Anime: Made in Abyss

Made in Abyss has two sides. The first is a wholesome adventure anime where children get to explore wonderful and mysterious worlds, make friends, discover cute and funny creatures, and so on. That’s essentially what it looks like on paper.

The second is a sadistic piece of media where the same children go through the most traumatic experiences, get beaten, tortured (body horror), killed, and sometimes worse. This aspect becomes more and more prominent as the series progresses.

The series uses both aspects as the same time, and that is what makes it genius in my opinion.

Indeed, since we viewers are humans, we have this thing called empathy. We also have some sort of maternal instinct which urges us to protect children (or more generally small and cute things) from danger. Put this two instincts together, and this makes the characters’ suffering have even more impact on the viewer.

Let’s be honest, the characters themselves are pretty uninteresting and cliche. They aren’t relatable either. Riko is a cardboard “genki” girl. Reg lacks character. He is basically defined by the fact that he wants to protect Riko, for some unknown reason. Nanachi is a better character in my opinion, but I’m biased by the fact she’s a cute and fluffy bunny-like creature. To sump up, the fact that the characters are so lackluster is one of the major flaws of the series.

How can the viewer find interest in the anime if the characters are this mid? Well, what makes the viewer connect to the characters is not their personality, but the experiences they go through. That is to say all the body horror, torture, and the like. They suffer so much the viewer can only empathize with them. The viewer wants them to overcome their suffering, their challenges. At the same time, it’s also a sort of sadistic pleasure, since it’s basically about taking pleasure in watching children suffering the worst pains, over and over again.

On the matter of sadism by the way, the original manga artist is most likely a sadist himself. He likes to create cute and innocent characters and make them go through the most horrible trials and the most humiliating experiences. It’s like when you’re looking at a cute kitten: one part of you wants to pet it, the other wants to crush it with your bare hands. The anime does that all the time, not just to children, but to other small and cute creatures.

On top of that, the original manga artist is probably a “pdf file”. Indeed, the anime includes quite a lot of suspicious scenes: there’s an old man that touches the kid’s weenie, there’s the weird fetish about shit and piss (we often see characters peeing themselves), there are some scenes showing the main characters (whom are all children) naked, and so on. This disgusting aspect of the show is quite hard to ignore, and makes watching it all the more uncomfortable. It is the second major flaw of the series.

Coming back to the characters, adult characters are either useless and irresponsible, or outright evil sadists (even the supposed good guys) who torture children for the hell of it. To illustrate the level of irresponsibility of those adults, here’s one of the dialogues summed up:

OLD MAN: “Ok, so you want to go on an adventure despite the fact that it’s 100% going to kill you in the most brutal and painful way possible? Have fun kid. Let me just touch your friend’s d*ck before you leave!”

(This is barely an exaggeration by the way.)

Another strength of the show is that the world it develops is both beautiful and creative. We have a very inventive universe, with very diverse creatures and the like. That’s part of the reason I want to continue watching the anime despite its major shortcomings. The outstanding animation quality goes hand in hand with this world-building and creativity.

When it come to the music, I found the opening to be very good, but wasn’t really convinced by the background music. Those singing voices… kinda meh if you want my opinion.

So to conclude, Made in Abyss has two major qualities and two major flaws. On the one hand it develops a very creative and stunning world which is both wholesome and terrifying, and allows the viewer to connect to the main characters by making them go trough the most traumatizing experiences. And the other hand its characters are pretty shallow, and the sadistic and almost pedoph*le aspect of the show is prone to disgust the viewer. Nevertheless, I did enjoy the show quite a lot.

The animation style suggests a wholesome anime for kids. Nothing could be further from the truth. Staring with a very interesting premise, engaging main characters and very beautiful environments, this anime slowly descends into narrative madness. It slowly turns into a gory, child torture porn with lots of child abuse of every kind (yes, even r**e).

From the 9th episode and onward, gore is frequent with copious volumes of every kind of bodily fluid you can imagine and frequent dismemberments of cute creatures and characters (even the main characters are not immune to the sadistic fetishes of the author).

The main storylines and mysteries presented at the start of the show remain completely unresolved by the end on the 2nd season which takes place in a single location and drags on and on. It becomes painfully obvious that the author(s) have no clue how to resolve the mysteries they've set up, and are wasting time with pseudo-philosophical ramblings about "value".

If you like this sort of thing, watch it. Otherwise, avoid it like the plague.

Review
Made in Abyss made quite some noise during its release. Apparently it was because it engrossed a childlike art style mixing a tale with a decent degree of maturity and tension, where death is always lurking behind the next door. Like always, however, it becomes hard to understand where the wonders of a show are to support such an extensive acclaim from its fans.

This is the vibrant adventure of Riko, a young cave raider in the city of Orth. This city is famous for its massive, seemingly endless, and mysterious pit, aptly called the Abyss, where cave raiders probe in search of artifacts of ancient civilizations and in hope of finding meaning to their lives. Riko is one of those cave raiders, a child with a dream of becoming the best of the best, finding amazing treasures and creatures, and make her name famous enough to reach the status of her mother, one of the most important cave raiders in recent history.

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1. Not much to start from
   The premise of Made in Abyss breaks out from the trend of hyping creative ideas. You see, going in to the depths of an unknown hole or reaching the higher levels of a tower is the basic idea of every dungeon crawler game released in Japan, and they are fuc*n numerous. It is understandable that dabbling with the unknown is always enticing and a journey with a certainty of failure is truly intriguing, yet the creative work here is plain simple, unlike deadly MMO experiments or people capable of rewinding time.
   
   Simplicity goes even further
   Riko and Reg form the main duo of this trip to hell and they are sadly not much of a decent match up. Riko is your genki girl as seen by shounen minds, fully energetic, stubborn, quite an airhead, yet always dreaming and positive. Reg is... boring. He is a robot-like boy with amnesia (yup!), superpowers, indestructible body, some (non-explained) sense of responsibility towards Riko, yet not much of an intelligent mind. This duo, however, is basically forced upon a quest for the tale's sake. They are both children, yet venture into the unknown, a place of dreadful monsters, without any kind of plan. The result is a dozen of scenes with Reg saving Riko from imminent death and both of them being deceived by anything with a grain for brain. It gets annoying to watch they treading into deathtraps as complete retards and it gets worse as you slowly see that Reg is just there for the plot convenience of making this impossible adventure possible. I mean, even Dora the Explorer and her monkey cohort make for a more intelligent and inquisitive duo.
   
   Yet it builds something from that
   If the basic premise and a childish main duo are certainly big negative luring factors, the atmosphere of the show is simply amazing. The cutesy artwork contrasting with the deadly threats is wildly interesting, especially when boosted by an amazing soundtrack capable of crafting dark moments and enhance the sense of exploration. The monsters and scenario also pick you by hand, delivering some terrifying monsters and magical creatures along with breathtaking scenery of bizarre qualities, making the Abyss look and feel like a place you want to explore.
   
   But oh, the shounen smell...
   They label this a seinen? Really? Anyway, Made in Abyss does start giving you a sensation this can become a deadly trap specialized in killing cute big-headed children, yet its true colors sometime give away. Ranking system? Yup. Legendary fighters? Yes. An annoying weak protagonist dreaming of becoming a hero? Yes. Some secondary character saving her ass every time? Yes. Yes. Yes. This is a shounen for god's sake. One of the long-running types even. Slowly, it grows strong on that, although you don't see combined fights at least. The so called cave raiders turn out to be heroes with amazing powers capable of surviving a deadly environment and equipped with magical weapons. Not much for a mature tale of exploration of the unknown and survival, heh?
   
   It got some nice twists though
   Once again, although it blurts the shounen trash-talk about ranked heroes and such, Made in Abyss does something similar to Attack on Titan and deliver some surprising twists and can build up tension unlike most shounens around. The secondary cast turn out to be interesting stereotypes with some of them being even decently fleshed out, and when everything comes together the show treats the main duo as the stupid immature children they are.
   

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Comments
Made in Abyss is a charming show indeed, one of the most vibrant and well-produced shows made by the average Kinema Citrus studio, which had already done a decent job in the overly terrible Black Bullet and required something with at least some inherent quality to stand above mediocrity. Well, they got it. That's for sure.

However, once again the community hypes something much more than what it deserves. Made in Abyss is a decent watch, but far from being the amazing show many claim, bloating its scores along the web as if this was an inventive and impeccable take on exploration and discovery. Nope. This is a fun dungeon crawler that mixes content for children, your usual shounen patterns, and nicely add the mature atmosphere like some recent shows had.

Heads up, it does get a bit dark and gritty. The manga even more so.

If you like REAL adventure anime, then this is for you. Heck, if you like gripping anime this is for you too.

And what I mean by real is that they really go on an adventure, travel, deal with the environment instead of dealing with people. There are no evil villains here, just a wonderful world to explore.

Art and animation is unique, seems low key but is actually very, very detailed and flawless. Seriously, I can't find fault with it.
Soundtrack... eh, it's noticeable, but at the same time, fun to hear. Occasionally falls into the background, simply because of the tension of the rest of the story.
Story... No spoilers, but it's never boring. Not once did I want to skip a moment. Every piece of information you get is precious.
Characters a solid 9, simply because there are some that are stereotypical or too easy to read. But to be fair, there are AWESOME characters too.
Value and enjoyment are both 9, simply because it does get darker. Although, in hindsight, I should have seen it coming from the start.

If you can handle a bit of grit, then this is totally worth watching. Even the characters that I despise I kinda like as well, simply because they're more than just "that evil person we need to defeat".
If you can't handle the darkness, watch the anime and leave it at that.

There is some usual stereotype like always. A girl is there and a boy comes out of no where But it is no problem if there is no problem if there is no history behind the whole or dungeon or what ever it would be in the ground. What is interesting about this anime is vast variety of possibilities that can surprise you in the line of story. (At the time only 5 episode is released). Just with first episode you wouldn't have a clue that what the story would be but in 4th episode it will give you a hunch.
I hope that story line keeps its way to discovering new aspects and exploring lots of new things because at this way it can be a real good adventure piece of work that we hadn't for a while.

This show is like a pretty looking mystery box, booby-trapped with a dozen poisoned needles. It’s beautiful to watch, painful to approach, and disappointing once you open it. What I mean by that, the only incentive it’s giving you is the scenery porn, the torture porn, and the constant unknown of what lies ahead. All three of which have been proven to be disasters for any title.

The setting of the show is Kaiba gone terribly wrong. In both series, we initially know nothing about the world and the amnesiac main character. By the time the show is over a dozen episodes later, we know everything about Kaiba, and absolutely nothing about the Abyss. It’s a perpetually ongoing mystery, existing for the sole purpose of teasing the viewer, before it overstays its welcome and becomes nonsensical in the likes of Lost.

There is no sense of meaningful adventure. Rico wants to explore the abyss, find her mother, and does neither. Gon in Hunter X Hunter for example, was also looking for his father, finds him at the end, while informing you about every area he was going to. Rico on the other hand didn’t find her mother and didn’t discover anything, since the only thing she knows about the Abyss is scattered information other explorers have already recorded in books.

Said information is limited to items and creatures. It doesn’t say anything about what the Abyss is. There is no lore about what the hell is going on here. Why is there an upside down forest, who made it, for what purpose, why is there still sunlight miles below the surface? You don’t know; it’s just a cool looking scenery. There is no history or logic, and the people exploring it are just looking for artifacts as if they are easter eggs instead of a historical puzzle they are trying to solve.

There are not even any traditions or folklore regarding the explorers and how they are living around the abyss. The hole has nothing to do with them. They just moved there to essentially pillage the place for money, and have nothing to say about their civilization or the culture they are currently tomb raiding. So basically, despite the setting being a very deep hole, there is absolutely no immersion. It’s vapid air, nothing is fleshed out.

Going back to Rico, she is so bad at exploring, to the point she would have died a dozen times without Reg and his “kill everything” beam. You can’t even call Reg a character, since his only motivation is saving Rico because … fuck he knows. He has no motivation; he just appears out of nowhere and becomes her pet. He is literally a walking plot convenience, since he can one-shot any monster, jump around long distances, and never gets damaged because he’s indestructible. He’s just there to debuff an otherwise impossible journey.

And yes, there are cases when can’t overcome a challenge but even then there is an unbelievable amount of plot armor. There’s this crazy explorer who overpowers them, and just about when she is ready to kill them, she goes “trololol, I was just kidding, I never wanted to kill you.” There is another scene Rico gets poisoned and out of nowhere someone appears to save her. It’s all fake suspense, since every time they are in danger, everything is instantly resolved in a lazy way.

It doesn’t help how every character is a plot device, existing either for infodumps or plot armor. Everything they say or do is happening in a forced and artificial way since it happens exactly when it needs to happen. Even the freaking curse of the abyss is a plot device, existing for preventing the characters from moving too fast, instead of having an in-series excuse for being part of the setting.

That is also why every scene with injury and suffering is torture porn, since it’s forcefully happening for the sadistic pleasure of the viewer and is then quickly taken away so the plot can go on like nothing happened. Speaking of viewer pleasure, the characters are shamed by constant sexual teasing and low brow erotic jokes. It doesn’t add anything to their personalities besides fueling fan fiction and deviant doujins.

Even if you filter out the deviance, Rico and Reg are completely basic personalities, and are only defined by a couple of vague features. There is nothing memorable about them compared to the things they experience, effectively falling victims of the curse. Not the one of the abyss, but rather the one of shock factor, where the viewer cares about the horrible experience, instead of the character experiencing it.

The best character ends up being not in the main ones, since it’s the fluffy bunny, for being the only one with a backdrop story and a lot of knowledge to survive with practical skills instead of deus ex machina bullshit. Unfortunately, she is introduced late in the show and most of her appeal is furry fan service, and even more misery porn by being a victimized cute girl.

And that’s why Made in Abyss is nowhere as good as many make it seem. Even Mahoujin Guruguru, a show airing at the same time, does everything better.