The anime Darling in the Franxx is one of the weirder anime to come out of the last decade. The story follows a group of teenagers, called Parasites, who are tasked with piloting mecha suits called Franxx to fight against monsters that attack the few human settlements left on the planet. It has a super complex plot and in-depth world-building which unfolds as the series goes on, giving more information to the audience in little bits and pieces.

Related: Darling In The Franxx: 10 Burning Questions That The Finale Left Us With

But there are definitely some things about the series that are never fully made clear, or if they are, it’s in a subtle way that doesn’t totally explain everything. In a lot of ways, the anime leaves the audience with more questions than answers.

10 The Inhabitability Of Earth

The implication of the humans living inside of the plantations is that the world outside is uninhabitable. This makes sense on some level because the klaxosaurs are constantly attacking the plantation; if they just lived outside, they’d be at risk of attack.

However, the APE Council has clearly attacked and instigated the conflict with the klaxosaurs, who otherwise wouldn’t be aggressive against humans. Earth has probably always been perfectly livable by humans, as seen at the end of the series when the children go out to continue the human race.

9 The Fate Of Zero Two And Hiro

Anime darling in the franxx hiro and zero two

Zero Two and Hiro take Strelizia into the atmosphere in pursuit of the VIRM, not wanting to let them escape in order to come back in bigger numbers to destroy the world. In the process, their connection through the Franxx and through their romance, they merge into one being, with Strelizia, so they’re essentially one person.

They use the power of their connection with each other to defeat the VIRM in a massive explosion, which destroys them in the process. The series shows that the characters meet years later as children, having been reincarnated.

8 Adults

The adults in the series are all immortal. Adults can choose to be immortal; it doesn’t come naturally to any of them. But in order to achieve immortality, they give up their ability to reproduce.

The children who become Parasites have the ability to become adults and therefore immortal, but it’s very unlikely that they will do so. This is mostly because it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to reach adulthood, since they’ll likely die in battle with the klaxosaurs.

7 The Plantations

Plantations are human settlements in an otherwise uninhabitable Earth atmosphere. They are heavily armed to protect against the klaxosaurs that sometimes attack them.

Related: Which Darling In The Franxx Character Are You Based On Your Zodiac Sign?

The Plantation is essentially a giant city, where the adults live, with the area at the top as the area where the Parasites live and from which they are deployed to defend the plantation in the Franxx. They are not allowed into the larger part of the Plantation without express permission from the APE Council.

6 Nana

Nana and Hachi are two young adult Parasites who are tasked with looking after Squad 13 and noting how the experiment to have them living together alone is going.

Nana is one of the few Parasites who has been able to undergo the transformation to immortality. But she actually relapses into a pubescent state when she sees how happy Squad 13 is, living together as a family, and therefore losing her immortal status. She’s replaced by another Nana, since she is seen as unfit to continue working over the Squad in this state.

5 The Squad 13 Experiment

Squad 13 is treated differently than other Parasite squads. The audience knows almost from the beginning of the series that they’re part of an experiment, though it’s not clear at first what they’re trying to accomplish.

Related: Darling In The Franxx: 5 Reasons Hiro & Zero Two Are The Perfect Couple (& 5 Reasons They're Horrible For Each Other)

When they’re left alone and unsupervised, it becomes clear that the idea is to see if they’re able to develop emotional and sexual feelings towards each other (as teenagers are wont to do in those kinds of settings), to see if that makes them a more compatible and effective team.

4 Parasites

It’s never fully explained why, but the designs of the Franxx require that they each be piloted by two pilots, a boy and a girl. This has something to do with the fact that they have functional sexual organs that allow them to reproduce, therefore letting the two sync together in order to pilot together.

It isn’t necessarily the case that the pair has to be a boy and a girl, as Ikuno and Ichigo do attempt to pilot a Franxx together; it doesn’t work, but that might be because they are incompatible, not because they’re the same gender.

3 The Children Aging

It’s made clear throughout the series that no one actually expects the Parasites to reach adulthood. They’re pretty much supposed to die in battle. And they age incredibly rapidly anyway, so those who do manage to make it to adulthood don’t get to enjoy life for that long anyway.

This is likely because of the way the children are created, genetically. Since they’re meant to serve a specific purpose, and since they’re not supposed to be able to reproduce, there’s no point in giving them long life spans.

2 Papa And The ACE Council

The big revelation in the third act of the series is that the APE Council, which is in charge of the plantations on Earth and makes decisions concerning the klaxosaurs and the Parasites who fight them.

The head of this council is Papa, who seems to have sole control over what happens on Earth. He is revered as a deity by the adults and children of the plantations, who even pray to him. It turns out that he is actually a member of a species called the VIRM, who intend to destroy the planet.

1 Children

In Darling in the Franxx, children are not necessarily just small humans who will eventually grow into adults. For all intents and purposes, the two are different species. Adults are immortal, but because of the choice to live immortal lives, they are unable to reproduce.

Children, on the other hand, live short lives and die fairly young, even by the standards of regular human lifespans, but they retain their ability to have children.

Next: Darling In The Franxx: 5 Reasons Kokoro Should Have Ended Up With Futoshi (& 5 Reasons Why Mitsuru Was The Right Choice)