Flawless thoughtlessness

Should you watch Made in Abyss?

For the sake of this post, Season 1 will refer to both the movie Dawn of the Deep Soul and Season 1 of Made in Abyss. I never watched the recap movies so I can't touch on them whatsoever.

This story isn't supposed to be sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows despite its initial image. The nature of it is brutal and grotesque. It's to be expected that varying degrees of bad shit will happen throughout the story.

I can admit that it became too much to stomach in Season 2. I feel like the author's tastes are imbued into the story way too much at this point, and it most likely isn't going to get better. It's almost as if the story was made to express their fetishes after a certain point. Season 1 has its moments with that one scene with Riko (you know the one), the main villain of the movie's general actions, and of course, the weirdly sexual jokes involving the main cast.

I can only handle so much of fictional child abuse and barely disguised fetishes within that. Despite that, Season 1 is arguably... watchable, with the uncomfortable scenes not nearly as prevalent as Season 2. It toes that line between "bad shit happening because story" and "bad shit incessantly happening due to the authors fetish for children" in a somewhat... digestible way. You're mostly able to write it off as anime bullshit. I'm really trying to be fair here.

Made in Abyss has an absolutely wonderful setting. I've seen that this is a somewhat universal sentiment regardless of the overarching opinion of the show. The creature and world design in particular is fantastically otherworldly, and I love seeing Riko and Reg traverse The Abyss. It's exciting seeing the different layers and how they're able to conquer hurdles within them. Lyza herself is a polarizing character even when so little is known. Shoutouts to Ozen and Nanachi. It has a great foundation.

Don't worry, you just have to power through the author's gore and piss kink.

Sure, whatever, enjoy your gore and piss. I have no real problem with that as a fetish, it's just not personally my thing. It's when very clearly drawn prepubescent children are almost always involved and/or the butt of a distasteful joke. It gets quite tiresome.

I was always wary of the mangaka due to the nature of Made in Abyss. Watching Season 2, along with reading briefly into some of his comments and illustrations, served as concrete confirmation that the mangaka likes putting these fictional children into insane situations constantly. Knowing this information makes trying to enjoy Made in Abyss extremely difficult. There was some sort of plausible deniability within Season 1, but I now find trying to justify what happens in this show for the purpose of being "le fucked up story" largely ignorant.

Barring all of that, the overarching plot of Season 2 was interesting with the inclusion of the Ganja squad. I loved the idea of a group of outcasts looking to establish their own community within the dangers of the 6th Layer. Iruburu's existence in conjunction with the backstory of Ganja had the potential to be wonderful, and it kind of is conceptually I suppose. What happened to Irumyuui serves as the foundation for the existence of Iruburu, and I really wasn't a fan of it. It was needlessly cruel and hard to stomach. The way it was depicted in the anime was incredibly grotesque. Nanachi and Mitty's story is much more digestible, in my opinion, and while it is sad and brutal, it seems more "purposeful" as a driving plot point for the story. It doesn't seem played up for shock value and Bondrewd himself is an interesting villain.

In this season, however, I feel like the gore and uncomfortable concepts were just turned up to an entirely different level compared to season 1 and Dawn of the Deep Soul. It was incredibly jarring. Maybe I've become "softer" since my first watch of the prior entries, it's been years. You could argue that I'm hypocritical for thinking Mitty's fate (or even Prushka's) isn't on the same level of Irumyuui's, but that's just my opinion. A somewhat unrelated addendum is that Vueko is a pretty poorly written character. I found her to be disappointing by the end of the season. I also wasn't a big fan on the emphasis of fight scenes in this season.

The tonal shift of Season 2 is as if Season 1 and Season 2 are completely different stories. I understand that the further they go down into the depths of The Abyss, the harder and more brutal their trials will be, my point still remains. If I recommended an already tentative viewer—understandably so due to how Made in Abyss has a "child violence" warning slapped on it—this, I'm sure Season 2 would be incredibly jarring for them as well. It could've always tonally been like this? It was just a matter of getting to the intensity that makes that tone so damn apparent.

Regardless, for these reasons, I unfortunately cannot earnestly recommend Made in Abyss for the average viewer. Before I was able to kind of try to justify powering through for its good parts.

Perhaps the balance established in Season 1 returns back to normal in the next arc, I won't be there to read it. Made in Abyss will largely be in the background of my mind until Season 3 comes out, and even then, it'll be a low priority watch.

It isn't the fantastical story I really wish it was. I want it to have a Cave Story vibe. I want there to be a harder emphasis on world-building, exploration, and for it to lean into its RPG qualities. I acknowledge that the main cast will go through fucked up shit and it will be emotional, but Made in Abyss feels like torture porn just for the sake of it. I can't really look past any of the really bad stuff anymore, I'm not the demographic nor do I have the stomach for it.

If you are/do, however, by all means, I'm sure you will enjoy Made in Abyss, and I won't judge you for it. There's things to love about it, but there's also a lot to really not like about it.

homepage

posted September 2, 2024

What's up?

00:00

0:00