Characters / DARLING in the FRANXX - Pilots Of Strelizia

aka: Darling In The Franxx Hiro

Main Character Index | Plantation 13 | Pilots of Strelizia | Pilots of Delphinium and Argentea | Pilots of Genista and Chlorophytum | APE | Additional Plantations & Squads | Klaxosaurs

The two central protagonists of the series who pilot the Franxx, Strelizia

Hiro

Code:016/Hiro

Voiced by: Yūto Uemura (Japanese), Ami Koshimizu (child - Japanese), Matt Shipman (English), Mikaela Krantz (child - English) ^{Foreign VAs} Carlo Vázquez, Oliver Diaz [child] (Latin American Spanish), Masumi Mutsuda (European Spanish), Maxime Donnay (French), Maximilian Belle (German)

The male lead. He was called a prodigy until he failed out in the test to become a Franxx pilot. This left him seriously depressed and made him consider leaving the Plantation, but his meeting with Zero Two encouraged him to try piloting again with her.

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• Accidental Pervert: Suffers this after rummaging through Zero Two's discarded clothes and accidentally holding onto her panties, causing no end of embarrassment to him and much amusement to Zero Two.
• Adaptational Badass: He is more assertive in the manga, where his desire to pilot with Zero Two prevents Mitsuru from ever piloting Strelizia and he also confronts Nine Alpha at full after the latter doesn't allow him to help out his beleaguered friends.
• Affectionate Nickname: Darling as called by Zero Two. One he inspired her to use for him during their brief time together as children.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: He kneels to Nine Alpha in the manga, begging him to stop fighting him and allow him to save his friends. When Alpha refuses, he goes all out against him.
• Amnesiac Hero: Hinted in the beginning, and shown later. Not only was memory erased but his personality was altered because of it. When it returns after Episode 13, he is much more like he was as a child.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Gives the equivalent to Zero Two in Episode 4 while she was being carted away. He only wants to pilot with her and no one else.
  • Gives a proper one in Episode 12, but due to a mutual misreading of the situation, it only hastens Zero Two's downward spiral.
• Animal Motifs: Hiro and Zero Two are compared to one-winged birds that need a partner to fly, which is also a nice symbol of their relationship.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Subverted so far. The children all hoped he would lead them because he was the best pilot, but things didn't turn out that way.
• Badass Adorable: When he was younger. While he didn't get to kill klaxosaurs back then, he had guts and was undeniably tenacious, as seen when he broke Zero Two out of prison and helped her evade the authorities for a while.
• Beast and Beauty: Gender-flipped. When he was growing up as a normal boy, he tried to help Zero Two (who was then a Cute Monster Girl) escape from an APE facility where she was being experimented on and tortured. During their time on the run, he grew to love her for her character and even promised to marry her.
• Big Damn Kiss: He initiates one with Zero Two in Episode 15 after they cleared up all their misunderstandings and apologized for their mistakes.
• Blithe Spirit: He was one to the other children in the Garden, and his curiosity and free-spirited nature are few of the reasons why his memories were tampered. Fortunately, this comes back in full force after he recovers his memories.
• Blue Is Heroic: A heroic Team Dad whose emerging secondary color scheme is blue.
• Body Horror: After piloting Strelizia with Zero Two a second time, his body starts to develop a blue grotesque substance that's slowly making him ill.
• Break the Cutie: Things weren't really going so well for him for the first few episodes, especially since he was the only one who couldn't synchronize with his partner. This rings true even more when his backstory is revealed in Episode 13, which makes clear why he became the melancholic protagonist we know.
• Broken Ace: He was formerly a skilled and promising trainee, well known enough that people in other plantations knew of him, but as of late he's reached the point where he can't pilot a Franxx and so his confidence has taken a huge shot.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: An unintentional case. He and Mitsuru promised to pilot a FranXX together when they were children, though Hiro forgot about it, leaving Mitsuru betrayed. Though Hiro forgot their promise not because of indifference, but because parts of his memories were wiped out. Episode 13 even showed that Hiro was sincere with his promise and was worried for Mitsuru while the latter was undergoing surgery; it just so happened that his memories were tampered with right before Mitsuru returned. And when he remembered it, he attempted to apologize, knowing (to an extent) just how much the promise meant to Mitsuru.
• Chekhov's Gun: Hiro's inability to pilot with anyone but Zero Two is revealed to be one. Because Hiro licked the blood off of her scraped knee as a child, he was afflicted with Zero Two's curse. His scores began to plummet afterward, going from one of the most promising pilots to a complete washout. He was even labeled as a "tainted specimen" because of the incident.
• Chekhov's Skill: Time and time again Hiro has managed to calm down Zero Two and bring back Strelitzia from Stampede Mode, which is exactly what allowed him to reach out to the Klaxosaur Princess through their mental connection while inside Star Entity and keep Strelitzia Apus from causing a literal Earth-Shattering Kaboom.
• Childhood Friends: With Ichigo and Goro. Episode 13 revealed he was also Zero Two's only childhood friend.
• Childhood Friend Romance: His relationship with Zero Two is revealed to be this.
• Childhood Marriage Promise: In a flashback in Episode 13, Hiro made one to Zero Two. That promise becomes the entire reason Zero Two strives so vehemently to become human. If they marry, he'll become her darling.
• Color Motif:
  • Grey. While all the children wear grey uniforms, for Hiro the symbolism is a little more on-the-nose. It can symbolize mourning, humility and repentance (after failing to sync with Naomi and getting her expelled from the program), but also depression, plainness, and lack of life or joy (which he very much feels before he joins with Zero Two).
  • As the series progresses, the grey motif gets gradually overtaken by blue. His saurification aside, it also illustrates how he complements Zero Two in their relationship, especially once they become an Official Couple in Episode 15.
• Constantly Curious: When he was a child, he was notorious for always asking the adults questions about the Garden, the other children, and Zero Two.
• Cursed with Awesome: More or less.Hiro would have been an Ace Pilot had he not drank Zero Two's blood, which contaminated his own and made him unable to pilot properly with any other pistil. But, the fact that he ingested some of her blood made him the only stamen who can ride with her more than three times and survive.
• Cute Little Fangs: Due to his complete saurification, he's shown to have these by Episode 24.
• Dance of Romance: An adorably awkward variant with Zero Two when she gets him into restricted (to him) areas by linking her hands with his, but leading with one pair of hands forward like a kind of dance. After his Anguished Declaration of Love in Episode 4, they do this together to bypass security and get to Strelizia.
• Declaration of Protection: Young Hiro vows to protect Zero-Two once it becomes obvious the adults will stop at nothing to get her back.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Part of the reason why he's determined to keep on piloting Strelitzia is because he's finally able to fulfill his role as a pilot, to the point that even when he slowly starts to die from linking with Zero Two, he's willing to die fighting than live another second as a useless civilian.
  • This is revealed to be a result of APE tampering with his memories. Originally, he only wanted to pilot in as much as it would let him leave The Garden. When this motivation is erased from his memory, piloting is all he remembers. Tellingly, he has moved on from this single-track mindset by Episode 16, as seen when he tells the squad that there's more to life than piloting.
• Determinator: He will stop at nothing to pilot a Franxx. As a child, piloting was a means to an end to escape The Garden. When he rescues Zero-Two, he decides he won't bother to wait, trying and failing to escape with her by himself. This attitude returns in full force when he gets his memories back, as he becomes increasingly adamant about gaining freedom for himself, Zero Two and their teammates.
• Distressed Dude: In the climax of Episode 20, he is taken hostage by the Klaxosaur princess, leaving Zero Two to go and rescue him.
• Do Not Go Gentle: Type 1. In Episode 6, he believes he and Zero Two defeated the last klaxosaur and he can peacefully fade away knowing he was of some use, and she can fight on without him. His old partner Naomi admonishes him for lying to himself in a dream, but he's still ready to face that good night... until he realizes Zero Two would be sad and alone without him. This snaps him out of it, and he finds the will to keep living and fighting for her.
• Establishing Character Moment: His very first scene consists of him monologuing about the philosophical meaning of a wounded bird he saw in the forest. As you might expect from this, he isn't the kind of person that would blend in at parties.
  • This makes a jarring contrast with the first impression we get of him as a kid. A cheerful, curious and charismatic boy who actively went against the rules set in the Garden and gave the other kids names. All those qualities were stripped away when his memory was wiped. And return when he recovers it.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Implied with Mitsuru, even if his feelings for Hiro are rather bitter at present.
• Evolutionary Levels:He began his Slow Transformation into becoming a Human/Klaxo-Sapien hybrid in Episode 17 when his horns start to grow. These become more prominent in Episode 22, where's he's also shown to have glowing eyes whenever he's stressed. Episodes 23 and 24 take it a step further after he connects with Zero Two in the Strelizia Apus, as his irises change to Zero Two's turquoise iris color. In the final battle, we see him with fangs, blue eyeliner, and rings around his pupils. At his demise, his spirit is shown to have blue skin, completing his transformation into becoming a hybrid like Zero Two.
• Exotic Eye Designs: In episode 23, he gets rings around his pupils due to fully embracing his klaxosaur transformation.
• Facial Markings: Due to his saurification, he develops a prominent blue eyeliner.
• Falling into the Cockpit: As he failed the test to become an official pilot, he was essentially a civilian when he first piloted Strelizia with Zero Two. And the only reason he got the chance to climb in the cockpit in first place is because Strelizia coincidentally crashed near him. It takes a while before he's officially established as a proper stamen.
• Fatal Flaw: He has the tendency to keep things to himself even when sharing them would be beneficial for everyone, which then leads to serious cases of miscommunication. Also, since when he was a kid he was the only one that was trying to fight the world around him until he met Zero Two, he often jumps into things by himself without talking first with his teammates.
• A Father to His Men: Hiro has a feel of Team Dad in his relation to other Parasites as a child and to Squad 13 after recovering his memories. It shows why he was the first choice to become leader. This is more pronounced in the manga, where his concern for his teammates is made as important as his growing relationship with Zero Two.
• First Girl After All: Gender-inverted. In Episode 13, its revealed that he was Zero Two's original "darling", the one boy who she truly loved and missed from her childhood.
• First Kiss: With Zero Two, which was a trigger of sorts to connect him to her and Strelizia. He actually didn't know what a kiss was until she showed him.
• Forgotten First Meeting : Implied in Episode 12 between Hiro and Zero Two in her true form. Episode 13 confirms he knew her from when they were younger, and he tried to escape the Garden with her after seeing her being subjected to brutal experiments.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Much like it happens to Zero Two, after his saurification his eyes glow an electric blue when he feels particularly strong emotions.
• The Heart: He serves as this to the entire squad; while Ichigo gives them instructions with Goro providing support, Hiro is the glue keeping the entire team together. There's a good reason he was supposed to be the leader.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Episode 20 heavily implies that his saurification is simply him returning to his roots and not a side-effect of partnering with Zero Two. Even the Klaxosaur Princess states that he's no ordinary human.
• The Hero Dies: He and Zero Two meet their end in the series finale. Fortunately, it's heavily implied that he and Zero Two were reincarnated as human children living in a world free from APE's oppression.
• Heroic Willpower: He may not be an Ace Pilot like his partner, but Hiro has a powerful resolve that allowed him to escape death, and what helped him get through what would have broken others.
• Horned Humanoid: In Episode 17, he starts growing blue horns which end up growing to full size after episode 23.
• I Am Who?: Hiro somehow has the ability to withstand being damaged as hard as the other pilots when piloting Strelizia with Zero Two. In episode four, the Elder Council states that "the stamen is tainted," so something is definitely different with our Hero.
• If It's You, It's Okay: Practically invoked by the fact that Zero Two is the only pistil he's able to successfully synchronize with.
• Indy Ploy: As a child/after he recovers his memories, he shows an aptitude for improvising. From using a decorative light to break a window to piloting a training unit onto the battlefield.
• Interspecies Romance: Between him, a human, and Zero Two, a klaxosaur-human hybrid. Subverted after his transformation, as they are now the same.
• It's All My Fault: In regards to Naomi being expelled from the program since she was partnered to him and their sync ratios continued to fall.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Episode 4 reveals that he told Zero Two to go with Mitsuru because he thought he would be a better partner for her. It's only when she confronts him in the bath and hints at her own insecurities that he musters up the courage to confess to her.
• Jumped at the Call: The moment he saw a chance to get in a Franxx, he begged Zero Two to let him pilot even if it killed him. Afterwards he bluntly puts that he doesn't care as long as he gets to pilot.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: It's hinted that during his time in the Garden, something was done to him which caused him to have blanks in his memory. Thus, he forgets crucial things such as his promise with Mitsuru, and the fact that he had previously met Zero Two long before the events of the first episode. Episode 13 confirms this to be the case, but by the end of the episode he finally remembers everything.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Hiro is more grounded and not as boneheaded as most examples, but when he has a goal in mind, he won't hesitate to jump head-first into danger to achieve it. Both Mitsuru and Goro have noted that he has the tendency to immediately get into trouble without consulting others first.
• Living Emotional Crutch: His kid self became one for Zero Two, as her entire reason for killing klaxosaurs is to become human and be able to reunite with him again; making Zero Two's actions in Episode 12 much more painful in hindsight.
• Love Confession: Gives one to Zero Two in Episode 12. Too bad she wasn't in the right mental state to hear that. In episode 15 it goes slightly better.
• Love Epiphany: After observing Goro's and Futoshi's relationship with their partners for a while, he finally realizes he is in love with Zero Two.
• MacGyvering: Downplayed, but a few scenes display that he can be rather resourceful with any item at his disposal. A good example is in Episode 14, where he uses a blanket and a knife to create a makeshift grapple hook and escape the hospital via the window.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: A gender-inverted example between him and Zero Two when they were younger, which reflects just how much they've both changed at present.
• Man in the Machine: Ultimately he become this after able to reach Strelizia Apus and Zero Two consciousness. Thus also leading him complete his Slow Transformation into human-klaxo hybrid and connected with Strelizia True Apus.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Downplayed Trope. He isn't very "feminine", but his introvert behavior and moments of self-loathing make a strong contrast to the very assertive Zero Two. Interesting to note that he uses "ore" to refer to himself despite this.
• Meaningful Name: Hiro (Hero). Doubles as Punny Name.
• Mr. Fanservice: He has a collection of shirtless scenes, especially when he and Zero Two are naked.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Despite being totally justified in the moment to do so, he quickly comes to regret calling Zero Two a monster in episode 14 and is driven to tears over both the fact that he did it and that it looks like he won't be able to apologize to her for it.
• Nice Guy: Downplayed. Even while he was still in his depression, he never acted in a harsh manner towards his fellow pilots, even when some of them weren't as welcoming towards him. This doesn't mean that he's a pushover however, since he was more than willing to fight back when Zorome antagonized him one time too many. Once he recovers his memories however, he becomes a better example of the trope.
• The Nicknamer: He gave all the other kids actual names out of their numbers when they were younger, names they consistently prefer over their official designations. This is regarded as significant In-Universe given how Parasites trainees apparently don't seek this kind of individualization because of their controlled growing environment. Suffice to say not even an outlier like Zero Two thought of referring herself as anything else. Though ironically, Zero Two is the name Hiro gave her when they were children.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: His attempts to rescue Zero Two from her fate as a lab rat ends with him getting beaten, detained, and mind-wiped.
• Not Afraid to Die: Exhibits this for a short while, not caring that he might die on his third time piloting Strelizia with Zero Two (like all her previous stamen), as long as he got to pilot a Franxx. Seeing her freak out when she thought he had died (and thus, left her alone again) changes his mind and he now wants to live to be able to continue piloting with her.
• Official Couple: In Episode 15, he and Zero Two become this.
• One True Love: Much like the Jian bird from Chinese mythology, he and Zero Two serve as each other's wings. Back when they were children, Hiro tried to help Zero Two escape the APE facility where she was being tested on and tortured. Looking past Zero Two's inhuman appearance, Hiro grew to admire and love her for her character and went as far as promising to marry her while they were on the run. His short time with Zero Two made an impact on the latter and, as Episode 12 reveals, she subsequently spends much of her life looking to reunite with her original "darling". When she finds out Hiro was her "darling" all along in Episode 13, she becomes distraught over her actions before the two make up for their mistakes in Episode 15. Since then, the two have shown unconditional love for one another and know that their bond can overcome whatever obstacle fate throws at them.
• Only Friend: In Episode 13, it's revealed that he was this to Zero Two during their childhood.
• Parting-Words Regret: A non-fatal version. When Hiro comes upon Zero Two attacking the other Plantation 13 members, he tells her that she really is a monster (though he was referring to her actions). It's clear later on that he regrets saying that.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue Oni to Zero Two's Red. He's collected and Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life while she's unruly and not fond of regulations or social norms. Emphasized by Zero Two having red for her Color Motif, even more so when blue Tainted Veins start appearing on Hiro's chest after his second ride with her. This goes a step further in Episode 17, as Hiro is revealed to have budding blue horns. By the Grand Finale, he's completely turned into a blue male counterpart for Zero Two, as he's fully developed not just blue horns but also fangs, exotic eyes, and even blue eyeliner. When he and Zero Two sacrifice themselves, his soul is shown with blue skin as a counterpoint to her red skin.
• Reincarnation: Episode 24 heavily implies that he and Zero Two were reincarnated as human children, as it shows a pink-haired girl meeting a boy under a cherry blossom tree.
• Reincarnation Romance: He and Zero Two die in the final battle, sacrificing themselves to stop the VIRM. Centuries later, their souls return to Earth and become reborn as humans, where they meet each other again as kids. With the strong implication they will restart their romance, it's crystal clear that not even death can separate him from Zero Two.
• Rescue Romance: Forms a childish version of this with Zero-Two when they were younger. This becomes the basis of their actual romance when they recover their memories.
• Rookie Male, Experienced Female: His partnership with Zero Two is a good example. Although to be fair with him, all the pilots besides Zero Two are rookies.
• Secretly Dying: Piloting with Zero Two in Episode 4 leaves him with a spiked Yellow blood cell count that's killing him. When Goro finds out, he swears him to secrecy under the assumption that his third ride will be his last. However, he seem to recover from that problem by the end of episode six and has not died from his third ride.
• Sexually Transmitted Superpowers: Zero Two is a human/Klaxosaur hybrid. As she pilots her mecha Strelitzia with pure human Hiro, a process that involves a lot of romantic and sexual metaphors, Hiro starts to gain Klaxosaur traits himself. Justified: we eventually learn that he ingested some of her blood when they met as young children after they Escaped from the Lab where they were both created (their memories of the meeting were erased), and their piloting Strelitzia together is causing it to activate.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Surprisingly the first 4 episodes are built around him realizing it. He fails to connect with any partner besides Zero Two and she's a big part of why he enjoyed his first experience piloting a Franxx despite not remembering much. Episode 4 even reveals that the reason he wanted her to ride with Mitsuru is because he felt she deserved better than him and near the end he realizes that he doesn't just want to pilot a Franxx, he wants to pilot one with her.
• Slow Transformation: As revealed in Episode 12, Zero Two doesn't seem to be the only one who's becoming less and less human. While it's much more gradual in Hiro's case, Nana and Hachi speculate that if he keeps piloting with Zero Two, Hiro will also eventually meet Zero Two's fate. This is confirmed in Episode 17, when it's revealed that Hiro is growing blue horns.
• Something Only They Would Say: What led Zero Two to realize that Hiro is her first darling was when he mentioned the picture book that she had with her when she was a kid. As she lived in captivity at the time, she had zero interaction with the other children besides Hiro, whom she showed said picture book to while they were on the run.
• Spanner in the Works: Dr. Franxx calls Hiro "most definitely an unknown factor to VIRM", as it's his presence that delays Strelizia's explosion, something that the VIRM did not seem to anticipate or take into account.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In the manga.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Zero Two.
• Terrible Artist: He's not the best. He's embarrassed by his drawing in Episode 17 when Zero Two laughs at it, but she loves it anyway.
• This Means War!: This is Hiro's reaction at the end of Episode 18 when he finds out Kokoro and Mitsuru got their minds wiped. At that point, Hiro had enough of APE and is ready to rebel.
• Together in Death: With Zero Two in the aftermath of Episode 24's final battle.
• Took a Level in Badass: Zigzagged. Episode 13 revealed that Hiro was always a fearless badass, although his memory repression and his ingestion of Zero Two's blood negatively affected his aptitude as a potential pilot. Though after he recovers his memories, he becomes the badass that he was and more.
• Tranquil Fury: In Episode 19, when he confronts both APE and Dr. Franxx for their past and recent actions, he's completely composed as he speaks on the squad's and Zero Two's behalves. However, his anger is completely palpable throughout.
• Unfulfilled Purpose Misery: Having been trained since birth to pilot a Franxx and fight Klaxosaurs, Hiro is not happy to find he can't pilot and ends up depressed. When he finds he's compatible with Zero Two, he's insistant on piloting with her despite her reputation as the Partner Killer and he himself slowly dying as he rides, stating that if he can't pilot a Franxx, then he might as well be dead either way.
• Uptight Loves Wild: With Hiro as the Uptight and Zero Two as the Wild. Like the other kids he has been conditioned since childhood to always obey the orders he receives without question and fight for the sake of the adults. Zero Two is very irreverent, fights for her own survival, and is cynically aware that having to obey the adults until death makes for one horrible life.
• Used to Be More Social: As a child, Hiro was shown to be the center of his group and even gave everyone their nicknames. In the present, Hiro is not as close with the others, initially frustrated and looked down upon for his inability to pilot a Franxx. It's heavily implied that something was done to him in the past, which resulted in his change of personality. This implication turns out to be a fact in Episode 13.
• Useless Protagonist: He was regarded as one at first, since despite showing a lot of promise as a double-digit, he had trouble synchronizing with his partner. He subverts this after partnering with Zero Two, but then he gets accused of getting Beginner's Luck, with a few pointing out that Zero Two is the only reason why he is useful. The manga makes a point to further subvert this as he pilots Strelizia instead of Mitsuru and proceeds to trounce the Klaxiosaurs that were hurting his friends even if he was in pain during the fight.
• Walking the Earth: What he wants to do with Zero Two now that the two remember their past together.
• When He Smiles: Given that he's usually morose or deep in thought, seeing him let loose and exhibit joy in his expression is utterly heartwarming. His tear-laced smile/laugh when he reunites with Zero Two in Episode 15 is a perfect example of this.

Zero Two

Code:002/Zero Two/Nine Iota

Voiced by: Haruka Tomatsu (Japanese), Tia Ballard (English) ^{Foreign VAs} Mariana Ortiz (Latin American Spanish), Nuria Trifol (European Spanish), Claire Tefnin (French), Shanti Chakraborty (German)

The female lead. A mysterious girl with red horns. She is an elite pilot, but her tendency to get her co-pilots killed led her to be nicknamed "Partner Killer". She quickly took an interest in Hiro and managed to convince him to become her new partner, or "darling" as she puts it.

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• Ace Pilot: Compared to the other pistils, Zero Two has a lot more control over her Franxx's synchronization rate and movements. She can also pilot on her own with greater ease and has more experience in dealing with klaxosaur.
• Adaptational Nice Girl: Doesn't beat up Squad 13 on her own volition in the manga and her hostility towards them is due to being placed under the Klaxosaur Princess' influence until Hiro jumped into Strelitzia to undo it. There is also the fact that most of her toxic behavior towards Hiro are downplayed and she's not even trying to force herself on him like in the anime.
• Alien Blood: When she was a kid her blood was a bright blue, similar to the fluid secreted by klaxosaurs. As a teen, it appears to be the normal red. It's implied that her blood will turn blue again if her "saurification" proceeds.
• Animal Motifs: As stated below, she is somewhat compared to spiders; partly because of how it seems she has ensnared Hiro, and partly because of the whole Black Widow shtick. However, both she and Hiro are also compared to a mythical bird which cannot fly unless it has a partner, which characterizes their relationship.
  • Her voice actor has also likened her to a cat in an interview, which fits well with her pointy ear-like horns, her Cute Little Fangs, her occasional feral mannerisms (such as showing affection by licking), and Strelizia's lion-like Stampede Mode.
• Anti-Hero: Prior to her Character Development. Zero Two is known to be strong and carefree, but also selfish, headstrong, arrogant, and lacking of empathy. She tones down after reuniting and reconciling with Hiro in episode 15, where she finally shown her true kindness and cheerful side to the others.
• Artificial Human: She was cloned by Dr. Franxx from hair he took from the Klaxosaur Princess.
• Barefoot Captives: She was held this way in her childhood.
• Barefoot Loon: In Episode 8. When she gets in the middle of the boys vs. girls feud, a naughty streak is awakened in Zero Two and during the height of it, she runs around barefoot like a giddy child (mainly because she sneaks into a bathing room and you're not supposed to use footwear in one). When she gets caught, she is unabashed about using her lack of footwear to her advantage, stealing Hiro's Modesty Towel with her toes and showing off her skill with unencumbered feet by nimbly leaping all around the dormitory (and even the rooftops and a nearby tree) like a parkour maniac. However, after she gets scolded and the zeal of being impish wears off, Zero Two remembers she can't afford to act foolish after the horrible experiences she's had with former pilots and tucks her feet into slippers, signifying that her childish side has been beaten back. This trait might come from the person she was cloned from.
• Beast and Beauty: Gender-flipped when she was younger. She was a Cute Monster Girl in love with a normal boy, and her favorite picture book was a fairy tale about a monster/beast princess who fell in love with a handsome prince.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Part of the reason she likes Hiro is that he wasn't afraid of her and treated her as he would anyone else, whereas others don't treat her as human for one reason or another. As it turns out, they go way back, and even back then Hiro was the first to treat her kindly. She never fully forgot her short time with him despite the attempt at wiping her memories, and strives to become human much like the demon girl in the fairy tale book she had with her at the time.
• Become a Real Boy: Practically confirmed in Episode 12, where the reason why Zero Two wants to kill as much klaxosaurs as possible is because she believes that if she kills enough, she can become fully human. The fact that she's becoming more and more like a klaxosaur instead however, drives her into a state of despair and rage.
• Becoming the Mask: Despite saying to Hiro that he was fodder all along, it's implied in Episode 12 that she grew to care for him as her darling as his apparent fear of her increasingly feral characteristics wounds her and the act of draining him clearly pains her to the point of tears.
• Berserk Button: Best not to comment on how she's not human.
• Betty and Veronica: She is Veronica and Ichigo is Betty, with Hiro as their Archie. Contrasting with the obedient and straight-laced Ichigo, Zero Two is very flirty with Hiro, has an assertive personality and hates following the rules of the adults.
• Black Widow: She's known as the "Partner Killer" for a reason, with a Stamen count of over 100. (She's also thematically compared to a spider or vampire who drinks her partner's blood until he has nothing left to give, killing him.) Episode 12 reveals that she literally puts a curse on all her partners, draining their life-force each time they pilot.
• Blithe Spirit: Her seemingly care-free rule-breaking helps break Hiro out of his crippling depression and blind adherence to rules, and the cheerful affection she shows him in the children's quarters inspires some of the other kids to be more affectionate with each other. (Like the boys and girls sitting together for meals, or Kokoro feeding Futoshi honeyed bread.)
• Blood Knight: After fighting mostly Conrad-class klaxosaurs for several days, she gets very ecstatic and reckless when she sets her sights on a Gutenberg-class. She then nearly gets Strelizia trapped inside it, but her team comes to pull them out. Hiro even has to hold her back when she charges in again right after, and they only narrowly avoid getting crushed under the klaxosaur's feet.
• Body Horror: The scene in Episode 13 of her being not just strapped down, but pinned onto a medical table like an animal about to be dissected with her outer layer of skin severely peeled away.
• Broken Bird: Arguably since the beginning, but definitely in Episode 15. When she and Hiro reunite, she is a sputtering mess who is so afraid of hurting him again that she tries to push him away.
• Brutal Honesty: In episode 8, she gets a chilling moment following a girls vs. boys feud that has gotten so out of hand and obnoxious that the group of pilots is scolded. After an episode where the characters have mostly been quibbling over trivial and petty nonsense, Zero Two muses that this amusing spectacle was fun while it lasted. Then, in the girls' room, she reminisces on the lot of the children, and predicts that they're all going to be killed with an extremely icy look of bitter resignation, and says it with such certainty and lack of hope that it freaks all the girls out and gets them curious about why Zero Two is writing them off. They later discover a photo of a previous generation of plantation members she worked with... who are now all dead. It takes an even worse meaning when the full extent of Zero Two's abilities and the price for their activation is revealed. Zero Two is personally responsible for the deaths of all her partners because a parasitic curse is released from her that hacks away at their life force.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: She's an exceptionally gifted parasite whose extremely odd quirks (often commenting on how she and/or other people taste, often musing on how she wants to go in the ocean, dousing her food in honey, has No Sense of Personal Space) are tolerated because of how good she is fighting off klaxosaur.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Doesn't remember working with the members of Plantation 26 two years ago or getting one of their partners killed. As she puts it, weaklings die so she doesn't pay any attention to them.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: She's strong enough to punch an armored man across a room, and agile enough to jump up an entire story. Granted, she isn't entirely human, but how much of her physical attributes can be credited to her heritage is left unanswered.
• Character Development: While Zero Two is still an unruly Anti-Hero as of Episode 16, her personality went from a borderline nihilistic and violent "wild animal" to a cheerful and socially open "domestic pet".
• Character Tics: She bites down on her nails whenever she gets annoyed.
• Childhood Friend: Episode 13 reveals she was one for Hiro.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Her relationship with Hiro is revealed to be this.
• Childhood Marriage Promise: Episode 13 reveals Hiro made such a promise to her. That promise becomes the main reason why Zero Two is so hellbent on becoming human.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: When she was younger, she was tortured in various ways to test and gauge her Healing Factor.
• Color Motif: Her horns, uniform, and pilot suit are all red. This conveys not only her passionate, intense, exciting personality (and implied sexual liberation), but also how dangerous and blood-thirsty she can be. As a child, she used to have red skin.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: She's been a prized military asset of APE and sent to fight on the front lines for so long that she has no regard for human life or her own, since they all exist to fight and die and become a statistic anyway. Heck, even when her beloved is dying, perhaps the one person she unambiguously cares about, she hardly bats an eye at it because, to her, it's just a fact of life that everyone dies.
• Custom Uniform: She's the only one who wears a red uniform, and retains it even after she officially joins Squad 13.
• Cute Little Fangs: Played with; Zero Two has fangs, but they're not always played as cute. More often than not, when they are shown, it's to highlight her non-human nature, but she's not a example of Fangs Are Evil. And by episode 10, they're growing, implying that Zero Two is mutating.
• Cute Monster Girl: Her younger self definitely was this, having red skin, more prominent horns, claws, and sharp teeth.
• Dance of Romance: An adorably awkward variant with Hiro when she gets him into restricted (to him) areas by linking her hands with his, but leading with one pair of hands forward like a kind of dance. After his Anguished Declaration of Love in Episode 4, they do this together to bypass security and get to Strelizia.
• Dark Is Not Evil: She has demonic looking horns and her blood is partially of a dark looking race of monsters, but is on the side of the heroes nevertheless.
• Despair Event Horizon: Completing her Sanity Slippage, she crosses this line when she believes she's been rejected by Hiro in Episode 14.
• Determinator: She's implied to be this from the get-go when she sought to become human and reunite with her original Darling, but she shows this in full force in Episode 20. Even after the Klaxosaur Princess whiplashes her down several stories, she'll stop at nothing to save Hiro.
• Deuteragonist: The most important character in the plot after Hiro.
• Doom Magnet: Is called the "Partner Killer" by the children for her infamous streak in getting many of her co-pilots killed.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": In episode 17, Zero Two tells Nine Alpha not to call her Iota, a name given to her by Papa. She prefers to be called Zero Two, a name given to her by Hiro.
• Don't Look At Me: Her reaction when she and Hiro meet again in Episode 15.
• The Dreaded: To Squad 26, who worked with her before and had one of their numbers killed because of her reckless fighting style.
• Empty Shell: Her body became this in the aftermath of episode 21, with her mind transferred into Strelizia Apus.
• Evil Laugh: She does a rather scary one when she beats up almost the entirety of Squad 13 after wrongfully thinking that they've tricked her.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Her eyes have rings around the pupils and lack the shading of the normal human eyes.
• Experienced Protagonist: Having been fighting on the front-lines for some time, she's significantly more experienced than the other parasites on Plantation Thirteen. This is played for drama, as in episode 8, she has to explain to her squad that their days are numbered and that they are all likely to die fighting the klaxosaurs.
• Facial Markings: Has prominent red eyeliner.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Implied in Episode 12 between Hiro and Zero Two in her true form. Confirmed in episode 13.
• The Four Loves: She prioritizes eros love, but can't even comprehend storge, because she's never had any family.
• Freakiness Shame: Zero Two is hyper-sensitive to anyone making a comment about her non-human status and bringing it up is a very good way to tick her off. This is especially true when it comes to her horns. But despite that, Hiro considers her horns an attractive feature since he did call them "alluring" in his mind.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Played for drama. In Episode 13 she was subjected to horrible experiments so that the scientists can (presumably) collect data about the klaxosaurs.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Is partially klaxosaur somehow. Episode 19 reveals her klaxo-sapien side comes from her being a clone of the Klaxosaur Princess. Additionally, Episode 17 reveals that, like other hybrid species such as ligers and mules, she's unable to reproduce.
• Handy Feet: In episode 8, she demonstrates this skill. Zero Two sneaks into the boys' bathing quarters to steal their clothes. She also traipses around barefoot in lieu of her usual boots and socks (either to give make her footsteps quiet enough to go unnoticed or, more likely, because it's common courtesy in Japanese culture that you have bare feet or at the very least socks only in a bathing area to not track in grime). Hiro gives chase after her, and Zero Two catches him by surprise by doing something absurd - using her toes to swipe the towel draped around his loins before he can even react, and then gives him a smug and mischevious giggle as she mockingly waves it in front of him.
• Headbutt of Love: In the fourth episode, she touches Hiro's forehead with her horns to show affection.
• Healing Factor: It's revealed in Episode 13 that she has the power to heal her own injuries.
• Heel Realization: In Episode 13 learning that Hiro was the boy she loved all along causes her to realize that everything she's done - at least since arriving at Plantation 13 - has been pointless.
  Zero Two: Hey, were you my Darling from back then? Then what have I been doing all this time?
  • It continues in Episode 14 as she's barred from interacting with Hiro, forcing her to confront all the times she had acted callously or manipulative to Hiro with the hindsight of knowing that he was the very person she thought she was doing this for all along and that Hiro, as a teen, honestly cared for her the entire time.
• The Heroine Dies: She and Hiro meet their ends in Episode 24. Fortunately, it's heavily implied that the two have reincarnated as human children.
• Heroic Resolve: In Episode 20, she goes after the Klaxosaur Princess after she gets whipped out of Strelizia. Her drive to save her One True Love keeps her going even as she's losing a dangerous amount of blood from the fall.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In Episode 21, in order to force the VIRM to retreat, she injects a large portion of her soul into Strelizia, with the very, very small portion of her soul still left leaving her a nearly-catatonic, barely responsive Empty Shell while the majority of her soul powers Strelizia in its one-man war against the VIRM. After Hiro joins her in Strelizia, they leave Earth forever, sacrificing themselves to destroy VIRM's homeworld and free all their imprisoned souls.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Zero Two seems to only care about herself, so much so that even when Hiro is dying, it seems like she can't be brought to care when Ichigo demands she take it easy on him. That having been said, she has deep insecurities about not being human, and in private she gives Hiro an out, though naturally he refuses. Also, she's very lonely and seems to have been desperate for someone to love her. Also, though she hates it when other people bring up the fact she's not human, she can be very self-depreciating about it herself.
  • Zero Two turns out to be quite the good artist, and even made a perfect recreation of the images from her picture book.
• Horned Humanoid: Has small, but prominent red horns on her head, probably as a result of being a part-klaxosaur. Her horns were much longer and more prominent when she was younger.
  • The end of episode 14 reveals that her horns have started growing again, and by episode 15 they've grown into full-on antlers.
• Humanizing Tears: Has one of these at the climax of Episode 15 when she tried to push Hiro away and convince herself that she deserves to be called a "monster" for treating him like "fodder" and the brutal beating she inflicted on Squad 13 earlier. Hiro manages to talk her out of it and took their relationship to the next level with a Big Damn Kiss.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: She has klaxosaur blood, and yet is APE's best klaxosaur killer. This is because they've told her that if she kills enough of them she could become human.
• I Am a Monster: As much as she hates people calling her a monster, she calls herself one at times in a self-deprecating tone. This problem escalates in Episode 12, to the point that she wildly shatters every mirror in sight. It only gets worse later on, where she comes to consider herself a monster not for a what she is, but for the horrible things she has done.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: In episode 3, Mitsuru pilots Strelizia with her and starts raving about the Power High it brings him, offering to become her official partner. At this, Zero Two decides she can go all out purely to spite him; Mitsuru comes out of the experience badly injured and traumatized.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: In episode 8, she gets in on the fight between the boys and the girls because she thinks it will make her more like a human. This is because, as a child, she realized that she couldn't be with Hiro since they weren't the same.
• Ingesting Knowledge: Actually ate her picture book when she was a kid. However, it wasn't so she gain any knowledge but so she won't forget Hiro when they were kids.
• Insistent Terminology: For Zero Two, Hiro will always be her "darling". He taught her it in the past.
• Internalized Categorism: She completely loathes herself and other klaxosaur for being a "monster."
• Interspecies Romance: Between her, a klaxosaur-human hybrid, and Hiro, a human. Subverted once Hiro became part Klaxosaur as well.
• Irony:
  • Spends the first half of the series thinking that since she's not human, Squad 13 will never accept her, so she shouldn't even bother trying to be nice to them or show consideration for their lives. She fails to realize that said behavior is exactly what makes her monstrous in their eyes. Hiro and the others eventually call her out on it. After she and Hiro confess their love and she is officially accepted by Squad 13, she admits that she got it all backwards.
  • At the worst point of her Sanity Slippage in Episode 12 she nearly drains Hiro in her pursuit to become human and reunite with her original darling, driven by the belief that he had already rejected her out of fear; not only was Hiro fearing for her rather than her but, as Episode 13 reveals, Hiro is her original darling.
• Lack of Empathy: Zero Two doesn't display any concern for the lives of any pilot besides Hiro, because she thinks of them the same she thinks of herself. That is, they are all meant to live and die fighting klaxosaurs, so in the bigger picture it doesn't matter if they die today or tomorrow. Early into episode 14, it's clear that she really has come to care about the other pilots in Squad 13 and feels guilty for betraying their trust, but stubbornly wills herself to keep displaying no empathy for them and to outwardly insist that she never considered them True Companions, just temporary allies. Thankfully, this facade shatters in the following two episodes.
• Lady in Red: While far from a Proper Lady, in all other ways she fits this trope to a T. She wears primarily red uniforms and pilot suits, she has a very strong personality, her demeanor suggests sexual liberation, and she's seen as both dangerous and alluring by the other (male) characters.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Episode 14 in a nutshell was this for her. Her actions towards Hiro and her squad over her desire to become more human to meet her original "darling" leads to not only the one person who was willing to accept her for her monstrous self rejecting her, but also splitting up the only squad that came to accept her fully as well.
• Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb: APE's created Zero Two to be this. As a clone of the Klaxosaur Princess, they planned to use her to activate Star Entity and wipe out the klaxosaurs.
• Living Emotional Crutch: She becomes one for Hiro. To put it bluntly, Hiro cannot function without her, and he is willing to face the VIRM all by himself after she becomes an Empty Shell in Episode 21.
• Love Confession: Tearfully and happily gives one to Hiro in Strelizia in episode 15, which he reciprocates to the amusement and happiness of Squad 13.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Masculine girl to Hiro's feminine boy. While neither of them have the looks associated with this trope, their interactions are a blatant inversion of gender stereotypes: Zero Two is assertive and confident while Hiro gets easily depressed and is plagued by self-doubt. In a sense, Zero Two was the one that "rescued" Hiro when he needed help.
• Meaningful Name: See Stealth Pun.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Her outlook on life reflects this and why she doesn't bother with a name. They're all meant to fight and die, so why bother when all that will be left is a statistic?
• Missed Him by That Much: In Episode 12, Zero Two reveals that she's searching for her original "darling". But given the fragments of Hiro's memories and various other bits of Foreshadowing, Zero Two is unaware that her first "darling" and her current "darling" are one and the same. She finally becomes aware at the end of the following episode, however.
• Ms. Fanservice: She has a well-built body that she has no problems showing off, whether it be naked or in a Latex Space Suit, and everything she does seems to be part of an attempt to make everyone around her sexually uncomfortable.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Her tear-stained face alone screams this at the end of Episode 13 when she figures out Hiro is her Darling from her childhood. Episode 14 confirms that she's shaken up about all the things she has said and done to him, and even somewhat for betraying the rest of her squad. In episode 15 we see that she's downright afraid to touch him, because she considers herself a monster and doesn't think she deserve forgiveness after what she's done.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Repeatedly invades the personal space of people that catch her interest, getting her face uncomfortably close to theirs and even licking their cheeks for reasons known only by herself, or to get her point across. This might have stemmed from her childhood, when Hiro licked her knee to disinfect a wound.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Zero Two always keeps people at arm's length with mocking humor, nihilism, and emotional detachment. She never shows remorse for this, until after Episode 14. Her actions upon learning who Hiro really was lead to what she believes is a deserved rejection from him. After this, she is so distraught she can't look him in the face, weeping and recoiling when he sees her again.
• Official Couple: In Episode 15, she and Hiro become this.
• One True Love: Much like the Jian bird from Chinese mythology, she and Hiro serve as each other's wings. Going as far back as when they tried to escape APE's facility as children, Hiro was the only boy who admired and loved her for who she is, Warts and All. Their short time together as children made an impact on Zero Two and, as Episode 12 reveals, she spent much of her life looking to reunite with her original "darling", the boy she loved and missed. When she finds out Hiro was her "darling" all along in Episode 13, she becomes distraught over her actions before the two make up for their mistakes in Episode 15. Since then, the two have shown unconditional love for one another and know that their bond can overcome whatever obstacle fate throws at them.
• Oni: Some of her motif are based on the mountain beast. While her horns is obvious, she wears red which is often the standard color of onis. Her behavior is also more beastly at time. There's also been visual hints that she may have a more monstrous form. And lastly, her codename can be read as O-NI. Then in Episode 12, her true form is revealed to have red skin, which is a common characteristic of onis.
• Oral Fixation: She's constantly sucking on lollipops.
• Photographic Memory: In Episode 16, she's able to accurately recreate the illustrations of the picture book from her childhood. Hiro lampshades this by remarking how incredible it is that she could remember all of it.
• Power Limiter: Her headband seems to serve as such to some degree. When Ichigo knocks it off in Episode 5, her eyes and horns start glowing bright red.
• The Power of Love: Just like with Hiro, the adults attempted to wipe her memories after she was recaptured. They weren't entirely successful however, because according to them "something strong was protecting [her]", thus she was able to retain coherent (albeit fragmented) memories of her brief time with Hiro.
• Psycho Pink: She has pink hair and is definitely the most dangerous of the pilots.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Red pupils, to be exact. When Zero Two got angry with Ichigo, she seemed as scared of the red-eyed demonic creature in front of her as she was of the klaxosaurs that almost killed her. Her eyes then glow red again when she flies into a rage after thinking that the rest of Plantation 13 deceived her when she finally gets to visit Hiro.
• Red Is Heroic: Her main color scheme is red and she's an anti-hero.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red Oni to Hiro's Blue. As her Color Motif indicates, she is unruly, passionate and intense. Her "Darling" is collected, soft-spoken and prone to self-loathing when he feels he failed in his only purpose in life.
• Reincarnation: Episode 24 heavily implies that she and Hiro were reincarnated as human children, as it shows a pink-haired girl playing with a boy under a cherry blossom tree.
• Reincarnation Romance: She and Hiro die in the final battle, as they sacrifice themselves to stop the VIRM. Centuries later, their souls return to Earth and become reborn as humans, where they meet each other again as kids. With the strong implication they will restart their romance, it's crystal clear that not even death can separate her from Hiro.
• Rescue Romance: Forms a childish version of this with Hiro when they were younger. This becomes the basis of their actual romance when they recover their memories.
• Rookie Male, Experienced Female: She is an experienced pilot who fought many battles, while Hiro is a complete rookie like all the other pilots in the team.
• Rule of Three: Before Hiro, every pilot who served as her partner could only do so three times before dying.
• Sanity Slippage: As her transformation progresses she becomes more violent and hostile towards others, even Hiro. Her discovery that Hiro is her original darling after the things she said to him, as well as Hiro calling her a monster after she attacked the rest of Squad 13, pushed her even further over the edge. By the time they reunite in Episode 15 (which was ony a few days after they were separated, at most), she's burned through an entire squad of partners and her horns have grown into twisted tree-like shapes.
• Sex for Solace: Her reaction to Hiro's confession in Episode 12 to straddle him and start to undress herself. When he rejects her advances, she gets annoyed. It may have been because it would have been easier to kill him if he just wanted her for her body...
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: She clearly doesn't mind whether she's wearing clothes or not, judging how she doesn't even bat an eye about Hiro seeing her naked and instead picks on him for holding her panties.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: She arguably was this from the beginning, but Episode 18 makes it crystal clear that her past is taking its toll on her. She feels guilty over her past actions and starts having nightmares over the stamens she had consumed.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Once she takes a liking to Hiro, she decides that he and only he can be her partner. No one else will do.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Falls for the kind, heroic Team Dad Hiro who was the first person to treat her kindly.
• Smug Smiler: Flashes these all the time. Especially to Ichigo.
• The Social Darwinist: She casually refers to Hiro's squad as "weaklings" who he should leave behind.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In the manga.
• Spiritual Antithesis: She is what Rei would be like as a Hot-Blooded Action Girl who defies orders and both are clones of an authority of an enemy race with some human blood.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Hiro.
• Stealth Pun: If one was to use the naming conventions of the other characters for Zero Two, her name would translate to "Oni". Given her horns and personality, it would actually be very fitting. In a flashback, Hiro even mentions Oni as a potential name for Zero Two before discarding it.
• Super-Strength: She manages to bat a grown man away with a wave of her arm and jump the length of a room in a single bound.
• Sweet Tooth: Drowns her food in honey, nauseating Miku. And is always eating lollipops.
  • In episode 13, it's revealed that Hiro introduced her to sweets as a child. The Squee she lets out upon first tasting candy is the stuff of legend.
• Synchronization: She becomes linked to Strelizia following Episode 21, and wounds spontaneously form on her body whenever Strelizia takes damage, even though Strelizia is literally millions of miles away.
• Together in Death: With Hiro in the aftermath of Episode 24's final battle.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: By episode 16, not only has she reunited with her Darling, but she also finally understood what "being human" really means. That is, living together with other humans, helping each other while also being true to their feelings. Thanks to this discovery, she becomes much more friendly and cheerful.
• Troll: Clearly gets off on making Hiro, and pretty much everyone around her for that matter, highly uncomfortable for her own pleasure.
• Uptight Loves Wild: With Hiro as the Uptight and Zero Two as the Wild. She seems to have "break every rule set by the adults" as her hobby, while Hiro is quiet and obedient. More creepily, both of them have a cynical outlook on life, but while Zero Two freely talks about how much she hates their society, Hiro tends to blame himself whenever things go wrong, lacking the self-initiative to question the status quo he was born into.
• Using You All Along: When Hiro gives her his Love Confession, she responds that he's nothing but fodder to her, a means of becoming human and eventually reuniting with her real darling. When she later finds out he is her original darling, she is absolutely distraught over the fact that she'd been degrading and manipulating the first person she'd ever loved all along.
• Vampiric Draining: When she pilots, her partner is subjected to this. No one aside from Hiro lasts for more than three times due to the toll it takes on their bodies as a result.
• Vetinari Job Security: Despite her erratic rule-breaking and Black Widow tendencies, the klaxosaur are a great enough threat and she's a great enough pilot that HQ can't afford not to keep her around or send her out in the field as-needed.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Given how quickly Mitsuru was hospitalized after insulting Hiro... well, let's just say that speaking badly about her darling might not be the most inspired of decisions.
• Walking the Earth: What she wants to do with Hiro now that the two remember their past together.
• What Is This Feeling?: Downplayed. When she agrees to use Strelizia to help save Ichigo and Goro in Episode 9, she seems mildly surprised when she admits she doesn't hate this. (Considering her usual cold and aloof demeanor, learning to not dislike helping others is huge for her.)
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Zero Two starts getting a little too obsessed with killing klaxosaurs during a mission in episode 12, Hiro tries to rein her in. However, in the heat of the moment, she ends up choking him, and says things that are heard by the others that heavily imply she was going to kill him like so many of her other copilots in the past. Though the two get some clarifications of their past in episode 13's flashback, the other members of Squad 13 only saw and heard her trying to kill him. Consequently they refuse to let the two see each other, nor will they allow her to take part with her in any further missions lest she kill Hiro like so many other partners in the past.
  • She's also on the recieving end of this and called a "monster" by none other than Hiro later in Episode 14 for beating up the rest of Squad 13 in a fit of rage, thinking they have no intention of letting her see him again. This leads to her My God, What Have I Done? moment and by the time they met again inside Strelitzia in the next episode, she's clearly seen weeping over it and trying to push him away because she kept on insisting herself that she's a disgrace to her "Darling" until Hiro snapped her out of it.
• When She Smiles: After smiling mysteriously or smugly for the first several episodes, during the Episode 8 "Boys vs Girls" fight she smiles and laughs her heart out in sheer delight from all the fun she's having. It charms Hiro greatly. She also smiles at him in episode 13 when he starts recalling his past, which was blocked out as punishment for trying to escape with her back then.
• Wild Child: As a child, Zero Two had a Oni-like appearance, lack of social skills and was unable to speak, even though she understood with what people said to her. She also behaved like a feral animal, such as like growling, biting other people's hands, and trying to eat or swallow strange things like a paper book and a mouse.
• You Are What You Hate: She despises her 'handlers' for treating her like an military asset rather than a person, but she does the same to all pilots except Hiro. Additionally, Episode 12 makes it clear that her hatred for Klaxosaurs stems from the fear of becoming one herself. Her desire to avoid this, however, causes her to act more monstrous.

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