Today on Darling in the Franxx, Hiro gets a STD. This was a surprisingly good episode as I found myself pretty engaged with the goings on of the plot. Now previous episodes of Franxx haven’t been all that bad besides the excessive sex symbolism but up until this point I would have deemed this show passable. Decently watchable while not being particularly outstanding. This episode however may push Franxx out of the shadows of its inspirations and help it form its own identity.(Well I suppose it was differanting itself with the sex symbolism but that wasn’t exactly a positive distinction.) So we learn that despite Hiro’s posturing and excitement over finally becoming a pilot of a Franxx that him riding with Zero two has indeed been having a negative effect on his body. However until others who have rode with Zero Two and ended up hospitalised, Hiro seems to be undergoing different effects as a blue tumor has appeared on his chest that causes him agony. Despite this Hiro is determined to ride with Zero Two again despite the fact that this would quite likely kill him. I might be wondering whether Hiro would actually die if we didn’t have 19 more episodes to go and while I would applaud the writers if they were gutsy enough to actually kill off the main character, I sincerely doubt they will do so.
Which brings me to a certain theory I read about while browsing the seas of Reddit. It seems that there is a theory going that Hiro is going to end up becoming a creature much like Zero Two and that these two will end up becoming a red and blue Oni. If you watched My love Story or Re:Zero you may be familiar with this Japanese children’s story but the general jest is about a blue Oni pretending to attack a village so the Red Oni could drive him off and become friends with the humans. Afterward only to find a letter from the Blue Oni wishing him well and revealing that they will never seen each other again. There’s a whole TV tropes page on the topic but it does seem to appear quite a bit in anime and manga with having two characters, one passionate and aggressive while the other is more silent and serene. It’s an interesting idea though we can’t quite be sure that’s what this series in gunning for as I don’t see Hiro growing any blue horns. The easy way out of Hiro’s mysterious disease is to turn him into some sort of hybrid like Zero Two but I feel the series would lose a lot of the appeal it gained with this episode if it did that. For after that Hiro would get a power up and it would render the concern and tension of this episode rather meaningless.
We now know what “kissing” means for plantations for it is when two plantations link to transfer liquid hot magma with…each…other…in case you didn’t realise this is symbolism for sexual relations. Boy how subtle the writer’s hand is. There are bits of little info here which hint at darker events to come as our crew meet another robot team who have more experience and it shows that they are the exception to the norm as normal pilots don’t give themselves nicknames nor have specialized Franxx. More importantly when Zorome asked if any of them have “Become adults”, one of the members of the experienced crew whispers to the other “They don’t know.” Suggesting that these kids may have a shorter life span than they might think or that they never mature into adults and instead stay in teenage bodies. Mitsuru also is popping pills for some reason, maybe to fight of the infection that Hiro has.
Zero Two’s more callous and ruthless side appears as well for it’s clear that she cares about nothing other than Hiro and when it comes to other people dying in the battlefield, they were just too weak. So as far as Zero Two is concerned, everyone in the squad can die and she won’t give a damn. Even she knows that riding with Hiro will likely kill him but rather takes delight in knowing that he wants to ride with her despite the risk. As when pushed by Ichigo, she admits that if Hiro dies then he was just too weak to be her darling. But Zero Two also hinted as something else when called inhuman by ichigo, namely suggesting that the kids themselves are not human either which would make sense considering they have already confirmed they were genetically engineered. Well next episode Hiro likely isn’t going to die but that new nameless expendable robot crew might want to abstain from joining in this new operation, or else we will need to start digging some graves.
