Darling in the FranXX: an autopsy

Posted: October 31, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: "Reviews", Shit | 1 Comment »

(it was shit)

Today, I happened to look at the MAL page for the show, and the four top reviews give it 3/10, 1/10, 1/10, and 1/10. I don’t want to say “look, told you so” because there’s no point to that – everybody already knew it. The thing that confused me for the longest time, though, was how the weekly episode threads on reddit had so many supportive and optimistic comments.

I feel like the lesson to be learned here isn’t that DitF was a great show with a bad ending, but rather that the opinions on reddit threads are totally biased towards the most ardent fans. After all, what could a critic say except “wow, that was shit again.” The only “valuable” discussion around such weak, shitty writing would come from people who think it actually means something.

The popularity of DitF itself is bizarre, actually. Originally, people saw that Studio Trigger was making it and expected a Gurren Lagann or Kill la Kill. But… it was made by basically everybody who didn’t work on that stuff. The F team. Nobody really cared about that, though, because it was TRIGGER + MECHA. In a season with no big name shows besides Violet Evergarden (which was also carried solely by studio name), the masses needed something to fanboy about – and more importantly, characters to make waifus.

Darling in the FranXX reminds me of Guilty Crown, back in Fall 2011. That wasn’t mecha, but it was… mecha-lite in its sci-fi vibe. But it was mysterious waifu girl meets boy and blah blah the world, just like DitF. Back then, it was stupidly popular too, but got its fair share of hate from the start. I can’t imagine how bad the senseless fanboying could have gotten if Guilty Crown didn’t have three giant series in Fate/Zero, Hunter X Hunter, and Future Diary looming over its head.

…actually, I guess I now can.