Badge

Episode 5

Your Thorn, My Badge

DARLING in the FRANXX

Episode 6

DARLING in the FRANXX

Shooting Star Moratorium

Episode 7

Shooting Star Moratorium

Boys x Girls

Episode 8

Boys x Girls

Triangle Bomb

Episode 9

Triangle Bomb

The City of Eternity

Episode 10

The City of Eternity

Partner Shuffle

Episode 11

Partner Shuffle

The Garden Where It All Began

Episode 12

The Garden Where It All Began

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Reviews

Osiummaster
2

Have you always dreamt about being a mech pilot who was suddenly forced into a romantic relationship with a hawt waifu because the power of love would make your mech the strongest one possible? Well fear not, the time has finally come for you to watch: Eureka 7 DARLING in le FRANXX (The X stands for nude scenes because nothing is more romantic than nude 2d waifus) With the most generic MC possible, a harem of waifus who want his dick over that ripped 6'4 blonde guy, because our MC is such a niceguyTM, and an entire arsenal of plot armor asspulls, Darling in the Franxx crowns itsself as AOTS for many weebs who want to see their same beta ass fantasy wrapped in a slightly different jacket for the gazilionth time. In this universe, MCmcGeneric is a weak soyboy without any powers. That is, until his destined waifu arrives, and he unlocks his inner SSJ9. Being suicidal he quickly realizes he'll never get laid, he shall throw his life away with passion for the people abusing him, because that's how the Japs do it. In this very originally written story we find a pattern of the cast getting themselves into an emotional argument, lowering their fighting powers, however just when they are about to be crushed, or super amazing plot armor asspull heroes show up with le strelizia of doom and straight up wipe everything because that's never been done before. (wow strelizia omg le ebin lance so quick) Characters: Hiro: A generic loser soyboy for you to insert your own persona into, so you can relate. Zero Two: A girl who has more airtime being naked than clothed, but is somehow still the most loyal waifu you could possibly find. You guessed it: she's an alien And a bunch of other sexually frustrated angsty teens who don't really matter Because nothing is more relevant to weebs than wanting to get laid as a virgin teenager. Animation: If you throw your entire budget at the fight scenes, be sure to sexualize the girls as much as possible even in normal scenes, and the weebs won't notice. Sound: OP singer sounds like a tranny so Characters: I couldn't find a single original character in the entire series. It's like trying to find Waldo but he's simply not there. 3/10 Just stick to Hentai.

fr8train
6

This show was so close to being perfect for me it's agnozing how frustrating it is. I have a really hard time supporting shows with high sexualization of women or that contain crimes against women (i.e. Future Diary). First off, the positive notes: Love the design of the FRANXX, absolutely beautiful mechs. Looking forward to someone buying the rights for these and producing model kits. Absolutely connected to the primary protagonist relationship. It's been predictable but a very enjoyable ride (no pun intended). I may be a sap for old-school basic happiness romances, but I can see the start of one flowering here. Love a crazy chick as one of the primary protagonists. Love the fact that she's a human hybrid, love her strange idiosyncracies, loved the whole "darling" angle. REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO FLESHING OUT HER BACKSTORY. If we don't get something on that during this first season, I will be severely disappointed in the story writing. The "love confession" of episode 5 between Hiro and Zero Two, while full of used cliches, was absolutely adorable. Again, I feel like their pairing is so entertaining to watch. Now the negative: Human integration into the FRANXX, my gosh people are you freaking kidding me? You couldn't have gone for a Melfina (Outlaw Star) approach to full human integration into the suit? You just had to make the girls prostrate into a very compromising and humiliating position with completely OBVIOUS sexual innuendo to how the male and female are positioned in the cockpit? Totally unnecessary and severely diappointing. If you had re-thought the design for the cockpit alone you would have made my top ten anime list. Thank you for once again ruining what could have been a 10/10 for me. That leads into the sexual innuendos - this is almost borderline rape to be honest. They don't even hide it. If you can't stomach sexual innuendos of this magnitude and you find the demeaning of women revolting, stay away from this one. I understand the need for conflict in a main characters relationship, but given the highly sexual nature of the pairing of "woman basically being the console of the machine", again highly demeaning and very disappointing, and the hightened sexual state of the "stamen" or male pilot did you really have to send that turd of a pilot (whatever-is-name, the angsty cocky one) for a "turn" with Zero Two? That was very difficult to watch because again due to the highly sexual nature of piloting a FRANXX it felt like he was sexually taking advantage of Zero Two and her remarks after he almost died felt like he didn't measure of sexually which I also felt demeaned her character to be honest. I like how cold she is sometimes but overall this whole mini-arc simply shows the disfigured and perverted minds of the storytellers. Based on some of Zero Two's commentary of the world at large, I feel a dark side to her origin story - especially given her once happy nature (see episode 1 initial introduction). I'm assuming at this point sexual abuse by one of her stamens which developed into the tradition of her "consuming" her stamens as a natural form of self defense. If you guys go this direction, again, it will be too much to stomach for me and you will end up in the same category for me as Future Diary.

ThatAnimeSnob
3.5

Darling in the FranXX is a fine example of what modern anime have become and why they are throwaway trash. They are doing nothing but reusing older ideas, instead of having new ones. And on top of that, they don’t even do a good job at rehashing the same ideas. They are not trying to improve or refine them. They just make them more creepy, sexual, and edgy. They also ride on the name of who made them, instead of how good they are on their own, and do their best to keep you interested with how absurd they are by constantly making up memes and crazy situations, without actually caring about the quality of the script or good characterization. The show does its best to make hate everything from the very beginning. You get the scene where they establish the main character, and all you get is a bland self-insert who recited emo poetry and there is an injured bird that symbolizes something. First impressions are crucial for getting to like a character, and instead of giving you an interesting personality, or a cool design, or a sad backdrop, they throw in stolen quotes and symbolism, which have nothing to do with him as a person you are supposed to like for being a person. This is all nothing but pretentious overthinking replacing characterization. How can you still care after that? Same thing with the main female character. The establishing scene is about her being naked and crazy. What is there to care about her after that, besides the doujin you will look for when you want to masturbate?The funny part is that the majority of modern anime fans are fine with this trash, because they gave up on expecting to watch something good. Most of the community was calling this abomination the best title of the year, just so they can be part of the seasonal hype, write essays about symbolism, make theories about what might happen, only to lose interest as soon as it’s over, so they can move to the next trash that is about to come out. But until that happens, they will be kept preoccupied with two seasons of boring one-dimensional characters, each one defined by type rather than an interesting personality, as they spend their time trying to understand sex. Just by this set-up, you know this is bad from the get-go, since everything is defined by numbers and percentages instead of, you know, personalities.The characters have nothing to do outside of piloting waifubots by doing doggy style sex. This gets old very fast, since you don’t give a shit about action scenes that involve awful mecha designs and sex metaphors. Plus, the characters have no backdrop story since they haven’t done anything interesting in their whole lives. Their social interaction is limited to talking to equally flat people like themselves. Also, there are so many of them it becomes a snorefest to tolerate an episode dedicated to each of them; especially when you know only the main two characters matter in the story. Most others don’t contribute to the plot in any way; they are just there to waste episodes on sexual innuendos. It could have been a decent watch if it stayed that way and didn’t try to have a plot or deeper meanings, but it did and it backfired horribly. For most of the episodes, there were no explanations for why they are fighting monsters or why the world looks like a huge desert. The writers were constantly teasing an answer to all that, and to the most part did nothing to prepare the audience for it, since most of the episodes were wasted on the sexual frustrations of inept waifubot pilots. All the emphasis was placed on vapid love triangles, cheating, cuckholding, and shameless references to older mecha. That became the only thing the audience of this abomination was caring for. Evidence for how little thought was placed into the making of a cast, can be found when observing what happens to them once they manage to resolve the conflict they were written with during their inception. The single trait that was defining them ceases to exist, and they become black pieces of paper, since whatever specs of personality they had was defined by their conflict. Essentially, the moment their emotional baggage is lifted, they stop having a personality. Eventually the explanations for the mystery arrived in a rushed and retarded way, completely changing the atmosphere of the show, and as if by magic made everybody to realize the show was crap all along, despite that being obvious from the very beginning. After that, everybody was calling it a trainwreck and left them wondering how did Trigger, the savior of anime, ruined the potentially best anime of the year (lol). Some tried to defend this horseshit by saying previous Trigger and Gainax series were also becoming bizarre as time went on, and that it’s unfair to hate Darling when it was constantly reusing ideas from them. Those defenders are of course idiots who don’t see how said older anime had far fewer characters, with far more personality and backdrop stories, and had much smoother transitions by not wasting as many episodes on worthless characters, thus being left with enough duration to work things through a lot better. But hey, this is a modern anime, so who gives a shit about any of that? The point is to forget it the moment is over and move to the next trainwreck.

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