As some of you might have noticed since the start of the Winter season, I’ve been sticking little references to my preference to Ichigo over Zero Two in the popular Darling in the FranXX. Up until this week though, those references have been tongue in cheek, personal nods with no substantial argument backing them up. Having watched episode 14 and seen the wider community’s reaction to it, I feel the need to speak up for what seems to be the most misunderstood anime girl of 2018.
The lay of the land
Darling in the FranXX is set in a post-apocalyptic future where humans live in moving fortresses called plantations; in this world adults have little emotion and children pilot robots called Franxx to defend the plantations against monsters called klaxosaurs. It is the children that the show primarily focuses upon – of the seven that are together to begin with Hiro (code 016), Ichigo (code 015), Goro (code 056) and to a lesser extent Mitsuru (code 326) have been together since they were training in ‘the garden’.
The Tiny World of an Anime Amateur 