The project was officially announced on July 5, 2017 during a promotional spot broadcast during the airing of the first episode of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, presenting it as a joint original production by TRIGGER and A-1 Pictures.

Darling in the Franxx represents the first mecha anime produced by TRIGGER studio.

The creative staff includes several members who had already worked on Neon Genesis Evangelion, Top wo Nerae 2! and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, including director Atsushi Nishigori.

The series animation was produced in collaboration by TRIGGER (episodes 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14) and CloverWorks (the other episodes), an unusual division of work between two studios for the same series.

Canadian writer of Chinese origin Xiran Jay Zhao, author of the bestseller Iron Widow, stated that she was inspired by the two-person piloting system (man and woman) of Darling in the Franxx for her own novel, explicitly thanking the creators of the series in the book's acknowledgments; she also claimed to have conceived Iron Widow as a reaction to her dissatisfaction with the plot development in the second half of the series.

The ending themes, with the exception of the song sung by Zero Two, are performed by the group XX:me (pronounced as 'Kiss me'), formed by the voice actresses of the main female characters: Haruka Tomatsu, Kana Ichinose, Nanami Yamashita, Saori Hayami, and Shizuka Ishigami.

The opening theme Kiss of Death, sung by Mika Nakashima with the participation of Hyde, won the award for best opening theme at the 2019 Crunchyroll Anime Awards.

Despite receiving negative criticism from some websites (such as Anime News Network and The Gamer, which ranked it among the worst anime of 2018) mainly due to the controversial ending, the series retained a large fan base also thanks to the manga, maintaining a very high average rating of 4.8 out of 5.0 on Crunchyroll.

In the first half of 2018, Darling in the Franxx was one of the most searched terms on the Japanese search engine Yahoo!.