Episode 7 is the Beach Episode of Darling in the Franxx. As a reward for their good job in the previous episode, the 13th squad is allowed to go to a safe little beach cove for a couple of days. Normal beach episode type things ensue... at first.

But you have to remember, these kids are orphans raised from an early age to pilot the robots, and if it weren't for the Protagonist, they wouldn't even have names. So there are a number of things about their mentalities that are just wrong. And Zero Two's addition to the crew has brought along with it some ideas that they are just not equipped to deal with, like what a kiss really is, or love. Now the Jealous schoolkid reaction you see in many shows towards the guy who is getting some female attention thing rears its ugly head, but the result is decidedly off-kilter.

About halfway through the episode though, the crew discovers a fissure in the cliffside, which leads to a path to an abandoned town. These kids were never taught anything not needed for their mission. Like history. They never knew that people used to live on the surface, instead of the mobile plantations. One girl wanders into the remains of a clinic and finds a book for first-time expectant mothers. Expect that to cause issues in the future.

When they get back, there's a barbecue buffet set up for them, and they dig in. Although at least one of them wonders about how it appeared, since they're alone on the beach.

But afterwards, how badly they've been mind-fucked is put on display, as one of them declares the plantations to be superior to living on the surface, how he's proud of his function to defend the cities, and his hopes to join the ranks of the adults in the future, and the others respond enthusiastically. This in the middle of a discussion about why humanity left the surface, as Zero Two mentioned. "But the world is full of Klaxosaurs!" (The monsters they fight). Our hero speculates that mining magma energy might have brought them, but that is shot down as going against the revered Dr. Franxx, who moved everyone TO plantations to make them safe from the Klaxosaurs. The order of events, as far as they know it, is inverted. I actually found the scene rather chilling.

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