I recently finished watching Darling in the Franxx and I was blown away by it. This series is the greatest mecha anime I’ve watched in while. If you haven’t watched it yet, prepare for spoilers because I’m not holding back. Also, I’m going to talk about characters as if you already know who they are.
The show is fundamentally about a group of children called parasites that must fight monsters called Klaxosaurs in order to product the adults. They pilot giant robots called Franxx that can only be piloted with the synchronization of a male-female pair. Zero Two is a Klaxosaur princess clone and the most effective warrior against the klaxosaurs, however all of her male partners die after riding with her three times. She gains the infamous name as the partner killer. Hiro or 016, on the other hand, cannot not pilot with anyone except for Zero Two.
To me, Darling in the Franxx was a Hybrid between Eureka Seven and Gurren Lagann. If you’ve watched them then you know what I’m talking about. Zero Two looks like Anemone from Eureka Seven and Hiro is similar to Simon’s character design. Zero Two is a clone while Anemone was a clone of Eureka. In Gurren Lagann, the main characters fight against the Beastmen only to realize the Beastmen were trying to protect them from the anti spirals. Another aspect that makes all of these shows similar is that the female love interests aren’t human. Also, the battles are always for the right to stay on the Earth.
Despite the similarities, Darling in the Franxx addressed the concept of humanity beautifully. As I mentioned before, the children that pilot the Franxx are called parasites. Throughout the series, it becomes obvious that the children know nothing about basic human emotions nor about what it means to become adult and puberty. They pray to Papa before meals and they have caretakers that provide them with everything they need. The children don’t even have names. Their names are numbers, but Hiro became famous for giving children actual names based of their code number. The adults ensured that they knew nothing of love or puberty because their sole purpose for being created was pilot the Franxx. And when I say created I mean literally created. They parasites were clones. Only they could pilot the Franxx because the adults had given up their reproductive organs fro immortality. And reproductive organs were needed to pilot the Franxx.
The adults basically went against the human nature of procreation so that they could gain immortality. When Zorome encounters an adult because he wants to know how to become one, we see how boring and mundane adult lives are compared to the children. They live in these artificial cities called plantations and yet adults are never seen walking the streets. To get enjoyment they get into these capsules and have virtual experiences instead of conversing with the people around them. They also don’t even really taste or enjoy eating food. They have lost what it means to be human, but at the same time they can basically live forever. But if you can’t really interact with other people and have real experiences then what’s the point of living? Are you really living at all? Not only were they not living, they abandoned the Earth and left the parasites with a barren wasteland.
The children who weren’t human were considered to be contaminated so they were kept in a separate area of the plantation called Mistilteinn and weren’t allowed to go into the city. This area seemed to appear like the previous Earth before deforestation and desertification. The children had yummy food and lived normal lives. While on vacation after a successful mission against the Klaxosaurs, Kokoro found a book about childbirth in a deserted city that was left behind by the adults. She began to realize that she could leave something behind to be remembered for. The other children didn’t know anything about childbirth because the adults had never taught them. They started to realize their feelings for each other and didn’t even know what they were experiencing. When Kokoro got pregnant by Mitsuru, both of their minds were erased for having feelings that weren’t necessary to fight the Klaxosaurs. Despite this, they both came together and their love grew anew. The children were becoming adults and they had to start civilization from scratch because the adults had left them nothing. They learned how to grow and thrive from books that were left behind. Although, they were artificially created, they became more human than the adults who were naturally made. The parasites embraced their emotions and repopulated the Earth with people. They were also able to grow plants with the soil from Mistilteinn. The parasites were created in a lab and kept in a bubble their entire lives. They were faced with the uncertainty of the future, yet they embraced it and created a civilization from nothing. The parasites showed us that they could grab their future with their own hands.
