Darling in the FranXX: an autopsy

(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.

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.

the problem with violet evergarden

…is that I don’t give a SHIT about Violet Evergarden. After writing my last post on Sora yori mo Tooi Basho (which, by the way, has a stupid-as-hell English name so I’m going back to Japanese), I went and watched episode 5 of Violet Evergarden.

I had Violet Evergarden in mind as I was ranting about how Antarctic Girls is falling into the pattern of a “conflict-of-the-week,” and it’s pretty obvious why: it’s an episodic show with a microscopic overarching plot of Violet becoming human. I’m using “microscopic” because so far I haven’t been able to detect any meaningful change in our beloved robogirl. And while the conflict-of-the-week is sometimes interesting, everything revolves around KyoAni trying to make me feel sorry as I watch socially-inept Violet drawing pity as she takes off her gloves.

I don’t give a shit about this character. There’s nothing remotely appealing about a main character who has no emotions, and it’s even worse that every interaction and dialogue has to do with how she has no emotions. I could bear with it for the first few episodes, but now it’s just KyoAni flexing their animation skills and puking out a European Endless Eight where the only thing everybody talks about is how Nagato has no emotions.

you suck