Anime Spotlight #15: Made In Abyss

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The White Whistle Cave Blogger

I took a week off from blogging to finish my last class of the Summer/Fall term at WGU. It's been a hell of a term, too, what with my gambling relapse, minor alcoholism (and considering that I'm even labeling it as alcoholism, minimizing its effect on my professional and personal lives with such a jovial distinction as "minor" is one of the stupidest things I've ever said), and ensuing pancreatitis scare. So taking all of that into account, and the fact that I chose to change majors halfway through, start blogging again, and I still managed to complete four courses with three days to spare, I am feeling the pink cloud way too much right now. Of course, I still have to register for another term this week and get back on that train before I derail myself again. But I've been known to dig deep when I have to.

This fits perfectly with today's selection for the Anime Spotlight, a franchise on HiDIVE called Made In Abyss. I feel comfortable calling it a franchise because it isn't just an anime series, it's an anime series with two recap films, a sequel film, a set of animated shorts, and a second season that just started its dubbed release. This isn't the first time I've covered anime series and their movies in the same post, either. For the three other anime that got that treatment, check out the following links:

Air and Armitage III: Anime-BAWklog: Finished Series A-Z (Part I)

Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Anime Spotlight #1: Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Made In Abyss is a--now two season--anime streaming on HiDIVE, based on the manga series by Akihito Tsukushi (a former character designer for Konami), and follows a young girl named Riko as she works toward her dream of being an elite Cave Raider and uncovering the mysteries of the Abyss. The Abyss is your typical, "centuries ago, Japan was normal until something supernatural happened, and now, there's a giant hole in the ground" anime anomaly crossed with an inverted dungeon tower from an action RPG. And it looks beautiful. The character models are mostly child-like (and simple, except for the steampunk-meets-Rob Leifeld Cave Raider attire that puts buckles and pouches almost everywhere), but the scenery is spectacular, and the creature designs strike that Miyazaki balance between creative, innocent, and terrifying.

I feel like I should be doing a Stefon club recommendation, like: "Tokyo's hottest club is The Abyss. This. Place. Has. Everything. A giant hole in the ground, steampunk cosplayers, giant, flying, carnivorous ferrets with one eye, giant pitcher plants that bleed grape soda, giant hedgehogs that are part boar, and a Curse-Repelling Vessel. Its that thing where you open a box of tentacles by blowing a whistle, and use it to reanimate a side of beef that you keep as a pet."

While you're pondering the weirdness I just wrote, let's get back to the story. Riko has strong, "blindly optimistic shonen protagonist" energy even though Made In Abyss feels more like a good video game adaptation than a shonen series. Case in point for the RPG/video game reference, Riko gets her life saved from the aforementioned flying, mono-eyed ferret monster by an amnesiac cyborg boy with stretchy arms and a palm-mounted Incinerator beam that knocks him unconscious for several hours after he uses it. So, we have a multi-level dungeon tower full of monsters and excavatable relics, a two-member party consisting of a Scout and a...Mage?...with a high-cooldown attack and platforming capabilities. Also, there's a color-coded ranking system among Cave Raiders (Red Whistles like Riko at the lowest rank, followed by Blue and Black, and finally, top-ranked White Whistles like Riko's mother, Lyza), presumably based on their ability to go deep into the Abyss and return to the surface alive, if not undamaged, though it's later revealed that there is a point of no return that affects one's humanity and mental state if they try to ascend past it. This is because of a feature called "the Curse of the Abyss," which is essentially the Bends (a.k.a. compression sickness) with a supernatural, metaphysical, anime twist, and it's one of my favorite pieces of MIA lore because science! So why do Riko and Reg (the Bionic Commando robot boy, named after Riko's dog, but also maybe not because the Curse of the Abyss can manifest thoughts into reality and vice-versa) decide to begin their epic journey into the Abyss? Well, one day, Lyza's whistle and other personal effects are brought up from the depths by a group of Black Whistles, hinting that she may have died in an expedition. But a letter that Lyza supposedly wrote to Riko tells her that Lyza will be waiting for her at the bottom of the Abyss. Riko then runs away from her orphanage home (I thought at first that this was going to be a Promised Neverland or Shadows' House-type story, just based on the initial setting and controlling adult characters, but it goes in a completely different direction, as you can probably guess by now), and drags Reg along with her. Perhaps it's a story progression flaw, but with Reg tagging along, Riko is able to avoid most of the Abyss' dangers by using plot-convenient rappelling shafts that transcend Layers, until they reach a sort of checkpoint station (the "Seeker Camp") inhabited by mid- and upper-grade Cave Raiders, including Lyza's raiding partner, Ozen the Immovable Sovereign. That's another thing: White Whistles also have badass Sovereign titles (Riko's mother was Lyza the Annihilator, a.k.a. the Sovereign of Annihilation). After some existentially horrific revelations at the Seeker Camp, Riko and Reg continue their descent along the (mostly) pacifist route until they encounter the aforementioned giant hedgehog, which (in another bit of subterranean/deep ocean semi-accurate lore) can't see but has enhanced, borderline predictive senses such that it leaves our heroes on the brink of death. But suddenly, "Congratulations! Nanachi has joined your party!" Nanachi (dubbed by Brittany Karbowski, who is my spirit animal when Ian Sinclair is busy) is what Cave Raiders call a Hollow (not to be confused with the same named characters from Bleach). She's basically the combat Medic of our trio, as she fixes Riko's broken arm with advanced triage techniques, and possesses the same agility and precognitive pressure sense as deep-Layer creatures, but with a humanoid form and rationality. It's also revealed that Nanachi (and her less-sentient, more Hollowfied best friend, Mitty) is a "successful" experiment by Bondrewd, the mysterious and ominous Sovereign of Dawn. Empowered by the spirit of exploration and a desire for revenge against Bondrewd, Riko, Reg, and Nanachi continue their descent as the first season ends.

The first two films, Journey's Dawn and Wandering Twilight, are season recap films with the usual edits that are found in such films: reduced or omitted establishing shots, and dialogue scenes replaced with voiceover when an establishing shot is too gorgeous to leave out (which is often the case in this series-to-film conversion). The only other obvious changes come at the beginning of the first film and the end of the second film. Journey's Dawn begins with some noteworthy exposition about the origin of the Abyss that was not included in the series at all, and the new material is narrated by Ozen herself (Christine Auten in the dub). Events follow pretty much beat for beat thereafter, up to the midpoint of the series where the two leads confront Ozen at the Seeker Camp. Wandering Twilight picks up from there with some more voiceover from Ozen and a slightly extended flashback to a conversation she had with Lyza. This second film covers Riko and Reg's descent past the Seeker Camp, and their encounters with the hedgeboar, Nanachi, and Mitty, as well as the experiment that turned Nanachi and Mitty into Hollows. The new material in Wandering Twilight comes as a post-credits scene, wherein we learn that Bondrewd is monitoring the failed Hollows (like Mitty), and that he has a daughter, which leads into the events of the third film.

As Madoka Magica and Armitage III did before it, Made In Abyss followed up its recap film with a sequel offering that continues both the series and its film adaptations (though in Made In Abyss' case, the continuation is more obvious with the movies). Being a theatrical release, Made In Abyss: Dawn Of the Deep Soul gets more graphically violent with its gore and body horror elements than the series was allowed, and the humor is noticeably raunchier (giving Reg a furry fetish for Nanachi, and making constant reference to his erection, for example). The usual, "rappel to the next layer, do some platforming, fight large Miyazaki hybrids" plot beats lead into the trio crossing paths with Bondrewd and his biomechanical assistants, marking him as the film's ultimate antagonist and gatekeeper (as the elevator mechanism he used to experiment on Nanachi, Mitty, and countless other children, is the group's only means of reaching the next Layer below. In the meantime, Riko grows close to Bondrewd's adopted daughter, Prushka (whom we briefly saw in the post-credits scene from the last movie). But Bondrewd is a mad scientist, Prushka is a child, and we all know what Bondrewd does to children by now, so expect to give him Shou Tucker levels of hate by the time this movie is over (if the season one finale didn't get you there already). My only complaint besides the convenient "pacifist run" escalation and the increasingly lewd humor is the fights. The fights in Dawn Of the Deep Soul are cinematic and epic, but too much so on the latter. Reg's battles with Bondrewd look amazing, and even get a little Gainax-y when he goes berzerk. But there are too many of them and they drag on longer than they should. Kill Bondrewd, he just gets another body. Cut off a limb, he injects liquefied children and magic diamonds into his body and grows it back. He gets tired and bloodied? This isn't even my final form! Even after all of his methods of resurrection are deactivated and Reg finally kills him, Bondrewd somehow manages to survive to commit further atrocities. Somewhere around the middle of the second fight, I stopped marveling at the spectacle and started checking how close I was to the end of the runtime. But a victory is a victory, however anti-climactic and Pyrrhic, and Prushka's remains become Riko's white whistle (that's another thing: white whistles are spiritiually bonded and unique to each Cave Raider, such that only that person can use it, and a white whistle can only be created by sacrificing someone of importance--or Value, as the next season will call it--to that person), giving her access to the next Layer. Conglaturation! Is this story happy end?

Though I harped on some things about Made In Abyss, and heavily criticized the third film, I am glad to be watching the second season (The Golden City Of the Scorching Sun). I am also confused to the point that I might need mind-altering substances for some of the concepts to make sense. The Miyazaki body horror and character designs get turned to fifteen this season, as Riko, Reg, and Nanachi find themselves in a gravity-, time-, and space-defying village of ancient Hollows (possibly the first people in history to explore the Abyss). It looks like the Star Wars Cantina as designed by Edvard Munch, Salvador Dali, Claude Monet, and H.R. Geiger, and colored by Vincent Van Gogh and Jackson Pollack. Unsettling-looking blobs of flesh (sometimes metal), teeth, and zero-to-two eyes (that we can see) each, populate the landscape in a variety of colors and shapes, all of which speak a nonsensical-sounding language and look ready to eat and/or dismember our trio at a moment's notice. In short order, we learn about Value: a metaphysical concept in which the Abyss allows the denizens of this Layer to exchange their physical bodies, desires, and (twisted prostitution allegory?) fetishes for currency. Theft, as evaluated on a case-by-case basis, is punished by Rebalancing, in which the offender's belongings and physical form (their Value) are parsed into currency and given to the victim. Also, we learn that Nanachi isn't the only humanoid Hollow, and that Reg's real name actually is Reg (remember that whole, "manifest destiny" thing I mentioned way up above?). The second season is still ongoing at this point, and I haven't fully wrapped my head around what's going on (heh, ongoing, going on...), but I'm glad I rewatched the series all these years later (not so much with the movies, even though we get a little bit of new material from the recap films and the third film fills in the gap between seasons). I intentionally left out some plot points because I'm tired and they deserve to be experienced in real time, but yeah, Made In Abyss is a beautiful, deep (and not just for the sake of me making a pun), unsettling franchise with great mystery, solid lore, and cinematic spectacle to it, and I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, so I highly recommend giving yourselves the experience.

There's a lot I want to check out movie-wise, but the new term is starting, so stay tuned for next week's Anime Spotlight on Shadows' House. In the meantime, like and comment down below, and go watch some anime.

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