Today on Darling in the Franxx…puberty? Well our cast learns an important lesson about respecting each others roles and working together to triumph over the death their predecessors met. And all it took was a monster spraying goo on the female pilots which dissolves clothing and the boys seeing them naked. I…sigh…really? Look Franxx we got to do something about this tone problem you got here. It’s like we have two very different shows smashed together into one with one side being a zany fanservice mecha show and the other being a serious exploration of adolescent with dark undertones. These two are like oil and water, they don’t mesh. Well unless you are Houseki no Kuni which somehow managed to mix serious and comedy without them butting heads. I guess in this matter it’s a problem of extremes, for when Darling in the Franxx is ridiculous, it’s ridiculously ridiculous and when it is serious, it’s deathly serious.
We have a chase where Zero two steals the clothes of the boys and girls in the bath causing hijinks to ensue which pushes one of the girls into the forbidden rooms to discover the objects left behind by previous squad members who are most certainly dead. Miki’s reaction to that photo of the old squad sure is odd overreaction though as she didn’t really know them so I don’t see what could provoke such a shock in her. It’s odd as to why these items were left lying around for the pilots to find as well but there is hints that this squad was given much more freedom over others and this very much seems like these items were intentionally put there to be found. To get back on topic, I feel Franxx should settle its mind on what it’s going to be as it works on the fanservice action “turn off your brain” side but that side undermines the show when it attempts a more serious tone. After all, those former squad members died in mechs with ass controls, tragic though it may be I just can’t quite take seriously the image of a dead pilot holding a girl to his crotch doggy style.
The story does have tonal problem but to give credit where it is due the character really are a saving grace. They aren’t all that deep nor that interesting as they are for the most part archetypes. But they do have great character interactions that really sell the commoradie that the kids have with each other. Each person has their own opinion on the situation and don’t react in the ways you would expect. The situation in this episode being the girls bright idea of placing a line of tape separating the house into a girl and boy half which is rather ridiculous and not thought out. Though they make the point that it was primarily Miku’s idea and the other girls stick with it out of stubbornness. So it was refreshing to see the voice of reason, Goro, be the one to pull sly pranks to try and show the girls how silly the whole idea is and how they could just go back to how things were. Zero Two of course doesn’t give a damn about the line at all and spends her time with Hiro regardless which does put her at odds with the other girls. Again it is great to see each person individual reaction isn’t the same, Zero Two doesn’t care that Hiro saw her naked, Miku is furious, Kokoro wants to forgive the boys but doesn’t have the courage to speak up, Ikuno honestly prefers the situation of having the boys separated(But that doesn’t make her a lesbian, come on internet.) and Ichigo just seems to want to teach the boys a lesson. These mindsets even parallel their partners mindsets who respond similarly. There are two things selling this show as enjoyable for me at the moment and that is the animation of the action scenes and the general character interaction. Even if the plot is confused on tone I at least care enough about these characters to see where it takes them. Something I wish I could say about Fate/Extra airing this season.
This is why I mentioned this series as example for bad genre mixes (aside from B – The Beginning).
It really feels way too much like Kiznaiver to me, including labs and experiments on children and a connection between MC and the over-powered main girl and I don’t like any of these tropes.
Granted, genre mixes don’t need to be bad, as you said, but I fear the series will focus on love triangels and teen drama for most of the part. The setting might just be a bad excuse to generate this adam and eve situation as well as tons of sexual highjinks the kids can’t interpret yet. It will probably have some interesting twists near the end of the series but I don’t know if that world building will work and get enough focus if the anime tries so hard to be about puberty drama at the same time.
B the Begining is worse in that regard though. Honestly getting whiplash as it goes from CSI to Naruto.
You are right about that being the likely direction this series is going. But I also have a vague sense of it going much darker, maybe cause of the Evangelion similarities.
Yeah B was horrible in that regard. It’s sad because I really liked the CSI part of the series as well as Keith and Lily. I don’t know what they’re thinking when wrote that script.
It’s like two completely different series being shown parallel to each other without ever intermixing. Even the designs looked differently and the prophecy/god/evil clown part always destroyed the tone of the other side of the series. You could actually cut out that whole Naruto substory and it would barely have an effect on the main plot.
And I hope you’re right regarding FranXX. By now I expect this series to deal with the teen drama up till episode 13 or so and I hope it will get resolved by then in order to start with the world building and actual story.