The soundtrack is spectacular. The world is fascinating and beautifully detailed. All the landscapes and nature scenery remind me of Miyazaki's style. The art style and animations are gorgeous. The character designs for the white whistle cave raiders is really cool, they put a lot of thought into making them look unique.
Riko is annoying at first but eventually she grows on you. I'm not a fan of the cutesy bubbly art style for the kid characters. The show takes a very dark turn around episode 10. I was not ready for how dark it got. It was actually horrifying and very hard to watch what happened to Riko. The show very quickly becomes one of the most messed up and disturbing anime I've ever seen during the last episode, where we see the origins of Mitty and Nanachi.
What makes this show so unsettling and messed up is that it's actually a Lovecraftian horror disguised as a cutesy adventure. So you're going along with all these bubbly-looking characters and you think you're having this nice jolly adventure and then all of a sudden people start bleeding out of every orifice in their body or they start to melt, becoming an inhuman blob of flesh. It's really disturbing and quite gross stuff. But at the same time, it's oddly fascinating. We're basically getting to see an original Lovecraftian-inspired world and experiencing it through the eyes of a child. And this is what makes it so interesting; is that it's never been done like this before. The storytelling and world-building is amazing. The show also does a great job at being ominous and eerie.
Although the show presents certain things in a very grim, disturbing and bleak light, Made In Abyss ultimately is about the power of the human spirit to continue on, the will to want to live - and this is a beautiful thing. It's also about the importance and power of friendship. The humor throughout and the cute aesthetic of the characters definitely balances the tone of the show once you start to realize how brutal, unforgiving and bleak the abyss can be. The show does take a couple of episodes for it to get going and become interesting. But once it does, oh boy, you better strap yourself in and be ready.
Praising aside, I also can't forget to mention all the weird stuff that goes on in the anime. There's this sort of fetishistic nature to the show that is very hard to ignore. Some examples are the fixation on Reg's private parts, the child nudity, and all the weird butt stuff that goes on in Season 2. Although these moments don't really detract from the anime and aren't really frequent or graphic in nature, it does sort of take you out of the immersion of the world and makes you wonder about the creator's intentions. The problem is that these moments don't add to the story or to any character development, they feel unnecessary. It comes off as creepy and it's not funny. This is the main reason why it's hard for me to recommend. If it wasn't for all the weird fetishistic stuff, this anime would be near perfect. Other than that, I think Made In Abyss is a brilliant and original anime.
Riko is annoying at first but eventually she grows on you. I'm not a fan of the cutesy bubbly art style for the kid characters. The show takes a very dark turn around episode 10. I was not ready for how dark it got. It was actually horrifying and very hard to watch what happened to Riko. The show very quickly becomes one of the most messed up and disturbing anime I've ever seen during the last episode, where we see the origins of Mitty and Nanachi.
What makes this show so unsettling and messed up is that it's actually a Lovecraftian horror disguised as a cutesy adventure. So you're going along with all these bubbly-looking characters and you think you're having this nice jolly adventure and then all of a sudden people start bleeding out of every orifice in their body or they start to melt, becoming an inhuman blob of flesh. It's really disturbing and quite gross stuff. But at the same time, it's oddly fascinating. We're basically getting to see an original Lovecraftian-inspired world and experiencing it through the eyes of a child. And this is what makes it so interesting; is that it's never been done like this before. The storytelling and world-building is amazing. The show also does a great job at being ominous and eerie.
Although the show presents certain things in a very grim, disturbing and bleak light, Made In Abyss ultimately is about the power of the human spirit to continue on, the will to want to live - and this is a beautiful thing. It's also about the importance and power of friendship. The humor throughout and the cute aesthetic of the characters definitely balances the tone of the show once you start to realize how brutal, unforgiving and bleak the abyss can be. The show does take a couple of episodes for it to get going and become interesting. But once it does, oh boy, you better strap yourself in and be ready.
Praising aside, I also can't forget to mention all the weird stuff that goes on in the anime. There's this sort of fetishistic nature to the show that is very hard to ignore. Some examples are the fixation on Reg's private parts, the child nudity, and all the weird butt stuff that goes on in Season 2. Although these moments don't really detract from the anime and aren't really frequent or graphic in nature, it does sort of take you out of the immersion of the world and makes you wonder about the creator's intentions. The problem is that these moments don't add to the story or to any character development, they feel unnecessary. It comes off as creepy and it's not funny. This is the main reason why it's hard for me to recommend. If it wasn't for all the weird fetishistic stuff, this anime would be near perfect. Other than that, I think Made In Abyss is a brilliant and original anime.