English Dub Review: Darling in the FranXX “Punishment and Confession”

02 lets loose her inner monster, Hiro gets some restful relaxation, and Ichigo confesses her true feelings.

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Hiro is trapped in a hospital bed for most of Punishment and Confession. After last week’s monster merge with 02, he needs plenty of recovery time to get back to his usual self. Meanwhile, Ichigo has had enough. Knowing now that full consequences of Hiro’s partnership with 02, she demands that the pink-haired plague is removed from the squad.

To everyone’s surprise, this request is already in motion, coming down from the top brass. 02 is being returned to her previous team: squad 9, where she will try to partner with someone other than Hiro. Regardless of the risks, though, Hiro doesn’t want to let 02 go. In a last-ditch effort to make him see reason, Ichigo tells him that she can’t bare to see him turn into a monster because she’s loved him ever since they were little.

Our Take:

The last few episodes of FranXX have been above average, and this continues the trend, though there’s not quite as much excitement to go around this week. Episode 14 is definitely a slow episode, but sometimes it’s nice to have a breather, and it fits in thematically with Hiro’s rest and recuperation. Even if there wasn’t a whole lot going on, what was there is pretty important stuff.

I’ve been waiting for 02 to blow up, and it finally happened in FranXX’s typical overwrought fashion. Hiro walking in on Ichigo being held up by her neck felt truly dangerous, although his arrival quickly quieted 02 down. (For being the human equivalent of research guinea pigs, where is all the adult supervision during this? Are Papa’s henchpeople just watching without intervening?) Hiro has a lot of questions after his experience last week, chief among them: was 02 merely using him all along? She seems to admit in her inner-monologue voiceover that this is the case, but as usual with FranXX, it’s still kind of unclear what all this means exactly.

The dub was no shock, with lots of solid performances this time around. Ichigo had many moments to shine, although my favorite line was about how she insists she’s “gradually getting better” at slicing apples. (There was a lot of blood this episode, what with Ichigo’s injury and 02 nervous finger-biting.)

Episode 14 continues on with the relationship between 02 and Hiro, and the implications that her monstrous nature has on their future. While nothing too suspenseful happened this week, there was still plenty of plot going on, as well as some further development of Ichigo, as she finally expresses her true feelings to Hiro. How will he respond? Guess we’ll just have to wait until next week to find out.