Franken Fran

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Review in Haiku: Franken Fran

Horror-Comedy
about artificial girl
who is a surgeon.

STORY:

Episodic tale
with occasional reference
... to prior chapters.

Overarching "plot"
about "Franken Fran"'s father
sometimes, it shows up.

Individual
stories are usually OK
Seven out of ten.

ART:

It's horror manga
So prepare for lots of gore
And gross visuals.

Art quality's good
Slightly better than average
But nothing too stellar.

Still, this manga's gorn
Is super engrossing, so
Eight points out of ten.

CHARACTER:

Fran Madaraki
Is adorable and weird
Doesn't quite get things.

She MUST save a life
Regardless of end results
Fates are worse than death.

Her sisters show up
I won't spoil them for you
Eight points out of ten.

ENJOYMENT:

I lack any doubts
On the enjoyment of this
Crazy horror tale.

Like watching train wreck;
What's going to go wrong next?
Cannot look away.

Left with some nightmares.
One of the best ones around.
Ten points out of ten.

OVERALL:

If you like gore
Karmic deaths and surgery
You'll love Franken Fran.

Ok so this is my first review, so bear with improper format or an un-standard review i guess. This is one of the most unique things I have ever read; Franken Fran in short is a twisted, deranged, genius, conceptual, moral questioning work of art.

This manga is currently my favourite manga, but first off before I say the good and why you should read it, here is why you might not want to read it:
It is filled to the brim with an extreme level of gore and horror, and is not for the weak of stomach or mind, and If you are one of ... these don't bother reading it.
_____________________________________________________________

If you are still reading this, your probably are not weak of mind or stomach or at least want to test your luck. So now I will say why I liked this manga so much:

The Characters: All the characters were very creative, but most importantly was the main character, who I thought was very well designed in both appearance and in their personality and actions. They mean well and only do what other people want and believe will help them, but the twist is, that those people clearly didn't think through well enough and so most of the conflict results not from Fran's failures, but from her patients.

Art: Pretty decent in general, characters are very well drawn, but the best drawn stuff is the gore, and detail and level of accuracy on peoples limbs, organs and internal anatomy.

Story: I put this last because it doesn't really have a plot in particular that goes throughout the entire thing, I'm not sure If this is the correct term seeing as this is a manga, but it has an episodic plot, that is different every chapter.

Overall the reasons behind my liking this manga so much are this; It was really interesting conceptually and it questions science and morality, in many different lights and offers tons of legitimate solutions and shows the reason why they fail or succeed. The most interesting thing about this manga is how all the problems that are fixed amazingly are all unethical or immoral, but leave people happy in general, and all the failed experiments are from negligence in the patient not thinking things through, or In the patient and then Fran, taking on an experiment on something not quantitative, but qualitative. (You will know what I'm talking about if you read it)

All in all; 10 out of 10. And It was very interesting.

Sorry for the massive review lol, I kinda started ranting...

Franken Fran is an episodic body horror manga with a soft hint of comedy put into the mix.

The story revolves around a frankenstein-like girl named Fran and her encounters with various people who often seek her advanced medical knowledge in order to solve a particular problem they face. Almost all chapters are self-contained individual stories with new casts of characters, with Fran and company being the only thing that ties it all together. However, I do recommend reading Fran in chronological order because a lot of stories get referenced in later chapters. The stories by themselves arent that scary in a graphic sense but ... they are pretty scary and very interesting in terms of ideas of what sorts of things could be done to the human body. The only big problem I had with this one was that the pace of every chapter sped up like crazy on the last third or fourth pages of a lot of chapters which kind of messed with my immersion in the story. However, most of them end on a unique bitter-sweet note that felt unpredictable and left me craving for more.



As for the main cast, I definitely felt like they weren't fully fleshed out.
Fran Madaraki(the MC) was, in my opinion, the vocal point of this manga. She is a master surgeon with a very nuanced philosophy and charm that captivates the reader. She is like a clever subversion of the mad-scientist archetype that's believable and works exceptionally well.

The only thing she lacked was character development and progression. You could argue that this was because she was from the start an accomplished individual and that's fair. But still, much of her character and her relationships with other charecters were unexplored. The same could be said for the rest of the cast excluding Frans little sister Veronica who developed quite a bit.

The art was pretty decent, with great detail put into the body horror big page layouts. The character designs were very unique and the monsters that were introduced always felt fresh.
The one thing I found very misleading about Franken Fran( and I think most fans will agree with me on this one) were the volume covers of the manga. All of the eight volumes feature a very sexualized depiction of one or more of the main characters. Which would be fine if this was an ecchi series, but its definitely not. None of the characters are depicted in a sexual way in the manga and nudity is only shown when it is accompanied by body horror. Although, I must say that the cover art definitely differs from the style of the manga so it's possible the covers were done by another guy who just happens to have a thing for Frankenstein girls, who knows.

Overall I think this is a nice read, and I am giving it a 6 out of 10.
I would've given it a 7 or maybe even an 8 if the story actually concluded. But after 70 chapters the story just kind of stops without ending. Hopefully the sequel Franken Fran frantic won't meet the same fate.


Thanks for reading, peace out :)