Franken Fran by Katsuhisa Kigitsu

It is now October, and that means its the start of this year's Halloween Spectacular.



Franken Fran by Katsuhisa Kigitsu

Art and story (c) Katsuhisa Kigitsu

Genre: Horror, Seinen
Length: 8 Volumes – 61 Chapters, some extras



            Franken Fran has an established art style, all the details in place and the character designs unique, the gore is well done and accurate, and the “monsters” and related art are often so gross you want to just turn the page immediately, in a good way. Its strange at times how well put

together the creations are, considering the events leading up to some of them. Beyond the name itself, the art is really the most attractive thing about this manga, and in the gore and horror manga genre, that is a real plus. The faces are animated and widely expressive, and the characters are, despite all looking different, part of a cohesive world. The clothing is just as detailed as the story, and lend well to the characters. At times the backgrounds were a little lacking, and at the beginning the profiles of faces were a little out of proportion but those are really the only two complaints I have. Well, the gross stuff was a little grosser than I like it, but that is a personal thing.
            Fran Madaraki is a highly competent and skilled doctor, she can perform surgeries in a snap and add a few enhancements in while she's at it with all the many research products she has invented in her many hours in her research lab, too. Though, its not always what the client asks for… or whats good for society… or even should ever exist, but Fran has all the best intentions at heart. Follow Fran though her many procedures and patients, most of which are even stranger than her.
            Franken Fran has all the right things, excellent art full of interesting and well fleshed out characters and their flaws, a mix of horror and humor that would appeal to many fans of it's genre, though provoking, or at the least, intriguing looks at society and

Uh... Fran, your eye...?

medical tampering with the human form, you probably sense a but coming on, and here it is: but, there are several failures to this manga that render it, in my opinion,
not really worth the time to read it. With a name like 'Franken Fran' and a title character covered in scars and complete with head bolts like some sexy Frankenstein's monster, I may have set my sights too high for this title. I wasn't able to get around to it last year and saved it, only to find it wasn't worth the wait. Is there anything more of a let down than finding something wasn't worth the wait? First off, this manga suffers from general lack of a plot. I don't mind the occasional story that muses every chapter, touching on different topics and genres, but it has to keep my interest. For example, I love the anime Excel Saga, which follows this pattern, strange characters getting into different predicaments every episode, but I didn't like Princess Resurrection that I read last year simply because it didn't follow that pattern in a compete and well thought out way. Now Franken Fran is a bit of a different case, it is very well thought out, but the complete lack of some sort of connecting plot just doesn't work for me when the manga is eight volumes long. There were a handful of reoccurring characters, but even by volume four I was sick of quite a few of them. Had there been a few chapters actually setting relationships between Fran and her 'sisters' or some kind of collective background to them, I would have liked it forty to fifty percent more. Instead you're given new people and instant relationships nearly every single time. The mysterious 'professor' that binds them is never given some sort of story, either, besides the intro at the very beginning so even that shared history has no weight a t all. The one or two chapters in every volume where I was actually interested in the science or society problem involved became less and less worth it the longer I read because there was no

accomplishment to having read everything before it. I could have read just the chapters I was interested in, and would have suffered nothing from no knowing what came before or after it. Even the excellence of the art didn't matter by volume six, and by the last volume I was just glad it was ending. Of course, the ending itself just proved to make me angry all over again because I wasn't really given one after all my trouble. I could go on and on about how frustrated I was reading this manga but perhaps I'd better put a little praise in here before even the most patient of readers quit this review. On the whole, its pretty funny, and the humor is pretty consistent every time. Like the chapter about these sentient cockroaches that Fran made, and how they had created a whole society for themselves, it really gives a sense of social commentary and WTF are these bugs doing? Nearly ever chapter had something humors about the situation and how Fran was handling it. There really were plot lines that could give you something to think about after the story is over, too, and make you think about your own opinions on the subject, of course since it was a humors manga it was brought up in the most ridiculous possible scenario. Such as a zombie outbreak where the people aren't actually the dead brought to life, but a whole bunch of people had already been killed by the time that fact comes to light. Or what would happen when you let high school kids get whatever plastic surgeries they want (crazy modifications, of course). Fran herself is an interesting protagonist who causes as many mishaps as she fixes, and her terrorized cast grows comfortably as you move along with out getting overwhelming. You get plenty of dark and twisted laughs from this well drawn and fleshed out characterized manga, but it just didn't hold enough interest for eight volumes with out a more integrative plot to run through it all.



2.5/5 Really more of a set of horror short stories, than a unified whole.

But that's not very Halloween, Fran.