DARLING in the FRANXX

Bad. I watched too many episodes trying to give it a fair chance.

Excellent setup with a terrible payoff. This show teased so many interesting ideas only to suddenly shift the story to a generic, stretched-out copy of Kill La Kill's final act.

The fan consensus pegs this as conservative propaganda about traditional gender roles and makin' babies, but to me, it feels like a work made by repressed queers who are convinced gender essentialism is real but that sucks, and are trying to carve out a path towards a positive existence within that framework. Plus, I'd say that, among the many anime about teenagers in giant robots traumatized by being forced to be soldiers, it shows trauma and recovery better than 90% of them. Flawed but good.

Watched this one because my teenage daughter asked me to. She loved it, I didn't. None of the characters made me care for them, and I was not that fond of the overly stylized art in combat scenes. The soundtrack was good though. In the end it was very much a meh-experience.