Franken Fran/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Fans... differ on how they feel about Fran's Technical Pacifist For Science! morality.
  • Complete Monster: Some of Fran's patients rival her in Squick and High Octane Nightmare Fuel, without any of her endearing traits or possible justification. The Corrupt Corporate Executive old woman who desires eternal youth and the "very lucky man" come to mind. And then there's Gavrill...
    • Chapter 46 adds Steabe Jocks to the list: he is a Corrupt Corporate Executive whose company is developing a medicine to make fat people become compulsive overeaters (or more so than they were, depending) so they can profit as their customers consume more of their products. He is also the first character in the series to outsmart Fran, and apparently didn't care that the girl who Fran was trying to help with his medicine ended up killing a classmate and then died consequently.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: Fran fixed herself after her head was cut off. She cured decapitation.
    • "Nezura-san" was a crowning chapter of awesome and heartwarming.
    • The Reveal at the end of chapter 59 is this in a really disturbing way.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: Chapter 26. Cameo at the end by the fucking Flying Spaghetti Monster!
  • Family-Unfriendly Aesop: It's not known whether the author intended to put them in the story, but there are still subtle messages. The most obvious one is in chapter 23 Justice, where a man gets modified by Fran into a super hero named Sentinel. He starts killing criminals, only to be hunted down later by the relatives and loved ones of those he killed.
    • Well, it's a deconstruction of the typical Toku program. The hero, by using Fran to become stronger and stronger, eventually morphs into a toku-esque monster, who is then attacked by new Toku-esque heroes, who are then augmented themselves... and so on.
    • In universe example, Gavrill goes to teach at a school, and promtly starts giving students advices involving: how to rape a girl, how to buy your way into universities, and how to become a Gold Digger.
  • High Octane Nightmare Fuel: This manga is not for the faint of heart. Or for those with a particularly strong religious conviction. (Not that it portrays religions badly in most cases, just the content of the work.) Or those who don't want to see human entrails rendered in loving detail. Now, if you excuse me, I've just finished the second chapter and feel a particularly strong desire to vomit and repent, followed by a helpful round of tossing in my bed. Consider yourself warned.
    • Then there's Gavrill who first appears in Chapter 40. Never mind the fact that she's a cruel and sadistic killer. Never mind the fact she was first introduced in the manga as she was eating someone's remains. Never mind the fact that she flat out tears Veronica apart. It's what she can become that puts her into this territory. And she always appears to be very hungry. Very, very, hungry.
    • Even the fans are at it!
  • I Am Not Shazam: The title character is named Fran Madaraki. She has never actually been referred to as Franken Fran.
  • Squick: Ever so much...
    • In chapter 30 the people who get off on nearly killing themselves manage to squick out Fran.
  • Tear Jerker: Chapter 38. One of the few times the final result of Fran's work is not played for Nightmare Fuel.
    • Also in the ending of chapter 43, where a rich girl's uncle who formerly came to Fran for a brain transplant ended up sharing a body with her due to an "incomplete" opperation. When a bomb goes off in her house and several people who were after the inheritence she recieved were killed, the uncle has his own brain put in the girl's old body while he made Fran put the girl's brain into a clone of her. The other people who got killed ended up sharing the old body along with him, as was the uncle's wishes just so that the girl could live freely.
    • Chapter 25 when Veronica is almost sold to a pedophile group by the only friend she made on school. The saddest part? She knew it all the time, but stuck around as the girl was the only one at school who treated her nicely. And at the end, Veronica said the only phrase that can be used to comic relief and heartwarming at the same time: I'm not crying...I SAID I'M NOT CRYING!
    • Chapter 48. The somewhat Sympathetic Murderer Nogizaka finally finds happiness... comatose and dreaming of a fantasy world where, finally, there are people who love her. Come to think of it, this fact is what makes said character sympathetic.
  • Too Good to Last: Eight volumes just doesn't seem like enough.
  • Ugly Cute: Okita, the cat with a guy's head. Said head (if you ignore the cat body) is actually quite handsome, as demonstrated when Okita used a puppet human body. Many of Fran's other creations also count, such as her dog-headed butler.
    • Not to mention Fran herself.
    • And Veronica.
  • The Woobie: Adorea. She's got one hell of a tragic backstory. She's also a very sweet girl... when she's off the clock anyway. Only Franken Fran could make a tentacle faced man-eating organ harvesting Humanoid Abomination into a Woobie.
    • Officer Kuhou. She's always running into Fran and she's had far too much experience with her in the past. Kuhou will start to have a mini Freak-Out any time she comes across her or if she even suspects her to be involved in her current case. Fran made her fight her own clones after a case for reasons best know to Fran. She does not even know if she is the original or not. Poor girl...Then it happens again.
    • Veronica, if you consider that she passed through quite a hell after she separated from Professor Madaraki and before she found Fran: Having a dog as her only companion (which very likely have died), being scolded as a freak and constantly targeted by the mysterious organization that wants the professor's secret projects. Not to mention the bad things that occasionally happen to her, like the bullying she had to endure in chapter 25 - though in that case she came off as an Iron Woobie. Also, Fran apparently likes to take her apart and do...things to her.
  • Took a Level in Badass : While your opinion may vary as to whether she became "badass" or not, you can't deny that officer Kuhou became a hell of a lot serious after she was transformed into a monster girl.