Lol, namefag here (tired of posting anonymously).
Anyway, I have this theory I'd love to share, assuming it doesn't sound to stupid.
What if Madotsuki is a stressed out married woman reflecting on her childhood?
Bare with me. Essentially, Madotsuki is a married woman trying her best (yet failing miserably) to adjust to the complexities of adulthood, eventually falling into a deep depression and seeking refuge in nostalgia. I'll try my best to break how each area and character plays into this, starting with...
Madotsuki's Room: First off, I guess I should state that all you see in the game is a dream, even when Mado is "awake". Her "awake-ness" (for lack of a better word) is just adult Mado mental projection of her wanting to be a child again. Her refusing to leave her room is her refusal to face the reality that she can never go back, or her refusing to deal with her problems in an adult way. Her going to sleep is a metaphor for her clearing her mind temporarily, allowing her to fully explore her fantasy childhood dream land.
Madotsuki's Balcony: When Mado starts dreaming, she always ends up on her balcony. In real life, this is where Mado always went to try and relax before her breakdown. She would watch the clouds, have a smoke, try to ease her mind. The fact that you can't interact with anything on her balcony in her dreams indicates that what she once saw as a place of peace where she could go to relax, she now sees as useless, believing that nothing she ever did or could do here would take her mind off of her problems, which is why she's so eager to leave her balcony and explore the rest of her dream world.
The Nexus: This is Mado's overall views of her childhood. As a child, she always felt trapped or limited, as if she didn't really have much freedom, but as an adult she believes that she had so much more choice as a child than she does now. These two views mesh together to form the nexus, a fairly small, unexplorable room (feelings of entrapment / lack of freedom), yet it leads to all these fantastic worlds that aren't accessible in the real world.
Forest World: This is a forest that Mado used to play in as a child. She would always stumble across frogs, so she began acting as one (frog effect), hopping freely amongst the trees. One day, she was pretending to be a frog and bunch of people (the "face carpets") saw her, one of which being a girl from her school (the toriningen) who teased her about the incident relentlessly, coming up with all sorts of epithets and such (i.e. "frog girl", or whatever). The blobs represent slugs Mado would play with, pretending that she was racing them or that they were following her.
Block World: Block world is representative of the blocks Mado used to play with as a kid. She would scatter them across her room and pretend they were their own world, one she wanted to lose herself in. It was a world she could do anything in, including what she couldn’t do in real life (hence the men’s bathroom). In the box she kept the blocks in was a tiny stuffed doll of a little girl with a hat and scarf. Mado somehow always missed seeing the doll (hence her being invisible in Mado's dreams), but one day she found it, being reminded of a picture she drew of the doll, which brings us to...
Monochrome Desert: This area goes further with the whole “Madotsuki as a child getting lost in areas she imagined” concept. Basically, it’s a desert-type place she thought up and drew (it’s in black and white because, honestly, I don’t know, maybe her family was dirt poor and couldn’t afford crayons or markers? Yeah, let’s go with that.), often pretending she was actually there (sometimes as the doll she drew, explaining the hat and scarf effect). Now, here’s where shit gets real. This is also an area where her real life conflicts with her dream life. For example, Dave Spector (A.K.A. that weird looking Picasso painting guy)? A subconscious portrayal of her husband. Those body parts in the area that you get to from FC World A? A distortion of what she viewed puberty to be like as a child. That one area with the severed heads where everything is on fire? The heads are her parents, indicating not that they are dead, but that they aren’t going to be there for their little girl like they were when she was younger. The fire represents her childhood burning or fading away, or just being a time she can’t always hold onto. Now onto the interesting stuff.
Monoko and Monoe are both alternate representations of the same person. Before I get to that, however, I’ll have to provide a little context. In real life, Mado and her husband have been trying to conceive for quite a while, eventually getting worried that nothing was working. They tried everything, consulting a doctor, trying fertility supplements and doing whatever the hell else helps to get people pregnant other than just screwing each other’s brains out. Eventually, their efforts paid off when Mado finally got pregnant. The happy couple did everything they could to prepare for the baby, such as clearing out a spare room, buying a bunch of toys and supplies, telling all of their friends and neighbors, etc. When the big day was so close that they could almost taste it, the unthinkable happened and Mado miscarried. Monoko and Monoe are separate versions of Mado’s miscarried baby. Monoe is what Mado thought the child would be like; happy, beautiful, bright, kind but slightly mischievous (explaining the grin), a child that would be like a bright light in a dark cave, but every time Mado gets too close to Monoe, she disappears , reminding Mado that this dream child doesn’t really exist, that what she wanted to attain so badly will always remain out of reach. The fact that you have to kill Dave Spector (A.K.A. Mado’s husband) to get to Monoe symbolizes the relationship between the couple after the incident. Her husband became cold and distant, and though he never explicitly stated so, Mado believe that he blamed her for the miscarriage. She, in turn, placed the blame on him, seeing him as the one thing keeping her from her vision. Monoko, however, is a slightly more realistic, if not distorted, take on the situation. She appears as a normal child, until Mado stops her, revealing a deformed little girl. This is Mado’s mind making her believe that what she thought would be the perfect child is really just a deformed mess, a freak. This in turn makes Mado fell like a freak, as in her mind she is incapable of giving birth to a normal child. It’s representative of the depression, shame and guilt brought on by the miscarriage.
Note that this is by far the most interesting part of this theory, so it’s only going to go downhill from here. If you want to stop reading now, I don’t blame you. With that said…
Puddle World: Just showing that Mado liked to play in puddles as a child, nothing really interesting. Sorry. :(
Dense Woods: Again, relates to the miscarriage. The uterus monsters at the end of the road are, well, Mado’s uterus. Don’t really have to go into detail about that one, I hope. Shitai-San (A.K.A. dead green roadkill guy) is yet another portrayal of Mado’s husband. Again, it deals with feelings shame, depression and playing the blame game. His corpse is Mado seeing him as a victim instead of an aggressor, taking the blame off of him and on herself. She gets the stoplight from him, allowing her to see what her mind attributes as the “truth” about herself and her potential child.
Dark World: Dark world is what Mado thought of the dark as a child. Like most children, Mado was afraid of the dark. It made her feel vulnerable confused, and would, in turn, remind her of other times when she felt vulnerable and confused, the next location (Wilderness) being an example of this. The dark was a place where she felt endangered and she just wanted to grab a weapon (knife) and slash at everything in her path until she felt safe again, or she was sure no one was watching.
Continued in next post...