Franken Fran



""Franken Fran: Mary Shelley wishes she's written something this scary.""

- Y, Ruler of Time, That Guy With the Glasses manga reviewer

There is a Gothic-style mansion in a distant, rarely-visited part of Japan. There, the world's greatest surgeon, Naomitsu Madaraki, once lived. But he hasn't come home in ages.

Instead, the professor's "daughter", Fran Madaraki, lives there with a large amount of her own ghoulish creations and her "younger sister" Veronica. She's a very unusual girl, what with the stitch patterns on her face and the giant bolts on either side of her head. Just as skilled at surgery as her father, and if you're willing to pay her price, she can do everything up to and including raising the dead.

Fran believes that a life should be saved no matter the cost, and keep that in mind, since the results of her surgeries are rarely (if ever) pretty.

Franken Fran is a horror-comedy manga by Kigitsu Katsuhisa that sets new stakes in the Body Horror category. Recently a Radio Drama adaptation was released as well.

Just a word of warning, practically all links here are NSFW. They are also not for the faint of heart.

Not to be confused with the wife of the junior Senator from Minnesota.

A

 * Acquired Situational Narcissism: The robotics developer in chapter 35 falls victim to this after the Robot Girl modeled after his late wife with her brain patterns uploaded (with help from Fran) into it becomes wildly popular and the fame and fortune (and women) go to his head. He eventually grows weary of his creations and tries to enter the dating pool again -- while surrounded by a bunch of the robots whose primary character trait is single-minded devotion to him.
 * And then he gets the same treatment his wife had at the request of the original brain uploaded robot, so he could be with her forever. He also gets to be exploited by his company to become the male model of the robot, for some added Ironic Hell.
 * Action Girl: Despite the series not really revolving on action/adventure, Veronica is sort of this depending of the situation. Chapter 46 for instance shows her doing spy stuff to steal an anti-fat medicine for Fran from a company that refused to let Fran use it to help a morbidly obese girl.
 * Gavrill counts, too.
 * Adaptation Decay: Invoked for Vol.4 Extra chapter, the story of the loyal dog in Ch.27 was adopted into a movie In Name Only. Veronica's reaction is what one would expect: "What the hell is this crap!" *Spit Take followed by throwing chair against the silver screen*
 * Fran seems to understand that the true story as it actually happened wouldn't make for a good movie judging by her reactions to Veronica's disliking to the changes the movie has over what really happened.
 * To quote Fran: "Well, it is a movie, so they were bound to change a few things."
 * Adorkable: Okita, in his cat form.
 * Alliterative Name: the people in Chapter 30 all have alliterative names, from A.A. to E.E., mocking the convention of murder mystery, spoofed in this chapter, that usually names suspects as A, B, etc. Of course, our beloved lady doctor is called Franken Fran (even if that's not her actual name)....
 * Ami Koshimizu: Fran on the CD drama.
 * Amusement Park of Doom: One chapter has a Disney-like amusement park with mascots . All well and good... until they start running amok and actually killing off the patrons.  . That not the real kicker though. After that whole ordeal is solved the manager actually re-opens the park again
 * Anachronic Order: The creator makes it clear that certain later chapters occur before earlier chapters. It's easy to tell which ones come first because Veronica is absent from them, such as Chapter 29. Chapter 29 occurred over several years, so Veronica was there by the end.
 * In a more meta example, the scanlations of the chapters are coming in this order, too.
 * And I Must Scream: The fate of the Complete Monster villain of chapter 15,.
 * A lot of Fran's patients wind up in this boat, temporarily or permanently, whether they deserve it or not.
 * Chapter 47:
 * And the Adventure Continues: In Ch 61,
 * Anti-Villain: the evil organization in Justice 2 actually
 * Anyone Can Die : No matter the species, no matter the gender, no matter the age (even kids and unborn babies), ANYONE can die, and suffer fates even worse than that if they don't, anyway.
 * Appendage Assimilation
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Veronica goes to school, she gets several papers taped to her back, like "DIE!" "I'm a dirty whore." "I'll do anyone as long as it's male. Even a dog!" and "Kick me."
 * Art Evolution: As can be seen here.
 * Artificial Human: Most of the recurring cast appear to be this.
 * Art Major Biology: The situations usually have a root in real science, then go for broke.
 * Asshole Victim: There are really many of them.
 * The Atoner:
 * Attempted Rape: By one of Fran's customers.
 * Author Tract: Chapter 5. People worship gods of all kinds, be it physical objects/people or spiritual beings. If there is no God, people will make one of their own.
 * Awesome but Impractical: The maggot/chrysalis birth method of Chapter 29. In theory it's really impressive and removes all of the hassle that comes with normal pregnancy. In practice... well, one of the advantages of pregnancy is that it protects the developing fetus. So unless you have access to an airtight and relatively secure environment (you know, like a womb) you would have to put in just as much, if not more effort into keeping the fetus safe than if you just went through pregnancy normally.
 * This being Franken Fran, the chapter illustrates what happens when parents don't put in this kind of effort. Babies carried normally don't have to worry about . One of the squickier chapters, which is saying something.
 * It's more on the lines of "Horrifyingly Wrong and Dangerous But Practical", really.
 * The entire Manga more or less seems to be this, as whenever anyone asks Fran for surgery, it usually ends up going horribly wrong due to the unforeseen side effects. Fran seems to be fully aware of these side effects (unless it's an experimental procedure) but the patients more or less don't care.

B
""...one of the victims happened to be the grandson of an influential politician, so I've been asked to determine the exact cause of the deaths that occur here. But let's not worry too much about the whole DYING thing. We should think of this as a vacation and have a good time!""
 * Back for The Finale: Basically every secondary or one-chapter-only character makes an appearance in Fran's dream in the last chapter.
 * Back From the Dead: On the twelfth page of the very first chapter, Fran explains that while reanimating dead bodies may be doable, properly resurrecting a person's mind with their personality and memories intact is an incredible challenge, virtually impossible. She proceeds to spend the entirety of the series easily reviving dead brains (and completely screwing up people's bodies.)
 * Badass Teacher:
 * Bandage Babe: Adorea appears to be a beautiful woman wrapped from head to toe in bandages and zippers, who acts as a living storehouse for organs and tissue for Fran. It's implied her actual form is something more like an Eldritch Abomination. One of the ways she can "store" bodyparts for Fran is by devouring patients whom Fran expects to die- though she must do so before they actually die, else the parts will spoil...
 * Beach Episode: Chapter 41... sort of.

"Gavrill (to a gonky boy): "You wanna be popular with the girls? Get plastic surgery and transfer to another school. Also, practice talking to people a lot. And if you need to, lie to women or buy them off with money.""
 * Beast Woman: Gavrill. Her body can distort into a giant wolf-like creature with double-rows of teeth.
 * Be Careful What You Wish For: Fran's patients.
 * Berserk Button: Inverted. Fran is usually pretty happy to do operations, but when you want do it to impress someone you like, she starts breaking into Tender Tears. It seems like she's really into The Power of Love...
 * In the chapter "Killing Impulse",
 * Beware the Nice Ones: Irritated that Veronica keeps killing people (even if they are attacking the lab), Fran sends her to a girls' boarding school to learn to be sociable. Veronica is viciously bullied, but one timid girl tries to be friendly to her.
 * Fran subtly shows that she's not one to be messed with either. When she realised that someone was attempting to steal information from her and Dr. Amatsuka, she turned the spies into dog-human hybrids, along with their master. She also subtly threatened a senator after helping him evade a vengeful Gavrill, hinting that whatever Gavrill did is tiny compared to what she can do to him.
 * More blatantly, in an extra chapter, after being conned into doing a Gorn movie that portrays both her and Professor Madaraki in an extremely negative light, she modifies another victim of their con into a horrific monster that kills them. It's very much implied that she knew that this would happen if she went through with the modifications, but is able to rationalize it as not against her code of ethics because she was just modifying the girl; whether she decided to kill the porn-studio con artists or not was her own decision that had nothing to do with Fran.
 * Big Bad Friend: In the story
 * Big Creepy Crawlies: Insects are often used as an easy source of Nausea Fuel and Nightmare Fuel. Insect-human hybrids, insects with a malevolent Hive Mind, people made of bugs, human fetuses that go through giant maggot/chrysalis phases instead of normal pregnancy, ...it's a long list. The artist is a little too good at drawing bugs.
 * Big Ham: The Sentinels sometimes gets like this.
 * Blade Below the Shoulder: Veronica's arsenal of hidden weapons.
 * Blessed With Suck: At the end of Chapter 10 Fran crafts a new layer of skin for Kouryuu that's much younger-looking than her previous one..
 * Blue and Orange Morality: Fran has a set of guidelines and rules regarding her behavior, but they are nothing like normal people's. Internet Backdraft has resulted on this very page from attempting to classify her Character Alignment. She strongly opposes murder, but won't mind if she gets to steal your organs, or if you live in a Fate Worse Than Death.
 * Put simply - Comparing Fran's sense of Medical Ethics with that of the greater medical community is like comparing apples to bricks. Bricks that won't kill you, but don't particularly care if you spend the rest of your life in unimaginable torment.
 * As seen in "Cosmetic Surgery," Fran will advocate normal, family-friendly solutions for problems before turning you into an Eldritch Abomination.
 * A quick summary, for clarity's sake: If it's elective or minor, she will recommend the normal way with hospitals and all, unless you absolutely insist. If it's an extreme case (and especially if your life is tight-roping on the edge of a knife), she'll get straight to it; there will absolutely be For Science! mixed in, and "alive but in deep and incurable psychological torment" is always preferable to "dead" in Fran's book.
 * She also has absolutely no qualms about selling any biological "specimens" to the highest bidder, much to the chagrin of those around her. She's also apparently unaware that the same specimens are used to attack her home.
 * Body Double: The mobster in Chapter 9 makes use of this. This results in some...complications.
 * Body Horror: Essentially the entire premise.
 * Surprisingly averted in some chapters, like chapter 45.
 * Born Lucky: Fran's explanation for the condemned man's Healing Factor in Chapter 28 - he's simply impossibly lucky, and his indestructibility is a result.
 * Actually,
 * Boring but Practical / Brutal Honesty / Family-Unfriendly Aesop / "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gavrill becomes the defacto advice counselor while subbing at Fran and Victoria's school because she doesn't sugar-coat things for the students. Aside from telling her students to engage in illegal activities her advice is actually good:


 * Bring My Brown Pants: In one of the bonus chapters shows the reporter who got infected in the zombie virus in containment. It is noted that the disease makes her constantly hungry and she keeps crapping herself as fast as she can eat.
 * Brother-Sister Incest:

C
"Adorea: "Veronica, are you crying?"
 * Cain and Abel
 * Catch Phrase: "Begin the operation!"
 * Chainsaw Good: In chapter 28, after hanging and lethal injection failed to kill a Complete Monster death row inmate, and Fran is denied the chance to study him, the prison officials give up on finding a humane way to execute him and violently dismember him instead. With chainsaws, as per the trope.
 * Chekhov's Gun: The bomb Fran implanted in Veronica.
 * Cheshire Cat Grin: Okita, fittingly enough.
 * Chew Toy: Poor, poor Officer Kuhou. Throughout the course of the series, she's been wrapped up in a case of more-than-possible severed body parts,, and that's just what we've seen so far; note that the majority of situations involving her are Played for Laughs. No wonder seeing Fran makes the woman seriously trip her shit.
 * In addition to that list,.
 * It's become even worse now:
 * Cloning Blues: In one chapter, Fran clones a girl using a method resembling cell division. However, she slightly botches it - the girl starts to endlessly duplicate. Later on the same thing happens to a police officer on the case of a serial killer She has post-traumatic stress flashbacks whenever she runs into Fran. They're played for comedy. Probably a dream sequence. Probably.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Fran, Fran, Fran. The worst part is that It Makes Sense in Context; Fran is an Artificial Human with the brain of a really chipper five year old, and her decisions and ethics are sound... for what she knows. Fran has been programmed to never, ever take a life, no matter what, and lacks the maturity to really think past that singular thought. This results in monstrously poor judgment on her part. She's a child with the power to mutate someone else for fun and profit, and no one can stop her. Scared yet?
 * Cluster F-Bomb: Gavrill ("I can smell your rotting cunt Fran!!")
 * Contemplate Our Navels: Fran is prone to meditating on the nature of humanity, ethics and everything in between - after she's done the morally questionable and potentially unsafe operation, of course.
 * Covers Always Lie: Humorously - and somewhat cruelly - played on with the tankobon covers, which are loaded with Fan Service and Les Yay.
 * Often a horrific version of the same picture is on the next page.
 * Perhaps the most awesome example is the cover of Volume 3, which features a sexy picture of Adorea, complete with cute face -- despite the fact that her actual face is a mass of tentacles designed for swallowing people whole. The aforementioned horrific version reveals that the "cute face" was just a biological mask.
 * Contemptible Cover: As mentioned above, the covers make the books look like they're very weird medical fetish manga.
 * Creepy Cockroach: They have built a human-like society within Fran's mansion.
 * Crossover Cosmology: Both Jesus and
 * Cruel Mercy: Veronica spares the leader of the boarding school kidnappers Although...

Veronica: "No...!""


 * Cruel Twist Ending: Quite a few of the chapters.
 * Cult:  Depending on the viewer, this could also be considered Crowning Moment of Funny.
 * Cute Monster Girl: Fran, to a certain definition of "cute"- she becomes remarkably less cute when performing surgeries and holding people's parts while those people scream in their heads about how they don't want her to do this to them.
 * Adorea's gentle demeanor can very easily endear her to some people. Even with the whole tentacles-for-a-face thing.
 * Veronica qualifies as well, considering she has an adorable appearance despite being a patchwork girl with an assassin nature.
 * In Chapter 55,

D - E

 * Dark Is Not Evil: Depending on how you interpret her character, Fran is either an example or a subversion -- she looks like a stereotypical horror monster (if a bit cuter), yet comes off as reasonable and nice at first glance. Then she starts dragging people off to her lab to use them as human experiments For Science!...
 * Her various creations play this straight, however.
 * Dark-Skinned Blond: The two tribes in "Amazon".
 * Dead Little Sister: "Octopus".
 * Death By Sex:.
 * Downer Ending: A regular occurrence; the rare positive endings are actually surprises.
 * probably comes the closest to averting this trope entirely. All Nightmare Fuel and Body Horror is kept to a minimum, and the character of the day.
 * Also
 * Dude, She's Like, in A Coma: Apparently, everyone working on the movie in Chapter 20 came to this conclusion. The critical difference in this case was that  Leading inexorably to the squicky twist ending...
 * Dying Dream: Chapter 48
 * Easy Sex Change: In one chapter Fran gives anyone and everyone in a school plastic surgery, from the mundane (epicanthoplasty) to the still mundane but getting goofy (giant breasts, a guy who's remade to look like an action hero star) to the completely ridiculous (human bobble head, demon horns). Ranging in the middle of the spectrum is.
 * Eldritch Abomination:  that Fran helped create in chapter 26.
 * Also once the painter can see all strands of the Electromagnetic spectrum he sees eldritch abominations and other horrible horrible things.
 * Pretty much half the things that Fran makes fit this. The other half is Body Horror.
 * Even Evil Has Standards: The people of unusual tastes manage to out-creep Fran, though the argument could be, as a doctor, she has issues with people who obsessively cause themselves pain.
 * Veronica has a moment where she is wondering why Fran is forcing people to live. However due to Blue and Orange Morality this is more of a case of Blue having heard of Quality of Life.
 * Everything's Squishier With Cephalopods: Chpt. 53, "Octopus"
 * Evil Old Folks: Chapter 50 is about a woman who has lived to an extreme old age all the while leeching off their family and making them miserable
 * Expy: Fran is basically a female version of Black Jack on crack.
 * There's also a movie director who resembles Ron Jeremy.
 * Let's not forget Mr "Steabe Jocks" from chapter 46.
 * The rich guy from chapter 57 is Ernst Blofeld in all but name and personality.
 * He also sounds a lot like Kinzo, with the way he earned money and that island.
 * Two of the mascots from the theme park cha
 * Eyes Do Not Belong There: shouldn't have that many eyes in one socket.
 * Eye Scream: See Visual Pun below.
 * Face Full of Alien Wingwong: Technically, since
 * Face Full of Alien Wingwong: Technically, since

F

 * Fan Disservice: There's a surprising amount of nudity... and every time it shows up it stops being erotic about three panels later. There's also the scenes with Fran acting in horror movies...
 * One of the horrifying and disgusting examples is in Chapter 19, Lust, when Fran helps the girls deal with their boy problems by getting rid of the boys' sexual lust. What the boys think is a pile of hot, young women ready to do the down and dirty is actually.
 * Fantastic Aesop: Practically every issue Fran observes a flaw of human nature and takes some bit of wisdom from it that the reader can share in. Things like, "Don't get so addicted to being revived from death by a maestro surgeon that you keep killing yourself over and over." Or "don't turn yourself into an anime character for love, or your skin will molt off and your lover will crush you to death trying to escape the alien you appear to be." Or maybe, "Inner beauty may shine through a layer of bandages, but those bandages are there to cover something horrifying"
 * Fantastic Arousal: In the Vengeance chapter, it turns out that the newest Sentinel . When it looks like the other Sentinels are getting ready to quit because they can't deal with him, he
 * Fate Worse Than Death: If the villain of the chapter doesn't end up outright killed, they'll usually end up with one of these -- either courtesy of Fran's dedication to saving life no matter what, or her questionable medical ethics.
 * Just villains? Almost EVERYONE who ever went through Fran's surgery will suffer this, one way or another (only a few don't, lucky them). And if they don't, someone else related have to face either death, or a fate worse than death itself.
 * The Fettered: When Gavrill is forced to becomes a high-school substitute her doctor/protector's only request is that she does not kill the students. She doesn't, but she does beat the shit out of them during a brawl with another school.
 * In "Best Friend", Gavrill finds out what happened to Veronica's friend but will only tell her if she becomes her slave. Veronica agrees, but Gavrill orders her to not harm the perpetrators.
 * Fingore: This close-up of Veronica's hand shows tiny weapons embedded under her nails.
 * Fire-Forged Friends: The Sentinels after defeating the Sentinel 100 Corps.
 * Flesh Golem: Many various flavors of the trope appear in the manga, but a classic example is the golem Fran hastily made from the bodies of dead Mooks to fight Gavrill. It didn't last two seconds against her.
 * Forehead of Doom: Fran's forehead, in traditional Frankenstein's Monster style.
 * For Science!: Basically Fran's reason for existence, and most of her MO for experiments and research.
 * Frankenstein's Monster: Fran herself is built on that template.
 * She also gives a stitched-up body to the cursed remains of.
 * Fun Size: What happens to Veronica after she's rescued by Fran after "fighting" Gavrill. The rest of the body... well... Gavrill's a "humanitarian"...

G

 * Gainax Ending: Neither the last chapter or the ending itself have any build-up or lead-in, and its kinda hard to tell what actually happened in the end.
 * One interpretation is that
 * Generic Cuteness: In the plastic surgery episode, a girl wants "big eyes" (read: she wants an epicanthoplasty). It's near impossible to tell the difference in the before and after, and even the author admits the character designs gave the story some problems. Though, we only get one "before" shot of her - one eye seems to be squinting while she holds the other one open wider. It's possible the "squinting" look is natural, and what she wants to have altered.
 * It also caused problems in Ch 37, where an actress wants to look like an anime character. The difference, especially with the eyes, is small.
 * Gift of the Magi Plot: A bit of a... variation, all right. A girlfriend to a boy had a traumatic experience with men and now has a psychological aversion to them. His response is to get Fran to change his gender by swapping his genitals for a woman's. The girlfriend has Fran do the opposite to her.
 * And then they cheat on each other... Well, assuming the omake pages are canon, at least.
 * Glasgow Grin: Apparently, Fran's jaw didn't come with the rest of her head.
 * Gone Horribly Right: Boy, howdy. A painter asks for working eyes - . Girls complain about the boys being too horny -, and it's passed as comedy. A woman wants to be eternally young - well, just look at And I Must Scream above.
 * Her creator also does this - can you say ?
 * Gorn: Lots and LOTS of it. In fact, in one episode Fran is (unknowingly) taking part in a Torture Porn movie. Then she realizes what it was and... well, the director's career ends.
 * The Grays: The girl from chapter 37 certainly looks like one now.
 * Groin Attack: Oh fuck, chapter 31, right when the Man Tribe vs Female Tribe begins. There's this slightly shadowed, but obvious pic of one of the female amazons cutting one of the male's genitals off. This is payback, because in the exact same page, there's a pic of some of the male tribe members raping the amazons(including the dead ones). So yeah, they were asking for it.
 * Grotesque Cute: The humans in this story can be quite adorable, as long as they stay human.

H

 * Half the Man He Used To Be: Agito in Ch 18, who gets better thanks to his Healing Factor, and Fran herself in Ch 60, with a bit more complicated solution.
 * Harmful Healing: Franken Fran will save your life, whether you want her to or not.
 * He Who Must Not Be Seen: Naomitsu Madaraki. At most, he is only shown as a shadow, and he never speaks.
 * Not in the present, but he does have a conversation with Akamatsu on-panel in a flashback to WWII.
 * He also appears in the Adorea flashback, with only his eyes hidden in the shadow of his hat.
 * Healing Factor: The Complete Monster in Chapter 28. He survives and completely recovers from hanging and lethal injection on his own. He later recovers from . In the end, the Healing Factor.
 * His healing factor has an unusual justification, not unlike the tunnel effect.
 * In Chapter 51, the fourth Sentinel is given this instead of the usual superpowers
 * Heel Face Turn:
 * Veronica is arguably an example. For the start, in her debut chapter she is portrayed in a more antagonistic way to the point she even stated that she wanted to kill Fran, probably due of jealousy as Fran was having a less sufferable life than hers. But in the following chapters she starts to gradually develop concern and care for Fran, as well as revealing to be not exactly a bad person despite her violent tendencies and beliefs.
 * Heroic BSOD: In Chapter 20 Fran has a bit of one when she is unable to save the Actress life and her last words were about the movie. Fran's Response? Make a giant puppet out of her skin to finish the movie.
 * Heroic Sacrifice There is a form of this in Chapter 43.
 * Hey It's That Guy: In the special chapters "Movie Star" and "Bloody Veronica" the small mini-sodes that follow both feature recurring characters, a man in a trench coat with the misfortune to see bloody spirits, and a girl with an eyepatch wielding giant scissors
 * Hollywood Exorcism: Chapter 52 has a cardinal being possessed by a demon and the Vatican exorcist troops doing everything they can for him.
 * Homage: "Her Pet Dog" is a homage to the story of Hachiko.
 * The Sentinel chapters are an obvious homage/parody of the Showa Kamen Rider series, with the four Sentinels corresponding to v1, v2, v3, and Riderman.
 * How Many Fingers: Fran did it in the "Attempted Suicide" chapter.
 * Humanoid Abomination: Many of Fran's (and her creator's) experiments end up creating nightmarish things who can only be considered human in the loosest sense of the word, Adorea being the most prominent.
 * Gavrill "The Wolf" has a "transforming" body/skeleton that distorts her into a gigantic, nigh-invulnerable wolf-like creature.

I - K

 * I Ate What?: See I'm A Humanitarian below.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: In chapter 6, a group of party guests unknowingly, well...
 * And cue the synchronized vomiting!
 * Gavrill's favorite snacks are her victims.
 * Infant Immortality: Aversion complete!
 * And they're not afraid of averting it twice!
 * Make that three : From that same chapter, there's also that kid who turned into a monster and was killed by the remaining survivors.
 * Played straight in "Amazon".
 * But averted again in chapter 55 !
 * Two other examples in the extra chapter from volume 2 and chapter 32. Damn, does the author hate kids or something ?
 * Intrepid Reporter: Ijuuin, the reporter girl who appears in the chapters "Piety", "Rolling World" and "Living Dead".
 * Keeping Secrets Sucks / Sadistic Choice: Once again Veronica makes a friend and once again something horrible happens to them. Gavrill uses her super-senses to find out the truth but will only tell Vernonica if she'll be her slave. Veronica agrees but Gavrill's order is to not harm her friend's rapists/murderers..
 * Knight Templar: Veronica. She was built to defend her target by killing any threat. The problem, as later chapters are making clear, is that her definition of "threat" is rather lower than it should be. Chapter 25 opens with her killing people for coming near Fran's mansion, and she's pulled her weapons for people just teasing Fran.
 * All the Sentinels qualify as well. The first one to be introduced killed a guy who recently had left the prison because he didn't think that two years sentenced in prison was enough for him.

L
"Matsumae: "I have all sorts of women in my life here. Monster girls, alien girls, grim reaper girls, devil girls, angel girls, android girls, ninja girls, samurai girls, human-weapon girls, princesses who're hiding their identities, girls who hold the key to unlocking world's secrets, and so on and so on...""
 * Lady Land: The island in "Amazon", which has a corresponding Man Land.
 * Laser-Guided Karma: Usually happens to either the person Fran operates on or whoever that person is closest to. Also has a strong chance of not helping at all, and just having a regular old Downer Ending when people die without deserving it.
 * For an ideal example, the villain from Chapter 15 tries to have Fran killed (unsuccessfully) and has her anti-aging treatment stolen (successfully) the moment she has it working.
 * Latex Perfection: Ssssssort of. Fran uses this in order to fulfill her patient's dying wish to finish her recent acting job....
 * Leaving Audience: What happens during Fran's lecture on her new childbirth method in chapter 29. It's a rare woobie moment for Fran as the fleeing of the other doctors brings her to tears.
 * Les Yay: Invoked Trope. Nothing solid in-universe so far, but not only do the Contemptible Covers depict more...uh..."friendly" interactions between major female characters, but Veronica has a couple times gotten highly contemplative when the idea of "girls loving each other" or "girl on girl" was brought up.
 * Plus, Fran at one point gives Veronica a hickey. Just to make a point. You know.
 * Aaaand then there's Fran-M and L reuniting...
 * The penultimate chapter results in a brainless but alive clone of Fran. For some reason, Veronica likes spending a lot of time alone in her room with her...
 * Lethal Klutz: Fran is a rare non-comedic example.
 * Little Miss Badass: Veronica.
 * Locked Room Mystery: Invoked by Okita in Chapter 30. This being Franken Fran, the solution is squickier than mere murder..
 * The Long List: Matsumae explaining what kind of characters has been made out of the clones in "Panoramic Island 1".


 * Losing Your Head: Seems to be a frequent occurrence among Fran's patients. Even Fran herself swaps bodies sometimes.
 * Lotus Eater Machine: The girls were complaining that all the boys were all obsessed with sex,.
 * Love Freak: Fran.
 * Love Hotels: One shows up at the end of Chapter 2.
 * Love Redeems: The outcome of chapter 18,

M

 * Mad Scientist: Fran and Naomitsu Madaraki.
 * Fran is actually ignorant of this fact, amusingly. When she was told that she basically was this in Chapter 11, she became saddened and confused... then she talked to her friend Okita about the matter, while ripping out a person's intestine.
 * I'm not sure that's a person's intestine...
 * Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Averted. Fran, for all her smiley Genki Girl nature, is probably more dangerous than her father is, especially when she tries to "help" and ends up turning you into a grotesque mockery of life.
 * Mandatory Twist Ending: Skillfully averted. That is, we do get a guaranteed twist at the end but sometimes the twist is a straight happy ending when we all expect something horrible. Thus, we can never be sure how it ends until the last panel.
 * This is noticable in Chapter 2, where one page turned what would have been a happy Aesop about loving someone deep down into a biological booboo joke.
 * Meido: Matsumae's island fantasy contains a whole team of these.
 * Minori Chihara: Veronica on the CD Drama.
 * Mind Screw: In Justice 2, an evil organization plans to destroy the world! By, um...  Um... yes.
 * Mister Seahorse: Well, sort of.
 * Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: Is Fran even qualified?!
 * Mother of a Thousand Young:
 * Multi Armed Multitasking: Fran frequently acquires at least one pair of extra arms when she's doing surgery, the numbers fluctuate between 4 and 8.
 * Mukokuseki: Deconstructed. Shows to what lengths idols will go to get that anime look... and what lengths it would actually take (like removing the entire lower jaw and bathing in silicone). It wasn't enough for just a simple epicanthoplasty. This is why it's important for art majors to take anatomy. Basically, it invokes an Uncanny Valley.
 * Munchausen Syndrome: Fran has the five patients in "People of Unusual Tastes" that each kill themselves so that they can be treated and revived by Fran. They manage to even freak out Fran herself.
 * Muscles Are Meaningless: In chapter 38, the boy's first request for Fran was to have bigger muscles so he wouldn't be as easy to bully... but she didn't make him any stronger, just bulkier.
 * Murder Is the Best Solution: Veronica was built with this in mind.

N

 * Naughty Tentacles - briefly in chapter 38. When your body reshapes on your whims, you should really keep dirty thoughts under control.
 * What exactly was Adorea trying to accomplish by sucking face with the guy who Fran gave a pheromone gland to?
 * Rare gender-swapped version in chapter 53, where a man takes care of an octopus that can imitate his Dead Little Sister.
 * Nice Hat: Veronica's fedora, which just adds a bit for her role as bodyguard/assassin.
 * Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Fran can produce ungodly amounts of Squick just by her mere presence. And that's before she starts acting. On the other hand...
 * Nightmare Fetishist: There are some people in-universe who find Fran attractive . The assassin Agito even called her "cute".
 * And then there's a bunch of people who once were saved by Fran from almost dead state. They gathered together and called her for a party.  Fran was squicked by them.
 * Fran herself is guilty of this from time to time. For instance, a giant monster Humanoid Abomination is ravaging the ocean in one chapter. Fran's reaction? "It sure is cute. I want one."
 * No Celebrities Were Harmed: The dickish executive from Chapter 46 has a disturbingly odd resemblance with Steve Jobs, so that his name is... Steabe Jocks.
 * Not Using the Zed Word: Invoked by Fran and subverted in Chapter 47. "Isn't that what a zombie is? How are we supposed to call them?"

O

 * Old Shame: In Universe example. Fran is tricked into starring in a torture porn movie. A few issues later, it's shown that Veronica knows Fran was in a movie but hasn't been allowed to see it.
 * One-Gender Race: The gender-segregated islands in "Amazon", which became that way thanks to Fran's dad. The two "tribes" want to get to know each other better
 * Only Sane Man: Okita, the only sane cat-man among Fran's entourage, often acted as a snarky foil to Fran before Veronica arrived. As in, a cat with a man's head. Or is it a man with a cat's body...
 * According to Veronica, he's a cat. Presumably he's been uplifted in some way. Or she's wrong. Or she implies that he doesn't have human male's distinct body parts.
 * In the first chapter, Okita states that although he "may look like this now, [he's] still got [his] human pride", implying that he's a man with a cat's body.
 * Our Werewolves Are Different: Gavrill and her overpowered form.
 * Our Zombies Are Different: In chapter 39 the mascots of Rolling World.
 * Chapter 47 has a Caribbean island where people killed by a disease of unknown origin come back from the dead to feast on the living.

P - R
"Actress: "My leukemia has magically been cured, somehow! The doctors said it was the power of love!"
 * Parental Incest: Fran has a crush on her father/creator.
 * Personality Blood Types: The subject of Ch. 57. Causing problems for Adorea, whose blood type is in constant flux.
 * Pet the Dog:
 * As a more literal example, Veronica to Paku in the extra chapter "Bloody Veronica".
 * Petting Zoo People: Okita sort of parodies this. While the usual blend of human and animal elements are in place, the proportions are completely reversed. He has a human head and intelligence, but aside from that he's basically an ordinary cat.
 * Power Limiter: Gavrill has one that looks like an egg timer built into her head "bolts". It takes a lot of concentration to control her very complex body and it's implied that she would've quickly fallen apart if she lacked will power.
 * The Power of Love: Lampshaded in an in-universe movie based on one of Fran's adventures:

Veronica: (flings her chair through the screen) "What the hell is this crap!?""

"Fran: Oh my, how embarrassing!"
 * Rape, Pillage and Burn: What Gavrill and her crew do on a regular basis.
 * Reality Warping Is Not a Toy
 * Recursive Canon: The hospital director in "Snow Light" refuses to let Fran do a surgery because of a book he's reading about her. It's the first tankobon.


 * Restraining Bolt: Fran inserts one into Veronica in order to keep control over Veronica's violent tendencies.
 * Religion Is Right: Jesus existed and was able to work miracles, at least. The Flying Spaghetti Monster also exists, or at least does now.
 * Revenge Before Reason: Sentinel 3, AKA the "Avenging Sentinel" from Franken Fran becomes addicted to vengeance  because the act of vengeance feels really good. And it's not like this or like that, it's just knowing you're avenging someone   produces that same kind of high.
 * Revised Ending: Word of God is that Chapter 11 was originally going to be an Omake in which Fran fails to save the girl's brother (because they won't let her near the operation due to her reputation), and instead fixes the girl's broken doll. In the full version that was published, the girl makes Fran realize that she can save her brother even without being allowed to perform the heart transplant -- by performing unauthorized surgery on the doctor that was chosen that enhances him to the point that he's up to the task. Instead, she can't fix the doll, as she just knows how to fix actual, living people.

S

 * Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: Fran Madaraki Is About To Shoot You. Interestingly enough, this chapter also contains a bald, scarred man with a Right-Hand-Cat...
 * Shout Out: Chapter 23 is a great big Kamen Rider pastiche. In fact, the whole Setinel arc is one big parody of it.
 * On Page 5 of Chapter 12, Fran uses a trick she read in a book to stop two schoolboys from fighting over a girl. The book she's reading? Pool Maison Ikkoku.
 * Chapter 27's ending is a shout out to the history of the dog Hachiko.
 * In chapter 26, Franken Fran "helps" a cult maintain it's messiah figure; who
 * Chapter 29 has Dr. Serizawa, the scientist who steals Fran's new method for childbirth, who has the same name and Eyepatch of Power of the scientist from the first Godzilla film; also, the half-human half-fly hybrid that gives birth to an entirely human baby.
 * The pregnant insect-girl's name was Kaneda. Now go back and read chapter 2 again.
 * Chapter 30: REDRUM
 * Chapter 31: "You're tiny, you must have tiny guts!"
 * Chapter 32: "What are you evildoers planning?!?" "Same thing we do every day, Sentinel. Try to destroy the world!"
 * Chapter 33: "This guy just won't die, even after he's been killed!"
 * Chapter 4: Among the list of classmates asking for cosmetic surgery, Fran mentions "Eiko, Siiko, and Diiko."
 * Chapter 41 features two Shout Outs: The first is the nun Shelly, who was possibly named after Frankenstein's author Mary Shelley, and the second is the section of Vatican which Shelly works for:
 * Chapter 45 has a Superman cockroach, a Batman cockroach complete with a roacharang, Sentai roaches, a Gundam roach-robot, a War of the Worlds-style alien robot walker, roach riders, a maser tank (roach size) and one of them turned Super Saiyan...also, Veronica is Ultra Black/Ultra Cockroach Girl/UCG to the roaches, and acts appropriately.
 * Chapter 8: Saya no Uta
 * Chapter 53: Takoluka
 * Chapter 47 has a particular scene where Fran, the reporter girl and a group of survivors are forced to take refuge in an abandoned shopping mall from the zombies, and then they are attacked by a group of thieves that want the mall's supplies. Does that remind you of a certain famous zombie film with similar circumstances?
 * Also from that chapter, there are a pair of mascots on the bottom of this page ... is that Mario and Luigi?
 * Chapter 54: "The Panoramic Island" has a very typical James Bond setup, Fran and Kuhou lampshades this.
 * Chapter 55: The "little sister" that Kuhou stabs has an uncanny resemblance to Lambdadelta.
 * In chapter four, she tells someone okely dokely.
 * Show Within a Show: Hachiko homage, shamelessly parodying some adaptation issues. Tropes including:
 * Adaptation Decay
 * Adaptational Attractiveness: Pudding was effected by this the most.
 * Hey It's That Guy: Veronica is played by that bodyguard Agito, who slit Fran's throat. Nobody seems to notice.
 * Relationship Upgrade: Runa and Pudding end up... romantically involved.
 * Sibling Yin-Yang: Veronica and Fran. The "yin and yang" isn't Good/Evil, but Life/Death; Fran cannot end a life, while Veronica cannot spare one.
 * And then there's Gavrill, who doesn't care about life or death.
 * Soundtrack Dissonance: The ending of the CD drama adaptation of "Chrysalis" is accompanied by light, cheerful music.
 * Slasher Smile: Fran, when about to commence surgery. For example...
 * Also the front page image above, when she's preparing to screw 3 guys for stalking her mansion. Boy were they screwed
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism - When it's not being darkly humorous, it's being cynical. See the two Justice chapters, the latter of which
 * Smoking Hot Sex: Nezeru and Jenny in chapter 56.
 * Something Completely Different: Chapter 45 doesn't deal with weird surgeries. It deals with Veronica finding a city made by cockroaches, which includes technology, music, love, superheroes, supervillains, Humongous Mecha, and a Super Saiyan cockroach......It really makes no sense, even in context.
 * Space Whale Aesop: Every issue, though it doesn't take itself seriously.
 * Stalker With a Crush: Chapter 7.
 * Stockholm Syndrome: when Veronica is introduced, she terrorized Fran and even kills one of her subjects. Then Fran catches her and starts conducting horrible experiments offscreen. By the next chapter, she's Fran's doting little sis.
 * Strictly Formula: Someone comes to Fran for help. Fran "helps" them. It backfires. Fran shrugs it off.
 * Alternatively, Fran invents some Nobel-worthy achievement in medicine to "fix" a "problem". Someone steals the idea. It backfires. Fran shrugs is off and moves to the next patient.
 * Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: Not with robot, but artificial organism. For some reason Fran decided to give a living amusement park mascot 20 times the strength of a horse and teeth sharp enough to bite people's heads off.
 * Fran's lab assistants tend to be about ten feet tall and half as broad across the shoulders. At least one of them has a remarkable Healing Factor and can serve as a decent assassin.
 * Super Senses: The wolf-like Gavrill has super-hearing and super-smelling. The latter makes her already torturous tenure as a high school sub unbearable because the students' body fluids are overwhelming.
 * Super Team This time with cockroaches!
 * Another one has popped up comprising of Sentinels I-IV.
 * Another one has popped up comprising of Sentinels I-IV.

T

 * Take That: Most folks are often too focused on the dark horror-humor to notice that the other half of the manga's comedy is firmly rooted in biting, snarky satire, often regarding Japanese culture and manga/anime tropes and cliches. Mostly from taking whatever is being mocked at the time, and bringing it to a twisted extreme. Japanese blood type superstition, for instance, is mocked by depicting it leading to a segregationist, dictatorial caste system. Then you have an entire chapter shocasing the horrific things one would have to do to themselves to look like an anime character in real life, and just how hideous that would actually look. And then you have the chapter focusing on an impossibly old woman, and Fran discovering the secret to her supposed immortality. The chapter appears mostly serious, with very little in the way of jokes, until you're hit square in the face with the punchline of the entire chapter:
 * Tear Off Your Face: Happens all the time.
 * The Un-Reveal: In the last chapter Fran has a dream where all her friend and former patients visit, but she's woken up just before we get to see Naomitsu.
 * Toku: Twistedly deconstructed in "Justice".
 * Too Kinky to Torture: The people of unusual tastes.
 * There's also this...
 * Torture Porn: The movie she was meant to star in.
 * Tsundere: A highly stereotypical one shows up in Matsumae's island school fantasy.

U - V

 * Uncanny Valley Girl
 * Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Lampshaded in Chapter 30, where people explain to Okita that they don't find the sight of a cat with a man's head surprising because they're familiar with Fran's work. Okita hadn't even thought of it.
 * Visual Pun: In the very first chapter, Fran is so moved by the client's story of fatherly love that she literally cries her eyes out.

W

 * Wandering Jew (The man himself appears, his body so far gone that his organs have been replaced by hordes of insects. Fran kindly rebuilds his body while Veronica thinks it's cruel to let him live after he says (well, writes) that he's very tired.
 * We Can Rebuild Her: Multiple examples, but one of the most extreme is in Chapter 26, where  Even Fran is a little stumped about how that happened.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: Probably one of the oddest examples of this trope, as Fran is not of the typical "I do what is right, even if I have to do terrible things to do so." Thanks to Blue and Orange Morality, Fran is entirely incapable of seeing her extremism as anything wrong. At most, she might see those solutions as not ideal.
 * She also subverts this at times. Most chapters put her in a situation that requires extreme measures to be taken, but when faced with day-to-day concerns, she often suggests more rational courses of actions.
 * What Happened to The Mouse?: A small example: Paku, the dog who accompanies Veronica in the extra chapter of volume 2. Veronica briefly mentions him in the beginning of "Her Pet Dog", but aside that he is never seen or mentioned again.
 * What the Hell, Hero?: Played with in the sequel to "Justice", when a new Sentinel discovers that the Big Bad's plan to destroy the world is through charities (clean water and hospitals for everyone = population boom = overcrowded humanity will fight each other at the drop of a hat = Profit!). Nonetheless, the Big Bad is very upset at the deaths of his minions and allows their families to take revenge.
 * What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: In full effect here to mind-bending extremes. Between the stitched-up, slightly deranged sisters, the man-headed cat and the Eldritch Abomination Bandage Babe, the cast seems tailor-made to provoke squeals of delight and horror from the readers.
 * White Haired Pretty People: There's two islands full of them in chapter 31.
 * Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Veronica, who has superhuman strenght and won't hesitate to kill someone, is horribly scared of ghosts.
 * Expendable Clone: Inverted. As long as there's a copy, Fran doesn't care whether it's the original or not.
 * Well-Intentioned Extremist: A bizarre inversion would have to be the Black Lotus Syndicate. Their plan is the eradication of humanity. But they don't plan on killing even one person, instead they
 * Fran herself. Her intentions are unquestionably altruistic, but she doesn't quite get the concept of "extremism"...
 * We Will Meet Again: The villain of chapter 46 delivers this to Fran, in a very rare moment where she is actually defeated.
 * What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made On Drugs?: In-universe example. When Veronica told Fran about Roach City, her first response was "Veronica...are you on drugs?".
 * The Worm That Walks: See above.
 * Wrong Genre Savvy: Fran often seems to think of herself as a facilitator of happy endings and true love, seemingly unaware of the barrels of Nightmare Fuel she deals out anytime she tries to "help" people.
 * The islanders of chapter 47 immediately assume the revived dead are actually zombies and feel free to start shooting them

Y - Z

 * You Fail Biology Forever: Sometimes things go past the point of sanity. This is quite deliberate.
 * Your Mind Makes It Real: In Chapter 38, Fran injects a teenager with an experimental batch of stem cells that respond to his thoughts, literally making him the man of his dreams.
 * Yandere: Chapter 35 "Robot", all the robots contain the emotions and memories of the creator's late wife, so guess what happens when the creator starts dating other women.
 * Zombie Apocalypse: Deconstructed in Chapter 47.