How Darling in the Franxx Broke the Internet

darling in the Franks was a big deal it took the Internet by storm when it released in 2018 an original anime made in collaboration between two giants in the industry A1 and Trigger but it was the latter that everyone was so crazy about A1 was cool but trigger was different it was the studio that had produced some of the most influential anime of all time that are not only respected Classics but iconic shows that helped shape and Define the medium of anime itself now imagine hearing that studio trigger nearly 20 years after their predecessor's last

iconic show was producing a brand new original Mecca anime with the eccentric experimental style of trigger but the groundedness of A1 and you can begin to see why darling in the Franks was a big deal to people this paired with darlifa's extremely promising season 1 and a certain pink hair dinosaur girl that would explode into popular anime culture everyone was talking about this show made like eight videos on it Kim Kardashian tweeted about it and Anna memes is still making zero two memes it's been five years this was the anime that would return Mecca to

its former glory an anime that would not only Define the mecca genre in the sea of modern anime but leave its mark on the medium for years to come cementing itself as a new modern classic but now if you're watching this video in 2023 it's pretty obvious that that didn't happen now nearly five years after it's finished the show that took the anime fandom by storm is all but forgotten the only remnants of its impact being the aforementioned Pink Dinosaur girl an empty soulless husk of her former self commodified into an overused meme reduced to

a Tick-Tock dance [Music] never could but how could I darliferal was the first seasonal anime that I ever got to experience life I felt a lot watching this show so what happened what was so special about it and was it even good or has my history with anime been a lie a fabrication of the stupid goofy mind of my 15 year old self I needed to find out the truth and to do that I like to do something that I rarely do on this channel I'd like to watch the the setting of darling in the

Franks is that of a futuristic post-apocalyptic world where giant biomechanical monsters called the claxasaurs have driven Humanity off of the Earth's surface cramping them into these mobile mechanical monoliths called the plantations and as you can probably guess it's up to none other than these teenagers to risk their lives and pilot their giant robots classic sugar and it's here we find our protagonist darling oh someone already made that joke poo unlike the other teenagers that are called parasites in this world can't pilot the robot that is until he meets zero two the half claxasaur Ace pilot

who also has a reputation of killing every partner she rides with Hiro finding out that he's the exception and that he can awaken Charlize true power and that's episode one and okay that's pretty cool albeit maybe a little generic for a mecha anime and that seemed to be the people's General consensus about the first episode too so what was it about Darling in the Franks that captured so many people's attention and the answer to that lies in its characters it's easy to brush over the characters of Frank's at the start their designs aren't exactly the

most striking their personalities feel more like singular tropes than an actual person and for the lack of a better word a lot of them just exist in the background like NPCs take this character for example and what information can you glean about her just from looking at her well not much maybe you can tell from her hair and face that she's kind maybe she's the more mature big sister figure of the group but that's about it her gray uniform doesn't tell us much about her personality she doesn't act in any ways that stand out and

the same could be said for pretty much every character we're introduced to in the first episode but now take everything I just told you about those designs Bland generic plastic and flip it on its head and that's zero two chances are even if you haven't seen Frank's you've seen zero two with their iconic horns and instantly recognizable pink hair zero two is the wild unpredictable and rebellious Ace pilot that we meet at the start of the show but watch how the single foreign variable begins to change the Dynamics that exist between the characters of Squad

13. starting with a trio of childhood Friends hero Goro and Ichigo zero two now inserting herself into the love triangle between them making Ichigo who is the usually composed squad leader into acting more assertive towards hero while Goro the Big Brother of the group that holds the team together struggles as his loyalty to both Hiro and Ichigo as their friends stops him from acting on his feelings this is a drama that doesn't get resolved until episode 14 and don't worry we'll talk about episode 14 but for now it's these sorts of messy and broken relationships

that you start to see form between every major character in Squad 13. like mitsuru who when he first meet him is kind of an [ __ ] for the sake of being an [ __ ] but you watch him as a grows out of that edge Lord personality from developing a love towards kokoro who is actually futoshi's partner and see how that affects futoshi or ikuno coming to terms of the fact that she'll always have trouble connecting to her male partner because she loves Ichigo or kokoro and this book she finds on the beach which

honestly is a subject I have no idea how to approach nor fit into this video so I just won't even attempt to talk about it that and also this video was already way too long and any more parts just might turn me into an insane person and finally Miku and zorume who actually they don't have that much drama but I love my two Sundries all the same all of this resulting in this web of connections wide enough to be documented and updated every episode by the community or this one made by gigock and slowly what

all of this culminates into is a story that takes you on a journey of a group of deeply flawed people learning what it means to be human through the relationships they forged with each other by themselves they feel static but through their interactions with other people they begin to feel human and what I love about Darling in the Francis fights is that they're an extension of that idea but to explain what I mean by that we first have to understand how these giant robots in darling in the frames work and to do that we first

have to talk about sex metaphors oh God what am I doing with my life if Evangelion has the Ava and gurun lagon has the well lagon darling in the Franks has the Franks that rolled up the tongue a lot better in my head but unlike the giant robots of other Mecca anime the Franks is piloted in pairs of two parasites the male statement and the female pistol look I know Guru lagon also technically has two people piloting it but that's two robots on top of each other so it doesn't count okay and if you disagree

I don't care and you're wrong and what makes this partner system so interesting is that it's not the individual pilot skills that determine how well they can fight but rather the trust between the partners having a direct influence on how well they could pilot the robot and on paper that's a pretty cool idea but it's in their portrayal of that idea where things start to go very wrong and if you want to know what I mean by that why is she positioned like that why do they have handlebars other asses I don't like those words

they're using okay come on really before I go on any further I feel like I should get this out of the way first if you've ever seen a trigger show before you probably know the deal this show is not gonna be for everyone a plot like Moe robots being piloted by pairs of teenagers and suspositions through sex analogies is weird and even for trigger standards while The Not So subtle euphemisms were something that didn't bother me five years ago now as a 20 year old man making videos about anime on the internet it is something

I cannot go without acknowledging to the point where about three episodes into re-watching the show I began to have a mild crisis about whether this video was even a good idea in the first place like was darling in the Franks ever good or did I Gaslight myself into thinking that what I watched was good for all those years but luckily if sex jokes were all there was to this weird weird show this video wouldn't exist and while watch how to justify it or try to tell you that the robots with massive asses are actually super

deep what it does is make one thing clear this is not a show about the giant robots fighting rather what you're in for is a human drama about squad 13 and the relationships that are formed tested broken and rebuilt between them throughout the course of the story The Double Pilots cementing the idea that this is not a story about any single character's goals or motives it's about all of them and the relationships that exist in between and damn I never realized the High School drama and the setting of a Mecca is something I needed but

here we are and once you begin to care it's hard not to get attached which is what makes an episode like episode 8 hits so damn hard squad 13 is engaged in battle with yet another lovecraftian nightmarish beast but through their efforts 13 has started to become a competent team by now so one by one they carefully coordinate their attacks and starts to win and what happens next is honestly truly terrifying dinosaur acid has melted through the pistol suits so the boys are like they kill the claxasaur the day is saved whatever it's a little

annoying but I guess it's nothing we're not used to at this point but what I didn't expect to happen was for the show to turn this goofy ass fan service scene into a plot point that leads to a war between the boys and the girls because whereas this sort of thing would have usually been brushed off and forgotten about the next minute in most anime our girls get rightfully pissed and it's silly but it's also funny it's hard not to remember yourself being there at one point that's how teenagers act they get into stupid fights

and do petty things then we get this scene of zero two where she says this kenka [Laughter] Ninja and look the characters I was comparing to background NPCs five minutes ago are starting to feel like a real family now and their relationships are starting to change zero two too and you think A Slice of Life episode in a dystopian anime about child soldiers shouldn't work but it does and it's just fun which is why it's so jarring when the group enters a Bard off room and they find this picture it's the parasites that used to

live in the Plantation before them who were all killed in combat by the claxosaurus and that's insane 13 enters this episode with Dinosaur acid but comes out of it with a realization that if they want to survive in this world they'll have to learn to understand and live with each other despite their differences the boys apologizing to the girls and the girls learning to forgive them and wow this episode went from starting with fan service to having one of the most and real messages about human relationships and just being alive and it's this aspect of

darling in the Franks I love most the action is great but the fights feel like an extension of the emotions or characters are experiencing the battlefield being a physical representation of that drama but now take into consideration everything I just told you about this group of deeply flawed yet human characters and compare them to the adults whose cold looming presence we felt throughout the entire show imagine living in the world where you are free from all the stress and worries of Life all of your basic needs like housing and food provided for you so you

don't need to work anymore actually you receive all the nutrients your body needs in packets you do not need to eat anymore you're weak and finite heart was replaced by something cold and mechanical you can no longer die hell you don't even need to do the things that used to make you feel happy anymore because there's a machine that can make you feel the same thing by stimulating the same parts of your brain and because you've become entirely self-sufficient as all of the hierarchies of your needs are provided to you by a machine survival security

happiness you no longer have the need for human contact you simply exist and to ape that's the Pinnacle of human evolution so while the children's Journeys have been about learning to embrace their Humanity City along with all the love joy pain and hurt that comes along with it the adults are a cold and utter rejection of that very same Humanity instead having replaced their lives with a cold and perfect machine-like existence of Eternal sameness and if you thought that dystopian nightmare City or the brain happiness device I just described to you was interesting and well

terrifying it's those sorts of Revelations tidbits of lore and World building that are scattered throughout the first 15 episodes of darling in the Franks bringing me to the next aspect of the show I think it does great the World building take the ominous looming threat of ape This creepy Council or Papa the Big Brother of the world of darlifra that monitors you every movement and punishes you for getting out of line or questions like the origin of the claxosaurus the remnants of a past civilization were exactly forced two months to go into the plantations in

the first place in where the children even come from these are all topics that were never outright told about but ones we can see through the world our characters live in as a result of their actions but here's where that starts to become a problem we're a squad 13 story has been characterized by their friendship love and learning what it means to be human nearly every aspect of the world around them is characterized by the opposite of that the complete lack of any human emotion or empathy and that very same Humanity that 13 spends all

that time finding the same love that breaks and binds them together the hopes and dreams that make their unfair existence bearable is viewed as nothing more than a defect to ape the real antagonists of darling in the Franks Squad 13's growing Humanity seen as nothing more than a weakness to be straightened and imperfection to be snuffed out and for us wholesome weird and silly as darling in the Franks can be we've also felt their presence in the start of the show be it from their monochrome uniforms bird cage like house or in the ways their

lives are treated like they're Expendable we're reminded again and again that whatever semblance of Happiness squad 13 builds for themselves is temporary and it could be taken away at any moment and it's this conflict of ideas that carry us into what many consider to be the best Arc of darling in the frinks starting with a flashback between the two Central protagonists of the story hero and zero two hey so what I'm about to describe to you is what is in my opinion the single greatest episode of darling in the Franks and one that probably led

to the creation of this video in the first place but what that also means is that what we're about to get into is pretty much going to spoil the entire show for you if you've made it this far into the video I doubt you'd really care about that but I thought I'd let you know anyways and well I hope I do a good job in conveying to you the impact of this next Arc enjoy throughout the story of darlifra we've seen the theme of becoming human reinforced again and again through the characters of squad 13

in their own ways whether it's through mitsuru's love or zoromi's acceptance but perhaps the most literal embodiment of that is zero two the half claxis or Ace pilot who was born in the lab for the sole purpose of becoming a weapon her desire to become fully human stemming from a promise she made with a certain boy from her childhood and it's this desire we see grow into desperation as we approach the halfway point of the show a desperation that builds as we see zero two grow more and more unstable becoming the monster everyone saw her

as and we begin to question who this startling exactly is which is something that gets revealed as we enter episode 13. starting with a flashback created in the lab with the DNA of a claxosaur to become the perfect pilot zero two was chained tortured and experimented on as a child her earliest memories being that over locked up in a small room and that being your entire world this only changing for the first time when their caretaker gives her a picture book her first pretty thing and for a while this is the only thing that humanizes

her or gives her any sort of semblance of being treated like a person so she holds on to this book for dear life becoming her soul lifeline and her hellish existence that is until he crashes into her world reaching out his hands to her as a shining ray of light planter going as far as to defy Papa to offer this little monster an escape showing her the outside world and letting her experience what it's like to be loved for the first time in her life and it's not too difficult to Guess Who that boy is

that boy is hero her darling whose memories had been erased until now the memories of his childhood now flooding back into his mind as we get one of the most beautiful ending songs I've ever heard in anime play over this scene [Music] and wow I cried when I watched this for the first time the emotion and execution of this episode feeling like the payoff to everything we've been watching up until this point and this for me and many other people was the point in the story that solidified this show as one of trigger's best Works

episode 13 is freaking awesome but that also meant that trigger in a weekly release schedule had a lot to live up to in the next episode and when it eventually arrived episode 14 broke the internet but unfortunately not in the way you may be thinking for many people episode 13 was the peak of a ride they had fully committed to at this point and for the same reasons I've been talking about for the past 20 minutes this is a show that elicits a lot of emotion in people the episode we just witnessed only reinforcing that

so when that big payoff everyone was expecting after last week's emotional roller coaster doesn't happen in the next episode it broke the community because immediately after the events of the emotional High we just witnessed episode 14 is about Ichigo doing everything in their power to prevent zero two and hero from ever meeting again hero now hospitalized as the aftermath of zero two's Rampage and this caused the shitstorm online unlike any I'd witnessed before the community going on this Ichigo Witch Hunt getting so bad to the point where members of the staff were starting to get

harassed by angry anime fans on Twitter and look I've got my fair share of criticisms for this episode but no matter how disappointed you may be in a piece of media that sort of [ __ ] is never okay and shouldn't be tolerated under any circumstances but that isn't to say I don't have my fair share of criticisms of this episode up until this point the drama and conflicts that drove the story of darling in the Franks have been characterized by just how raw and human it can feel and as messy as they can be

they also felt like the natural outcome of the environment and circumstances our characters are in but episode 14 felt like the opposite of that the entire conflict happening because hero happens to leave his room at the exact same time zero two happens to visit him leading to this frustrating contrived writing that soured the emotional high of episode 13 for a lot of people or so we thought because the episode that would follow the Ichigo complex would redeem everything I just talked about coming back from the intense Community lashback to become what is the single greatest

episode of the show that broke the internet episode 15 titled the Jian is the part of the story when our characters finally enter the Quran crevasse who moved the claxosaurus and the biggest battle squad 13 would face yet but because of what happened in the previous episode their strongest fighter strelitzia is missing zero two now piloting the robot by herself in Rampage mode growing more and more feral with each kill and it's devastating ape sacrificing countless Frances and even self-destructing plantations to create openings into this nightmarish Fortress only to be met with the massive Gutenberg

class klaxasaur penetrating the walls of 13's plantations as hordes of monsters flood into the city zero two state only worsening as she's become this unrecognizable feral Beast having let herself go and resigning herself to the fate of being alone forever but finally the one thing we'd all been waiting for begins to happen before our very eyes as hero charges into the battlefield in a tiny training unit running towards zero two with everything he's got all of his memories with the girl that changed his life now flashing before his eyes and yes it's finally happening as

Gore realizes he doesn't want to see his friends split up anymore and Ichigo accepting the fact that Hiro had chosen 0-2 over her the trio reuniting one more time as the friendships he'd forged throughout his journey now pulls him out of his lowest point to reach his darling and then this happens and yes this was it all of the sex jokes the drama the misunderstandings the backstory it was all leading up to this one moment and this scene made it all worth it and this explosive climax as you hear the opening song over the animation

and it's beautiful putting her close to the first major storyline of darling in the Franks the story of hero n02 episodes 13 and 15 are a goddamn Masterpiece and I can't think of any other word to describe what I felt experiencing it for the first time to the point where I could almost say that this might as well have been The crucial turning point of my life that made me fall in love with anime leading to the terrifying butterfly effect of me turning out to be an Annie tuber that only being almost because JoJo exists

my point being this is a show that makes you become emotionally attached and I wasn't alone in this this being the episode that solidified the show as a serious Contender for anime of the year for many people which is why it pains me to say that the rest of darling in the Franks World goddamn mistake the episodes leading up to the fall feel Strangely Beautiful like we're watching the creators of the show giving their beloved characters one final send-off saying goodbye to the way things were but also embracing whatever awaited in front of them with

hopeful optimism as the cats prepare to say their last goodbyes to their old home now destroyed as an aftermath of the battle of grand crevasse they hold a wedding for mitsuru and kokoro who have now entered a romantic relationship and damn I wasn't expecting them to get back to The Slice of Life episode so soon but it's nice like we were watching the aftermath of the absolute peak of darling in the Franks in both storytelling and popularity a sort of epilogue to the first chapter of darlifra's story which is why it's so devastating when the

wedding is suddenly interrupted by the adults mitsuru and kokoro taken their memories erased their happiness dashed Away by ape yet again and it's devastating to have watched the character grow from being this [ __ ] to one of my favorite and most endearing characters in the show then having all of that taken away in an instant any sort of Happiness hopes or dreams the children of squad 13 have crushed by ape in the adults cold unempathetic control and the cast feels this too they've been feeling it all along but this would be the final straw

At Last Hero and friends now with the power of the awakens trollitzia would rise up against ape fight for their freedom and carve out a brand new world for themselves in one final epic battle for their future leading into the Last Arc that would end the show in an epic finale and then this happens [Music] foreign [Music] aliens invade the Earth the classic swords turn into rockets and fly into orbit anti-space railguns start blasting it on alien space Fleet there's a giant robot now and ape turns into whatever this is the show explains this to

you because actually the classic swords were the good guys that actually used to be an ancient species of people called the claxosapiens that actually buried themselves underground to defend the Earth against ape who are actually called Vernal who are an alien species that wants to kill everybody and suck their souls into the hive mind and now you're caught up to the Last Arc if any of what I just said made absolutely no sense to you that means they did a pretty good job at summarizing it and now the show expects you to be on board

with this did I mention all of this happens in two episodes and now they're in space because now the aliens are trying to blow up the planet but actually what they're really after is this giant robot called star entity and now there's a claxosaur princess and okay sure why not they have a rocket ship now and [ __ ] it let's turn zero two into a giant robot we're watching a different show now what happened to the subtle World building the character-driven plot everything we've loved about this show for 19 whole episodes gets thrown out

the window and launched into the Sun the show ending in a space War there's no foreshadowing build up or anything that even hinted at the existence of an alien Empire and oh my God this is like the fourth time darling in the Franks broke the internet we've literally been through the five stages of grief with this show why what happened trigger what were you cooking why is this what you made hopefully by this point in the video I've done a good enough job and conveying to you the dilemma I'm facing with this anime on one

hand darling in the Franks is this beautiful story about love relationships and just being human but on the other hand it's like a train wreck I can't look away from crashing headfirst into a wall of problems like poor writing decisions batshit insane pacing and not knowing what it wants to be the end result being this joke of a show that went from being one of the best of the year to the community's laughing stock so is darling in the Franks a masterpiece or is it complete garbage or maybe it's neither but I can't just call

it mid the show changed my life so what is Starling in the Franks and to me I think the answer to that question lies beyond the show and the director of darling in the Franks atsushi nishigori I used to work at gynex and a lot of my peers moved to trigger while I was working on idol Master now I'm nearing 40 most of my co-workers are moving up and directing their own shows so I felt like this might be one of my last few chances to gather my favorite staff members and create something together what

I just read to you is a quote from an interview about Darling in the Franks by the director of the show at Sushi nishigori and while it's true that darlifra was created as a collaboration between A1 and sugar one thing I didn't mention is that darling in the Franks is just as much of an a1n trigger show as it is nishigori's Creative Vision an industry veteran and former member of Studio gynax behind some of their most iconic Works including the titles I mentioned in the intro grun lagon and Ava to an extent a man despite

his experience in the industry who had a dream of getting to direct his very own show a dream that only seemed lessen less likely as he took on the safe and stable job of directing the idol Masters shows and movies and when he finally got that chance decided to do it with his favorite people to work with his old friends in the industry people he'd worked with before and people he knew the talents of and when you look at darling in the Franks with that new context it's impossible not to see it in every corner

of it the show's Mecca and Slice of Life aspects being a result of blending his colleague's individual strengths having worked with all of them before and in this interview he makes the message of his show pretty clear so and despite all of the batshit insane plot of elements I think you can still see this message shine through in the show's last episodes embodied really beautifully in this quote by Goro Everything Changes all things eventually pass and nothing remains stagnant but if that nature of our world scares you out of appreciating what you have now you'll

never grasp any kind of future for yourself and [ __ ] I think that's beautiful as stressful as making these videos can be creating this YouTube channel was also one of the greatest decisions I've ever made in my life and while it would be silly to say that this anime was the sole reason behind it it still holds a place in my heart as one of the first anime I ever got to experience showing me the absolute highs and lowest lows of what an anime can be and also introducing me to some of my favorite

genres of the medium now being Mecca Slice of Life and romance and whatever it is nishigori was looking for with this show I really hope he got it because super eye patchable through this video is undoubtedly inspired by once said that spectacular failures have more value than mediocre successes and while darling in the Franks may be far from a masterpiece it may as well be the most spectacular failure of all time and that's how darling in the Franks broke the internet so if after all that you're still wondering if you should watch Starling in the

Franks just watch grun lagon