Talk:Chapter 45/@comment-39774967-20190611153950

I feel like I am one of the only ones who doesn't really care for any relationships aside from that of the main characters. MitsuKoko and IchIkuno are just plot devices for me, and I don't give any significance to them aside that of their drive for the children to develop feelings and go against adults.

But the romance between Hiro and Zero Two is different - it represents something out of order, a rebellious bond which goes against the entire society around them (like in Romeo and Juliet), both the norms of the adults and the cognitive ideals of the children. It is so engaging because it is the conflict for which you don't predict further predicaments for it, nor you feel relaxed while watching the series - it keeps you trembling because you want both of them to be happy, yet you know that there has to be a trickster which will destroy their hopes for being together in one shot, as the tone of the narrative implies that.

But what I actually mean is that it was different until their reunion in episode fifteen. As F. S. Fitzgerald pointed out in his The Great Gastby, "[Gatsby's] list of enchanted things had diminished by one" when he finally reunited with the the woman he was apart from for five whole years, which may as well be my case while watching the FranXX - I questioned myself: "Well, they are happy, now what's next?". The difference between Gatsby and FranXX (I feel like I am disgracing the prior by comparing the two, but FranXX is as interesting so nothing I can do about it) lies in the fact that in the novel, there are further hardships that the characters have to face in their relationship.

In FranXX, however, Zero Two and Hiro live a happy life until the final conflict, which in itself is very reactive and not productive when it tries to create any emotional tension. There are absolutely no precedents for Zero Two to be scared of turning Hiro into a monster and thus transfer her consciousnes into Strelizia (I am not entirely sure how that happened since nobody has yet shown a technology to do that at that point); then there is their first contact (and last) with the Klaxosaur princess, which tears them apart for mere minutes, again creating false tension. In the end, their deaths feel poetic and aesthetic, as well as sweet and romantic, but this large gap in the existence of the fragility in their bond leaves a kind of bitterness on the tongue that makes you add more sugar to your meal. In short, my point is that their reunion should have felt more sweet and euphoric than it was, and it didn't reach that milestone because they reunited only one episode after. I understand that it was the fanbase outraged at the IchiHiro kiss that made the writers from Trigger to rush to dismiss perhaps the most significant conflict of the main cast. However, this conflict is what may have bolstered the FranXX to be an anime of all time.

I have an idea of how to fix this issue, but I will refrain from posting any of that now because I dragged on for too long already. The reason why I am writing this as a formal essay is because I consider these series a work of capable hands and minds, and I regard it as a story that left me with as much experience as forever remembered anime like Death Note, Steins;Gate, Re:Zero  and the legendary Shounen. The reason I am writing it here is because I want people to consider that since the manga is diverging from the anime, it must fix the issue, not necessarily in my way, but definitely the way I would consider satisfying.