It’s the Birds and the Bees and A “Darling in the Franxx” Analysis Part 5
Well well well would you look at the time. It’s time for another one of THEESE meme dumps again hah. On a more serious note, if you haven’t checked out the previous parts it’s your lucky day because we’re putting out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 so click on rrright there to have a lil notion of what is going on here exactly (remember to come back tho).
In our last post, we barely scratched the surface regarding the symbolism in this anime; real talk, I bet there is a lot of it that we’ve missed and will probably be uncovered later on.
So, we can talk about how this series will age well later, right now we want to address how their lifestyles, are essentially the birds and the bees… and uh bears also (No, its not a sex joke… I mean it is, but also isn’t).
First, let’s talk about birds. Now, what are birds known for primarily? Flight, right? Indeed, that’s one of the things they’re mostly famous for, and what does Hiro and even the other characters directly refer to as piloting a Franxx? That’s right, taking flight; but that’s only the basic and more obvious one, as it goes way deeper than that.
So don’t get fooled by the BIRB…
Young birds usually bundle up in their nests waiting for their parents to bring them food, protection and everything they need to survive until they are ready to take flight; in the show something similar to this happens. The “parasites” are separated from the adults and are located in their own residences; this is done for them to develop emotions and grow their bonds, which are necessary to pilot the Franxx, and they are also provided with food, water and every basic thing they need while they are growing and “learn to fly”, much like a bird’s nest (also a cage here).
Not to mention how the show is based on the myth of a bird that needs their partner to fly, otherwise they are doomed since “where would a flightless bird go?“
This is especially important since all of the character crisis we went on earlier was due to the fact that Hiro thought he couldn’t fly, aka accomplish the only purpose he has.
Now, moving onto the bees.
Even with the Internet’s obsession with bees and how silly their depiction is, bees in reality are in an environment of fascism, which is reflected in the society of Darling in the Franxx. They have strict working regimens and social roles, with Papa being the “Queen Bee” of sorts, the parasites being the expendable soldiers, them basing their whole existence around Magma and only Magma and living in closed environments (the plantations). If you think we are stretching it, just look at the design of their cities. They are of a yellow-ish colour (very honey like), they are made of mostly hexagons and even the gosh darned Franxxs they ride are named after flowers.
Maybe, if it was only one thing. It’s very clear that it’s not a coincidence and was intended; but not only was it intended, its meant to send a message on how our society is slowly but surely turning into one similar in reality. Child birth has been on a decline on developed countries, especially Japan, and we are slowly becoming more indifferent and selfish towards things, how our lives are turning into a to-do list that if we don’t complete we feel bad AND get treated bad by others… kind of like in the show (thinking emoji). Of course, the population crisis in Japan has nothing to do with people deciding not to have sex or to have interpersonal relationships, it’s much deeper and more troublesome than that but we’ll make sure to expand on this in a future post about the subject. In any case, we have not reached that point in our world and will probably won’t reach it any time soon… even though in episode 18 it says it takes place in 2025… but I mean that couldn’t happen ever… right?
Nihilism aside, where do bears come into all of this?
Ye can’t tell the darn difference.
I’ll give you 0.5 seconds to think… yeah it’s the Klaxosaurs. Now, these guys fascinate me in more way than one: First, they are freaking amazing looking and I don’t care what anyone else says about it, if someone ever says that CGI can’t be done correctly in anime just link them to a clip where they appear and BAM argument won.
(OR we could just gush about how Houseki no Kuni handles it’s CGI department in Anime pretty darn well (and might be a subject for futures posts so look forward to that! :3c)
Second, they are humanity’s first and only natural predator. Let’s be honest here, we humans are lucky; we don’t have anything in nature that actively wants to eat our butts… except each other, which is ironic but that’s besides the point.
Klaxosaurs appeared one day, were like “sup, we are going to prove than an utopia isn’t possible by crashing your utopia” and suddenly humanity had to actually be afraid over something wanting to kill them. A thing that is much bigger and stronger than they are. However, much like bears, they don’t exactly have to kill the bees, but they kinda have no option because they want that sweet sweet honey and, as we all know at this point, Klaxosaurs want that spicy spicy magma.
What’s more intriguing and puts this symbolism in stone, is the fact that humanity had to sacrifice countless of lives to actually develop a way to combat this new predator, just as bees have to sacrifice countless of their kin to drive away a bear that decided to feast on their nest. What’s more important is that they were OK with it: hundreds of human lives lost and it’s just a “meh” for the people running the place; they might be humans but there isn’t a bit of humanity inside of them, and they even forgot Klaxosaurs were a thing after the parasites could take them out rather well. It is rather ironic that the soldiers develop more feelings than the civilians, but again I guess that happens a bit in real life too.
Edgy shit about life done and over with, let’s talk about 002 being bare footed.
You might think this is just us cattering to a specific audience BUT no, we may sell our souls to clickbaity titles but you’ll see why we’re diving into this seriously.
You know in episode 8 where they all decide to do a lot of teenage drama over boys being boys and girls being girls? Well that is a fun and annoying episode for multiple reasons but the thing I want to focus on right now is 002 as we are talking about symbolism right now.
As we have said before, 002 is kind of an indifferent person towards anyone that isn’t Hiro, but in this episode we see her act in a way that it’s not really reminiscent of her: she is very playful and decides to prank the boys and the girls by giving incorrect information and then stealing their clothes and escaping from Hiro in the smoothest movements the animation team could possibly make. She informs Hiro that she decided to act “human” because she wanted to be one so that way she could help Hiro and the others more, and while she ended up having a fun time doing so, what I want to pay close attention to though is her feet and no, not because of a fetish, because she is barefooted. Why is this important? Well, because every time that 002 acts rebellious she usually takes off pieces of her clothes, let it be a hat, uniform or literally everything (how she goes swimming in the first episode against everyone’s orders). In this case, she runs around barefooted as a giddy child while laughing and smiling, even if it’s a bit irritating for the recipients of her prank, and to end this sequence off she puts on a pair of slippers and refrains from acting in a silly fashion again, which means this “Child” attitude has been tamed once more.
With that over, let’s talk about movement!~
And with movement, we are talking about the most important thing on this series, the one that truly brings it to life, and what it is, you ask? Well, of course it’s animation! …right? But well, I think you already know this. “The animation is great, fluid, accomplishes what it wants” and all of that is the common thing to say in this kind of critique, but in this anime the animators went a little further and we are going to go too. At first glance it is kinda hard to notice, mostly because one can assume this happens thanks to the situation or just ignore it at all, but, if you look carefully, you will see every single character is animated differently. Every character is animated in a differing technique of movement. Without going in much detail about animation, we are going to use what I think is the best example of this: Zorome, Hiro’s rival and the most “toony” character; well, even if this “toony” mostly refers to Zorome’s erratic and outgoing personality, the animators took it to another level, because even if yes, he is draw in the same anime stile as all the other characters, that’s only when he is static; because when he is moving, oh boy, when he is moving the quantity of smear frames and the incredible exaggeration of his poses can only be described by that “toony” word. This is not only great into a visual narrative perspective but also into the characters as individuals, because it gets to the point you don’t really need to hear them to know their personalities. We can go on and on with every character, but there is this beautiful interaction between 02, Ichigo and Hiro’s animation style that set in the highlight the grade of detail put into this.
We really do love this lil shit.
02 has slow but wide movements, with just a few smear frames that takes her from point A to point B in just one or two frames. Her movements are elegant and very pronounced, to the point that she instantly catches your attention. Ichigo has more “closed” movements: she don’t move a lot and when she does she almost completely lacks smear frames, normally creating the illusion of really firm and steady moves, marking a point in her cautious and firm personality. And Hiro has this great detail that, at the beginning of the series, he was animated like Ichigo, but when he got to be close to 02, his movements were more like hers. Eventually, Ichigo started having more wide movements like 02 and 02 started being more calm like Ichigo, and in the middle, Hiro, started having a perfect mix between the two, a mix that, curious enough, is the way that most animes are animated (A balance between all this elements).
AAAAND that’s all for this post but next Saturday keep up with us as we will finally complete the analysis with some misc and itty bitty symbols we couldn’t put in this time, but make sure to follow us and again thank for the followers and contributors for their continued hard work!
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