Beautiful art, animation work, and music!
Without spoiling anything, the way it fit the theme was very clever. I didn’t read your theme explanation before playing so I did not see it coming.
I felt like the controls during the main game were good, but didn’t really like how the final battle felt. It was very hard (impossible?) to avoid the projectiles due to their fire rate and my jump height and hitbox size, I would always land touching at least one even if I aimed for the middle.
I checked whether there was any different endgame if you played a pacifist run, and there didn’t seem to be (unless I killed an enemy by accident and didn’t notice). I think it would have fit the theme of your game very well, but I also understand that it’s hard to put in everything in 48 hours :)