Anime is lousy with absent or downright evil parents, but the ones in Frankenstein Family take the cake, being mad scientists who genetically manipulated their own children for their experiments. They’re gone by the time the series opens, arrested and in prison, which leaves their children to have to care for themselves.
So from left to right we have the twin sisters, one a flower woman who can photosynthesise and grow all sort of flowers on her, the other a spider woman with artificial arms & hands. The oldest brother in the middle looks normal here, but is a weredog (not wolf) and tends to like his doggo form more than being human. Well, who wouldn’t? On the far left is the youngest sister, a mind reader who can’t turn it off so by necessity is a bit of a NEET. Our protagonist is Tanisu, the youngest brother, relatively normal because he’s ‘only’ a genius. Perhaps that’s why he’s the most obsessed out of all of them with appearing normal, conforming, trying to do all the things a normal family would do. Which is hard to do because none of them really have any idea of how to act this way, having been raised by their asshole scientist parents in what was arguably one huge experiment. What’s more, the rest of his siblings aren’t actually all that concerned about this, prefering to do the things that come naturally to them rather than forcing themselves into some ideal of what the average family should look like.
The desire for normality, for being an ordinary school boy is what drives a lot of anime protagonists just before they get dragged up into some grand adventure. That doesn’t happen here. Instead we have Tanisu coming to terms with his sibling’s nature & behaviour, as they in turn adapt a little bit to living in the outside world. In the end however it’s Tanisu who changes the most. He’s still somewhat obsessed with his brother and sisters passing as human, but less uptight about it, more accepting of their monstrous sides, no longer wanting them to repress them all the time. There’s a little bit of a queer subtext to this, isn’t there? Being seen as something that you are not, perhaps needed to be seen that way to not be hassled, but still living with the stress of having to repress parts of yourself.
What else made Frankenstein Family interesting to me is that it’s an actual Chinese cartoon redubbed in Japanese and then brought over by Crunchyroll. Some of the cultural assumptions and shorthand is just that little bit different form ‘real’ anime and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Also, because this is a half length show, the Japanese dub pads things out by having the actual voice actors do some silly skitches and such after each episode. This also include a visit to the company licensing & publishing the original manga with some neat if surface details about translating from Chinese to Japanese and the challenges that brings. It made for a nice little package each week.
This is the seventh post in this year’s twelve days of anime challenge. Tomorrow: let’s talk about the first boy Precure again.
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