I am starting to believe that Studio Trigger’s obsession with escalation is going to one day bite them in their own jugular. You can trace many of its key staffers – including members of A-1 Pictures – as far back as their days at Gainax working on Gurren Lagaan, the show that no doubt embedded this habit of going as big as possible into Trigger’s DNA.

The conundrum is that Darling in the Franxx lacks the tone that their most over-the-top works possess. Whereas Kill la Kill let you know how outrageous it was going to be in the opening minutes, Darling in the Franxx maintains a completely straight face from start to finish. The absurd designs of the Mecha seem to be a contradiction to the atmosphere being targeted. This is not a comedy but a drama with occasional outbursts of humor. While it is never “realistic”, it certainly seems to adhere to a more strict set of rules. These rules establish a tonal consistency that imbue the viewer with certain expectations regarding mood and presentation.

The final episodes sabotage the established suspension of disbelief. The escalation maintains its signature Trigger absurdity while insisting it has dramatic weight. In Gurren Lagaan the intent of having mechs throwing solar systems at each other in the finale is to be so ridiculous the viewer laughs. Darling in the Franxx makes some outrageous transformations, but they want you to take it seriously. Perhaps feeling awe, admiration, or overwhelming, tear-filled happiness.

I begin with the end so that I might make clear how much I enjoyed the show up until that point. Yes, the opening episodes are so blunt about their subject matter that they may as well be comedian Gallagher taking a sledgehammer to the watermelon that is your head. But there’s a reason for such bluntness.

Darling in the Franxx portrays relationships in a far more real manner than most anime do these days – note I am specifying most other anime in this comparison and no other media. The act of piloting is a blatant symbol for sex at first, but it also captures the emotional compatibility and vulnerability of such an act for those experiencing it for the first time – particularly without adequate guidance.

When I first watched the premiere three episodes I wondered if the show might be a response to Japan’s low rate of marriages and childbirth. The country is in a lot of trouble with young adults preferring to dedicate their life to a career and personal financial comfort than starting a family. The government has been trying to encourage its young adults to get married through a variety of programs and marketing tactics.

I was correct in my assessment, but not quite in the direction I had suspected. At first I imagined Darling in the Franxx was a rejection to the “old guard’s” insistence of marrying and mating as a duty. Implementing the same approach to love as one would loyalty to a job. This seemed all the more confirmed when the most devoted pilot finds himself lost in the home of an “adult”; a living space where the man and woman have no substantial relationship. The majority of the man’s time is spent sealed away in a casket, being granted the illusion of reward like hits of dopamine while his wife simply wastes the days away in solitude.

DO YOU GET IT?! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE METAPHOR?! DO YOU NEED ME TO EXPLAIN IT?!

It’s another sledgehammer of blunt metaphor cracking into your skull, but the message sings loudly and clear. The current marriage life of a housewife and salaryman of Japan lacks soul and actual, real love. The man spends his days chasing a pittance of reward from his corporate job while the wife is left home in the solitude of empty comforts.

By the end, however, the show is going further. The intent of the antagonists is to abandon marriage and partnership altogether, chasing that very same self-pleasure and illusion of eternal reward found in pure, unadulterated selfishness. Even if it’s partially a criticism of the old guard of Japan, it’s also a criticism of the current, younger workforce choosing to remain single so that they can live for nothing but the self.

Like roses blooming from fertile soil, many of these themes finally bear fruit in the final episodes of Darling in the Franxx. It feels as if the current direction of Japan has been judged harshly, and presents an optimistic rebirth in future generations rejecting everything the current culture stands for.

If there is any theme that interferes with this, it’s in constantly pummeling the viewer in the face with a toaster labeled “MARRIAGE AND UNITY”. For a show with a lot of smart things to say, it idiotically destroys pointless selfishness with the power of love. The very sort of concept that Gurren Lagaan had lampooned is here expected to be taken seriously.

Darling in the Franxx has ambitions, but it’s not nearly as smart or profound as it wants to be. Unfortunately your common anime viewer seems incapable of giving the show enough credit. This is in part due to the constant labeling of any sexual content as “fan-service”, robbing the show’s portrayal of character dynamics of meaning. Fan-service is pure titillation. It often requires camera placement that breaks free of a scene’s non-sexual context, or forces a sexual scene that plays to the viewer’s fantasies. While some of the content of Darling in the Franxx is certainly intended as such, the vast majority of its dynamics and direction are intended to serve the characters and narrative.

Darling in the Franxx portrays the reality of young adults discovering sex and romance for the first time in their lives in a society ill-prepared to educate children on such things. Reality is constantly shattering the fragile, crystalline perfection of expectations. One character’s heart is crushed beneath the apathetic wheels of a locomotive as their one-sided affection is met with rejection. A homosexual is forced to cope with a society that is designed purely for heterosexual partnership.

I don’t want to oversell the manner in which Darling in the Franxx deals with these situations. It touches on them, but that’s largely all it does. The opening episodes hook you in with surprisingly raw metaphors for a (non-ecchi) anime, but they fail to properly plunge deeper. The characters constantly feel like archetypes and are even tossed in a sitcom style “paint a line down the house” episode.

Then you reach episode twenty.

It’s too late for the characters to feel completely real, but it finally seems like the show does something with them. Unfortunately, it’s all combatting with the shallow plot of romance through the tone-shattering escalation of epic conflict. The show wants to ape so many superficial elements of Neon Genesis Evangelion, such as SEELE and LCL, when it should have been turning to the final thirteen episodes of Macross for inspiration.

All things considered, I would still say Darling in the Franxx is a good show. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it, and while the final episodes are the most disappointing, they also bring the characters to life. I’ll also appreciate any show that has ambitions, especially when they’re as relevant as the psychology behind the population crisis in Japan.

It’s true that I sigh when I compare this to the rest of Studio TRIGGER’s oeuvre. Kill la Kill may be a mess, but it is tonally consistent and manages to give each of its memorable characters an arc. Little Witch Academia may not be so ambitious, but it manages both a tight tonal and thematic focus while delivering a satisfying, heart-warming story about a kid learning to trust in their own magic.

The last of their original animations I need to see is Kiznaiver. Disregarding that, I’d say Darling in the Franxx is their weakest creation. Like Pixar films, however, that still puts it above many other anime releasing these days. It’s just a shame to see something with so much potential stumble and struggle towards the finish line.