I was actually left feeling like Link was something of the villain of Link’s Awakening. The monsters are only fighting for their own survival because they know everyone will cease their existence if Link wakes the Wind Fish. The bitter sweet ending as Link remembers the villagers before the dream fades away.
The game sets up Marin as such a sweet character with a sweet relationship to Link and ambitions to leave the island. It is saddening knowing she fades away at the end of the game.
I choose to interpret the fact that Marin and Tarin completely go missing after she leaves Animal Village signifies that maybe the dream is falling apart toward the end of the game and that they were never “real” in the first place.
Despite being “illusions”, dreams and the memories of them feelings can still have impact and evoke emotions from us. The ending hits me the same way a dream of seeing a long lost loved one again does or the way a dream of an sweet experience of someone who never even existed does.