Darling in the Franxx Episode 4 Review: Flap Flap

Episode 4 aired on 3 February and my Darling in the Franxx hype is back! As I ‘warned’ you about in my last review, I’m adding a new rubric for my review called ‘Today’s Best-of Phrases’, which are, in my opinion, implying some rather ambiguous purposes.

You can watch broadcast episodes of Darling in the Franxx legally and with English subtitles on the online streaming website Crunchyroll. You can find the link and streaming options for all anime here: Winter 2018 Anime: Legal Streaming List

Japanese title: フラップ・フラップ (Furappu Furappu)

Episode 04: Flap Flap

Mitsuru is lying on a bed at the infirmary in order to recover from piloting Strelizia. He is trembling in fear at what happened with Zero Two inside Strelizia. When a Klaxosaur appears, the pilots of Delphinium, Argentea, Genista, and even Chlorophytum approach the enemy, but can’t find a way to defeat it. Zero Two has to follow orders from Papa to leave Plantation 13 and to return to the front line, but because of Hiro’s wish to ride the Franxx with her as partner, she disobeys orders, returns to Hiro’s side and they defeat the worm-type Klaxosaur by piloting Strelizia.

Fun Facts

The episode’s title ‘Flap Flap’ is the sound that birds make when flying by moving their wings up and down. Hiro and Zero Two told us a story about one-winged birds, who can’t fly by themselves because each bird owns only one wing. Therefore they are looking for a partner in order to be able to fly. And I think that ‘Flap Flap’ means that Hiro has found his partner in Zero Two and is now able to fly, or better yet, be a pilot of a Franxx.
I am not quite sure what they mean by ‘kissing’. The only idea I have is that ‘kissing’ means that a plantation visits another one. As for this episode, we get to know that Plantation 13 is going to visit Plantation 26, because of this announcement: ‘To prepare for the kissing with Plantation 26, Plantation 13 will switch to mobile setup.’
The worm-type Klaxosaur reminded me of the American movie Tremors from 1990.
Mitsuru could operate Chlorophytum because Ikuno has changed a bit.

Today’s Best-Of phrases

I wanted to start this rubric with last episode’s review, but as there were no phrases that fit or that I liked, I postponed it to this week’s episode and got hold of some really nice ones.

Zero Two: ‘You want to ride me?’
Hiro: ’I feel myself going deeper inside you. I can’t tell where I end and where you begin anymore. But I love it.’

My Thoughts

I enjoyed this episode so much and I think that was because MY Zero Two was back! I mean, she was awesome. The scene where Hiro is taking a bath and she just jumps into it to question him about whether he is afraid of her or if he thinks she’s a monster or not. She seems so confident, but when she’s questioning him about what his thoughts of her were, she looked so sad and heartbroken. This girl can go from ‘I’m the best and strongest’ to ‘Please, don’t leave me’ in 2 seconds. I really wish to know how she is feeling on the inside.

Hiro runs after Zero Two when guards take her to a ship and he tells her: ‘I couldn’t take my eyes of off you. (…) I want to ride the Franxx with you.’ That was so cute!! As he is in love with her but hasn’t figured it out yet. And then Zero Two escapes the guards to reunite with Hiro. Her face was really epic. Either she knew that he’ll go after her or she was really hoping he’ll do so.

In the rubric above, I will list some phrases I liked and will talk about them here. So, today, we’ve got Zero Two who asked Hiro: ‘You want to ride me?’ and I was just like ‘wow’, I’m not quite sure what this anime is about… Riding a Franxx or sleeping with the girls that kind of become the Franxx so it could basically just mean the correct way to ride, but because the ‘correct’ way to ride a Franxx looks so perverted, maybe the creators just couldn’t think of other ways to describe the way of operation, but like this. And then we’ve got Hiro saying: ’I feel myself going deeper inside you. I can’t tell where I end and where you begin anymore. But I love it.’, a phrase someone could also perfectly misunderstand. I missed her moan when Hiro connected with her, like the other girls do. I was a bit disappointed that Zero Two and Hiro are riding Strelizia the same way around like the other parasites do. I thought that these two were something special and wished that it were the other way around.

When I watched this episode I had to smirk because of all the ambiguous scenes and was stunned because of how cool Zero Two was.

My What-Is-Going-On? Moments

Zero Two looks gorgeous in her red battle suit, but how can she and the other girls walk in these shoes? They look like high-heels without heels. Oh and the Franxx have the same kind of footwork. Why can’t they just wear ‘normal’ shoes? It looks pretty difficult to hold the balance.

In the End

This episode was so much better than the previous one. It was full of action, ambiguous text, and was really cute at times. The episode was so epic that I really enjoyed it and pray that the upcoming ones will be about the same level as Episode 4.