It’s hard not to get a foreboding feeling when the squad decides to hold a wedding for Kokoro and Mitsuri, especially when you consider the previous time this studio animated a wedding scene. Yep, it was fairly obvious that things would go south and south they did go as the two lovebirds were torn apart and had their memories erased. Not sure what APE is really trying to accomplish with this and it does feel like a bit of a forced development for the sake of drama. I originally thought this would be the catalysts for Hiro and the others to turn against Father and begin some sort of rebellion and the end of this episode certainly hinted towards that outcome. Though in the end it turned out that Hiro and crew just went to father, asked for an explanation and got told nothing. Thus his rebellion is to ask Father to kindly let them go after they complete their last mission. For as we all know Father has proven to be very trustworthy and most likely will adhere to this promise with no strings attached whatsoever. Sigh…admittedly these guys are basically just ignorant kids but I find it most silly that they can’t seem to comprehend the idea of Father betraying them.
Without a doubt their last mission will be some sort of suicide mission or Fathers version of “Letting them go free” basically means killing them. As much special treatment the squad has got, I doubt they would be willing to let them out into the world, especially considering that they declare two of them getting married to be “Dangerous” Ikuno’s little Yuri infatuation with ichigo got rather suddenly resolved but it was nice to see Ichigo compare her own unrequited feelings for Hiro and understand what Ikuno was going through. Thus allowing her to let her down gently instead of the predictable response of pushing them away or the fan wish fulfillment route of Ichigo suddenly turning gay.
With the second episode we get a exposition dump on the history of the world from the perspective of Dr Franxx and for a show that was so tight knit about revealing the setting it takes place in, I find this sudden exposition dump to be rather underwhelming. For one the planets history turned out to be far more simple and straightforward than I previously thought which effectively killed the interest it drummed up in me before. So the mysterious APE organisation just showed up out of nowhere, taught humanity to make use of Magma energy and then used that to push humanity to hand control of everything to them. Mining the planets Magma ended up slowly killing it and the Klax seem to be some sort of Antibody to stop Humanity from screwing up the planet beyond repair. It’s all very unsurprising, and rather uninteresting.
The one point of some interest is that Dr Franxx seems to have a obsession with the Klax queen and looks to have creating Hiro’s quad using part of her hair. At least that’s what I assume as others seem to be suggesting that Franxx created Zero Two but with the previous flashback it showed that he clearly found Zero Two and was surprised by her existence. Plus the klax queen is blue and Hiro appears to be growing blue horns. Ultimately this episode killed a lot of the previous interest drummed up by the mystery of this world. Now the only things left are revealing who the APE leaders are and what exactly are Klax. Though I am betting the APE leaders are some Alien beings. As a last note, props to Futoshi for not taking advantage of Kokoro’s erased memories to get her back as his partner and Zorome seems to have truly lost any faith in his revered father.
