Darling in the Franxx

 Anime number 299 I've completed (though I probably missed a few over the years to register on my MAL account) and what a fantastic one.

Now, it started out like this: during my lunchbreaks at work, I had watched the first 4 episodes (yeah sorry, I`m that kind off anti-social collegue, I prefer a quit corner with my headphones), when i rang Noshi and said she had to watch those asap, because she'd like the series.

She did, and we started watching the rest in the evenings, and a week later the whole series had passed by.

And what a series it is, I rated it with a 9 / 10 on MAL.  In the future, humanity has become immortal, but at the price of being able to reproduce.  But they are at war with a race of monsters called Klaxosaurs, and in order to pilot mecha's called Franxx, children are still around to pilot them, promised to become adults once they kill a certain amount of Klaxosaurs.  And then they meet this strange girl called Zero Two, complete with horns and fangs.  

Hiro falls in love with her, and becomes her new "darling", a term she gives to her co-pilots, but who never last longer then 3 rides.  Because a Franxx needs to be piloted by a male / female combination, and they need to connect on an emotional level in order to make it work.  Yet Hiro works in perfect unison with Zero Two.

They later learn that there is more to humanity's evolution then they where taught, after they discover an ruined village and things like "babies", for which one of the squad, Kokoro, develops a want for.  When she does get pregnant during the final assault on the Klaxosaur base, they learn they have been played all along by the elders, while Zero Two and Hiro find out they have been connected longer then they ever suspected.

As the masks fall off and the true enemy is revealed, it comes to Zero Two and Hiro to stop them, together with their friends.  But knowing they might be forced to make the ultimate sacrifice, they decide to go in alone, promising to come back to Earth someday.

And they do, in what is one of the most beautiful endings I have seen in an anime, or other media for that matter, in years...

A truly recommended series, as this is a masterpiece, but now I DO WANT a Zero Two for my figurine collection!