I really tried with Darling in the Franxx but I naturally lost interest. If you read the synopsis you could see why many have gravitated towards the series and why I would at least to attempt watch it:
Synopsis:
The survivors of a catastrophic war against monsters cluster inside the fortress city Plantation and train youngsters to defend humanity by piloting large battle robots called Franxx.
So what was wrong with the series? First I’ll start with the good. The animation was top notch. And that was it. Much of the criticism of the series is that it drives too much from other mecha series like Evangelion and Gurran Lagann. I don’t think it’s the biggest problem the series has.
The obvious and silly fanservice. The pilots simulate the doggystyle sexual position, with the females bending over. The first few episodes lean heavily on weird sexual tropes. I only have the first few episodes to go on, but maybe the series had a more sophisticated plan in mind and I’ve missed it. The in your face sexuality has apparently force China to ban it.
Finally, I didn’t care for the mecha themselves. They were seemingly design after the female form, but it made them look to “cartoonish,” almost like large toys. In the first episodes the fighting aspect was clearly secondary to the emotional drama between the teens. If Darling in the Franxx wanted to hold on to some of the audience presenting more action could have done it.
Yeah, this series didn’t look interesting to me at all. Trigger needs to stop being the expensive version of Gainax and do some other things. I thought the premise was too gimmicky, unoriginal, and is way too fanservice-driven for my tastes.
I doesn’t seem to add anything new to anime.
Yeah, that can be a dealbreaker for me. I know not everything has to be super unique, but even the stuff I know about that anime has been done before and done better.
You can’t really reinvent the wheel but you could invert some troupes. My Hero Academia seems to do that well for a shonen series.
That is true and I do like when movies and series do that. With that being said, I am leery about My Hero Acedemia because of all the hype it’s gotten.
Hype can be off-putting but I do think that My Hero Academia is worth considering.
I see. I’m not too big on most Shonen stuff and it’s rough trying to get into newer anime (especially longer series) for me with various life stuff going on. Saying nothing about what my reviewing blog is about, I often get disappointed about something that’s hyped. At best, I could say “Alright, it’s good, but not THAT good.” At worst, I say “Did these people watch the same thing I watch? This is crap!”.
LOL. It’s probably best to make your own discussions on which anime worthy of the hype. Some people over sell certain anime.
…and that’s why I have Iridium Eye reviews despite me focusing on not-so-popular stuff. Okay, I DID review Your Name, but that was the closest thing I did to mention something of some notoriety (at least in the anime subculture) and I did it so I can say I’ve reviewed everything Makoto Shinkai directed. I certainly agree with people overselling anime.
I was surprised how much I liked Your Name, I usually don’t go for that type of anime.
That’s fair. I thought it was a good albeit overrated movie. To be honest, I didn’t think it was Shinkai’s best film and I’ve followed his career not long after Voices of a Distant Star came out on DVD over a decade ago. It still shocks me to this day that everyone knows him now when barely anyone cared about his works back in the 00s despite some glowing reviews for some of them.
I watched Your Name after I kept hearing about how much it generated at the box office. I wanted to see what the hype was about.
Yup. If you would’ve told me 10 years ago that Shinkai would have the highest grossing anime movie of all time, then I would’ve called you insane.
I wanted to like Senran Kagara, which a lot of people seem to like, but it was just too dumb for me. I couldn’t swallow that those women were supposed to be ninjas.
I heard it had too much fanservice.
It was very little but fan service 🙂
I’m still watching the show, but there are moments when I have the same feelings towards it. At least you weren’t fully exposed to the toxic fandom that it spawned.
Let me know if the latter part of the series gets better. Maybe, I give it a second try.
You’re totally missing out then! Like most Trigger productions the meat of the series doesn’t start till the second half. While the first episodes are a little iffy and fan-servicey the emotional complexity of the show REALLY makes up for everything else. It is literally one of the best emotionally driven shows I have seen. I feel like a lot of people haven’t given this show a chance because of how off putting the first half is. I wasn’t really sold on it at first either, but I’m glad I have stuck around for the rest of it.
Good to know. I’ll wait to till the series or season ends and watch all the way through. Thank you.
Episode 19 has been my favorite episode by far! It will be pretty interesting to see what they do with the ending.
Escape while you can. The show isn’t going anywhere.