Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: DARLING in the FRANXX
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5505 Location: Mexico |
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I gotta say, I'm sick of this excuse. "We're only X episodes in" has been repeated ad nauseam since the first episode. We're not "barely" past the mid-point of the show we're already 25% into its second half. There's only nine episodes left. What has been accomplished in 15 episodes? What do we know about the plot or the world? What is the show trying to say? Love conquers all? It's not about sex but making love? Why do we need this overly complex and underexplained dystopian backdrop for this pedestrian and unoriginal beauty and the beast love story? When will there ever be time for any of this to be explained, when we're more than halfway through the show and so very little has happened in the past four months? |
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Scherzo
 Posts: 149 |
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I mean, 02 has unquestionably been victimized her entire life, so it's kind of hard to find her morally culpable in the same way say the action of Plantation 13 can be. The fact that she acknowledges her way of living is wrong I think is a big step for her. I mean, this isn't the end of their relationship; it's the starting point for them to begin to really understand each other. Frankly I'm SO relieved this happened this episode because I honestly thought they were gonna draw out 'is 02 a monster' until the Final act. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11355 |
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It's Medical Mechanica!
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Sentinel_Wraith
Posts: 23 |
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#1. We don't yet know if they are human, trans-human, humanoid aliens, or even synths. There's some evidence of some weird cybernetic/synth experiments if the comments about "Uploading" plantations are true. #2. We have to remember this is already an incredibly unhealthy and broken society that uses child soldiers, orders soldiers to commit suicide, tortures children, and potentially commits mass murder. And that's the official government, too! I do agree that it's disconcerting that Zero-Two allegedly killed about 20 more people offscreen, but I also find it unbelievable that she did so. She normally consumes a stamen due to her vampiric nature every 1-3 missions, but we're supposed to believe that she killed 20 over the course of a single mission piloting with her? I think that's more of a logic oversight there, but I do agree that it harmed her narrative. That being said, the regime also holds a great deal of responsibility for continuing to use her despite the danger. Not only do they push pilots onto her, many of them are reportedly eager to do so despite the cost. At this point we also have another interesting change. For the first time Zero-Two herself recognized that her actions were wrong. She came forward about her guilt and calls herself out for the way she treated Hiro. While it might seem they jumped to forgiveness a tad too quickly, Hiro also made it clear that they would need to "talk it out" and "work it out". There could be more to this, and I expect that this isn't the end of the discussion on her behavior. It was nice to see the "real" Zero-Two from the lab instead of the smug and self-assured facade she previously wore, and I'm curious to see how her growth pans out. #3. The vitrol for Ichigo was not that she was trying to protect Hiro, but that she intentionally manipulated the squad and Zero-Two into a position that was romantically advantageous for her. The second that she threw herself all over Hiro and started trying to make out with him while he was utterly broken was terribly wrong and people were rightly offended. The fact she did that right in front of her partner while crying out about how she would only ride with Hiro was wrong. Furthermore, she was perfectly fine with the deaths of the other stamens as long as her guy was ok...and that's not right either. Again, while this series has been giving some of the issues a pass, it's also important to remember the broken context of the society and the examples set for the characters by the adults. |
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Zomb1e13
Posts: 50 |
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How was it wrong for her to do those things infront of Goro? I mean yes it was wrong in the context that Hiro was emotionally broken however Ichigo doesn't owe goro anything. Goro and Ichigo are only partners in a Franxxx because they are compatible to pilot together not because they are lovers. In fact Goro only confessed to Ichigo to move past her, knowing since they were kids that Ichigo only looked at Hiro and wouldn't look at anyone else. |
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Yazu13
 Posts: 129 |
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If you can't find any merit or meaning in the story at this point, maybe you should stop watching it, it's not for you. Mankind has been making stories for thousands of years, nothing is truly original anymore, but that shouldn't keep someone from enjoying a story just because it borrows some tropes from other stories. As far as I'm concerned, even though it takes inspiration from Evangelion and the concept of Beauty and the Beast, it has already accomplished enough originality to keep the story compelling. You make it sound like stories aren't allowed to have beginnings, middles, and ends. What you see as an "overly complex and underexplained dystopian backdrop" I call world-building and intrigue to keep the viewer engaged without data-dumping the entire plot to them in a single episode. I understand if you're not the patient type, but stories need time to be told and the best stories introduce the viewer to their worlds little by little. This show has been anything but uneventful though, so all I hear from you is undue criticism. Plenty of people enjoy Darling in the FranXX without conjuring excuses as to why it isn't as good as most people think. Last edited by Yazu13 on Mon Apr 23, 2018 3:34 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Chrysostomus
Posts: 335 |
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Of course, part of that oppressive dystopian system is the fact that countless stamens are sacrificed to 02 (who doesn't care) but it's like almost no one in the fandom bats an eye at that. And yes, 02 is perfectly logical and consistent in her actions. The world immediately shat on her at birth and she had no one to teach her anything about even the most basic human social conventions as they put her in the loli guro machine meme. So, yes, there's nothing wrong or weird with her being sociopathic and callous. She has no reason to be polite or considerate to anyone in that crappy world. The problem lies in how Hiro (and the general tone of their relationship, and the fanbase full of waifufags) ignores or whitewashes her past conduct because oh he's so understanding, so kind, so saintly. What a model young man, what an excellent example for the Japanese youth. It's almost as if he had an ideal upbringing and grew up in an affluent, developed country... and not in a dystopian hellhole.
And even if what you said is true, it's all about execution. Honest question, is this anime excelling at anything it's trying to portray? |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11355 |
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Everyone keeps talking about how horrible Zero Two is for killing all her partners. What is she supposed to do? The adults keep pairing her up with people they know can't survive her nature. She's been brainwashed into believing that she has to kill Klaxosaurs, and even if she wasn't, what would they do to her if she refused? Probably torture her even more.
She's made peace with an untenable situation by not caring what happens to the fodder they keep shoveling at her, and just does her job. She doesn't love that job, but it makes her happy while she's doing it because she believes it's making her human. It would destroy her to care about all of the victims the adults essentially forced her to kill. |
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Mojave
 Posts: 178 |
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She actually has a degree of control over the severity of what happens to her partners, although she can't eliminate it entirely. When she briefly partners with Mitsuru early in the series, he's doing okay physically until he makes a remark about working well together with her, which she takes as a challenge against her. She then ramps things up to a degree that inflicts vast amounts of both physical and psychological harm on him. In addition, although Hiro does suffer some physical side effects in the early stages of his partnership with 002, it only really ramps up as 002 becomes more unhinged and emotionally distant from him, meaning that she was controlling the amount of damage she did to him at first and then stopped doing so. So 002 is very much culpable for what she has done to her partners. It's not 100% her fault, and the adults certainly share a large portion of the blame, but she has nonetheless actively chosen to do greater physical harm to her partners than she naturally had to. It wouldn't destroy her to care about her partners, it actually greatly improves their health if she does so, she just chooses not to. |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
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^I don't think she was modulating the damage done, but rather the effort that she was putting in, which increases the damage that it does to her partners. While she could afford to be more gentle in the earlier missions in the series, given how much they were struggling with this battle, I don't think she could have afforded not to put in as much effort as she could, which would naturally entail more damage on her partners. Certainly with Mitsuru, and Hiro around episode 12, she could have been less aggressive and caused less damage to her partners, but I think for her missions on the front lines, it would be a luxury they couldn't afford, especially in the context of her belief that she would become human if she killed enough klaxosaurs. And even if there was some room for a less aggressive approach, the effects would be marginal outside of special cases like Hiro. Dying after 5, 6 or even 10 missions isn't much better than 3 if you just end up dead all the same.
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11355 |
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(emphasis added) She could hold back when the opponents weren't so strong (before coming to P13, she was apparently on the worst of the front lines, so I assume those enemies were much more powerful than what our kids were sent against at first), but as they got stronger, so did her attacks, and so did the damage she inflicted on her partners. Mitsuru is a bit different since he practically goaded her into damaging him, by obliquely insulting her Darling by comparing himself. But that one's still on her, I agree. But you admit that she's not entirely in her right mind and that it's getting worse, yet you still think she has the self-control to hold back when the adults, her enemies, and her belief in the benefits of her mission are all telling her to go balls to the wall? And you don't think piling on top of all that the guilt of killing her partners because she couldn't finesse it enough in the heat of battle would not be enough to destroy the already crumbling edifice of her psyche? That would even tear apart someone who had had a stable childhood and a loving family. And yes, her restraint would improve her partner's health, assuming they didn't both die from her holding back on the battlefield. She does seem to be able to pilot on her own though, so it's not clear to me why the adults even partner her up. Are they afraid she'd go completely nuts and not come back, or destroy everything in her path, friend or foe? Are the adults using her stamens as a kind of control rod to keep her from a meltdown? Edit: So while I was writing all that, zrnzle ninja'd me and said it all more succinctly anyway. 
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Chrono1000
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jr240483
 Posts: 4378 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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that may be the case, but the way people go over the top is kinda out there. don't you agree??? and its as i said. so far none of the Japanese forums communities haven't gone up in arms as of yet cause if they did, we would be hearing news of the staff receiving death threats all over the place! luckily for them the US have a zero tolerance policy on that! |
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jenthehen
 Posts: 835 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio |
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Man, this show. I have been consistently engaged and entertained week to week (moreso than the consensus even seems to show), but I am still very apprehensive that the moral of the story is going to be:
Women, right? They are cuh-razy baby-makers who just need to be reigned in by a man! 
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2191 |
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You haven't actually looked at the responses to Franxx staff tweets have you? |
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... but when a show is intended for an audience of entrenched fans, how can the Western anime community muster up anything more than a collective "meh" when predictable-in-hindsight melodrama occurs?
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