(no subject)

[feotakahari]

My complaint about Fran Bow is the same as my complaint about Omori—a lot of the adventures in hallucination-land don’t seem all that relevant to the issues the characters are supposed to be dealing with. Omori fights monsters based on the monsters from a video game he liked. Okay, but what does the game mean to him, and how does it relate to his situation? Fran helps a volcano reunite with his wife. Does Fran have any personal connection to the concept of spousal separation? I think End Roll pulled this off better by tying just about everything back to Russell’s trauma in some way.

(Before you ask, I never played Alice: Madness Returns.)

Comments

[lb_lee]

I took that to mean that the creators of Fran Bow intentionally wanted to make it vague how psychological-based that world was. The hallucination realm may affect human psyches (or be affected by it in turn), but it also may be a freestanding place, independent of Fran's psyche. Or a mixture of both!

I do love me some psychological realms, as you know, but I also enjoyed Fran Bow's ambiguity. Chapter 1, in the asylum, seems very clearly to be about Fran's mental state, but once you get to the land of seasons, it becomes waaaaay less certain what is "real," what is "psychological," and whether those categories are airtight. I found that enjoyable, as someone who gets frustrated when my brainrealms are like, "Buddy, this is not about you. We do have lives outside of YOU, you know."