Darling in the Franxx (Japanese: ダーリン・イン・ザ・フランキス Hepburn: Dārin In Za Furankisu), abbreviated as DarliFra (ダリフラ DariFura), is a 2018 Japanese animated science fiction romance television series produced by CloverWorks and animated by CloverWorks and Trigger that premiered on January 13, 2018. The series was announced at Trigger's Anime Expo 2017 panel in July 2017. A manga adaptation by Kentaro Yabuki and another four-panel comic strip manga began serialization on January 14, 2018.

The animation began international distribution simultaneously upon its domestic release. The streaming service Crunchyroll internationally simulcast the series, with Aniplus Asia simulcasting the series to Southeast Asia. Service partner Funimation began the dubbed release of the series on February 1, 2018.

Contents

Darling in the Franxx takes place in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future where the remnants of human civilization have abandoned the surface. Adults and children exist in contrasting environments from each other. Adults live in technologically-advanced cities within Plantations and are immortal, but procreation and relationships among them have become obsolete and undesirable. Artificially-created children, termed "parasites", are deprived of individuality and are educated only for piloting Franxx in pairs to defend humanity. Parasites are kept in isolation from adult society in environments nicknamed "birdcages", which emulate that of a bygone era, so that they can develop the emotional responses required to pilot a Franxx.

In the early 21st century, the progress of human civilization was accelerated by ground-breaking discoveries in mining technology, allowing extraction of magma energy for a new low-cost, all-encompassing energy source. Scientists contributing to the breakthrough formed "APE", an organization that would gain a large influence on world politics and the global economy as a result of their discoveries. After discovering human immortality, much of mankind opted to become immortal despite the side effect of losing their reproductive functions. Led by APE after the sudden emergence of the Klaxosaurs, the remnants of human civilization relocated to Plantations and the Franxx units were later created to combat the Klaxosaur threat.

Plot

In a post-apocalyptic future, humanity is under constant threat from giant creatures known as klaxosaurs (叫竜 kyoryū), which are sub-divided into at least four categories based on their size: "Conrad",[b] "Mohorovičić",[c] "Gutenberg"[d] and "(Super) Lehmann".[e] Pushed to the brink of annihilation, the remnants of humanity are led by the mysterious organization known as APE to abandon Earth's now desolate surface for the relative safety of mobile fortress-cities known as Plantations. To defend the Plantations, children called parasites are raised to pilot giant mecha known as Franxx[f] (フランキス Furankisu) in boy-girl pairs. The male pilot is called the stamen and the female pilot is called the pistil. These children are artificially-created and have short lifespans. A team of ten parasites is assigned to the experimental Squad 13 of Plantation 13. One of them, Hiro (016), is a former pilot-candidate prodigy who can no longer synchronize with his partner and they both fail to complete the training program. While skipping his class's graduation ceremony, Hiro encounters Zero Two (002), an elite Franxx pilot with klaxosaur blood, red horns, and an infamous reputation as the "Partner Killer". The rumor is that Zero Two's partners will die after riding with her for the third time. Despite this, after Zero Two's partner is soon-after killed during a klaxosaur attack during the graduation ceremony, Hiro volunteers to become her new partner, or as Zero Two calls him her "darling".