The movie Dawn of the Deep Soul, which continues the story of the acclaimed Made in Abyss anime, which I have reviewed, is slated for an American release at Anime Boston on April 11, according to Crunchyroll. After that, the film will see (presumably limited) theatrical distribution.
Personally, I’m not sure if I should be thrilled or disappointed. Rumors have swirled around for a while about a sequel to Made in Abyss, and one was announced at a talk show some years back, followed by speculations on a 2019 release date.
2019 is obviously behind us, but with the upcoming movie set to continue the story where season 1 ended, it is no longer clear if there will be a season 2 at all.
The art posted here comes from Shen YH, who has created a watercolor-like art imagining Made in Abyss as a video game. I’m not sure what the purpose is behind this, but if it’s concept art for an actual game, that would be awesome.
These images apparently imagine Reg, the robot boy, as the player character, and depict him in some of the most iconic scenes from the TV series, now with health bars and maps and such.
Made in Abyss, directed by Masayuki Kojima. Written by Keigo Koyanagi, Hideyuki Kurata, and Akihito Tsukushi. Starring Miyu Tomita, Mariya Ise, and Maaya Sakamoto. Kinema Citrus (). 12 episodes of 23 minutes and 1 episode of 46 minutes (approx. 322 minutes). Rated TV-14.
When Made in Abyss appeared in 2017, it was the biggest hit of its season, if not the year. It also quickly became one of the most polarizing titles on social media. I was already praising it before it appeared in English simply because I’d caught glimpses of its creator’s art. Then I started to hear … rumors … that made me squeamish—mostly about the manga being a hairsbreadth from lolicon.
I’ve not had a chance to read the manga, which if I’m not mistaken is still ongoing, but I have finally sat down and watched the thirteen-episode first season of the anime. I can say nothing substantial about its source material (my info is mostly hearsay coupled with some amazing panel art), but I will say that, whatever the manga is like, the anime is really, really impressive. This is one of the best cartoons I’ve ever seen, hands down.
It might be a bit before I finally produce the review of Made in Abyss that I’ve promised. I’m working on my book today instead, and I should probably consider higher priority.
I’m also trying to figure out the new interface for WordPress, which is an improvement over the old one in some respects, but deeply frustrating in others. They added some handy new features, but for some reason also stripped down the WYSIWYG editor, so to do some of the formatting I used to use routinely, I now have to write in-line CSS . Go figure. And there’s not even a button to insert ordered lists; I mean, that’s basic HTML, and this editor can’t handle it. Good thing I know some HTML.
I’ve decided that, after Made in Abyss, the next series I tackle will be ViVid Strike!, which is the last series in the Lyrical Nanoha franchise available on Amazon Prime. After that, I intend to drop the service: Amazon Prime is expensive, and its selection is lousy for an anime fan. For someone interested in magical girls, Lyrical Nanoha is probably its biggest draw, and even then, its selection is disappointing: it has none of the movies, and it’s missing ViVid, the series that comes after StrikerS and before ViVid Strike!
I haven’t started it yet, but ViVid Strike! is supposed to be fairly violent series, with more physical combat and fewer magical attacks than its predecessors.
Once I’m done with Amazon, I’ll probably subscribe to HIDIVE, which I can get for only five bucks a month (a third of Amazon’s price), and start working through their catalog. After I’ve eliminated everything of immediate interest that they have, I’ll likely end up subscribed to the complete VRV package and return to Crunchyroll in spite of my increased misgivings. But I’ll put that off for as long as I can to give them time either to clean up their act or crash and burn completely.
So … that’s all I have for today. I’m just too pissed off at WordPress to write any more. I mean, is it too much to ask to have a blog editor that can insert numbered lists or special characters? And whatever happened to my ability to indent paragraphs?
I recently finished Made in Abyss. I’ll have the review up in a few days, but I want to give a reasonably thoughtful commentary on some of the controversy that surrounded this show, so my review might take a bit to polish. As a preliminary, I’ll just say that, whatever its source material might be like, the animated version is one of the best anime I’ve ever seen, up there with the likes of Vision of Escaflowne and Super Dimension Fortress Macross.
It should be watched for its background art if nothing else, but there’s also the soundtrack, the direction, the lovable characters … and the frontier medicine scene. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about.
I probably need to wait a few days to publish because if I talk about it too soon, I’m more likely to gush over it than review it properly. Just amazing.
But anyway, I think I should stop writing about it for tonight and go work on my book instead.
I was into Made in Abyss before it was cool … sort of.
The creator of Made in Abyss is one Akihito Tsukushi. I first learned of his existence when I discovered some stunning fan art he made for Fairy Musketeers, one of my all-time favorite magical girl shows. I thereafter learned that he had created a web serial called Made in Abyss, which was gaining some popularity because of its stunning artwork.
The Abyss.
Not long after that, the anime adaptation was announced, and it was simulcast on the (now defunct) Amazon Strike. Around the same time, Seven Seas Entertainment nabbed the manga for a translation.
During its run, Made in Abyss was about all anime fans were talking about. I watched as the talk in my Twitter timeline slowly evolved from “Made in Abyss is amazing” to “whoa this is dark” to “exactly how perverted is Made in Abyss, anyway?”
Scandalizing Twitter since 2017.
Much as I wanted to, I was unable to watch Made in Abyss during its run, because I was in graduate school and working two part-time jobs, and I simply couldn’t justify the frivolous expense of a streaming service. Now that I’m gainfully employed, however, I’ve been exploring the anime available on Amazon Prime, but I hadn’t yet made it to Made in Abyss because I was working my way through some of the available magical girl shows first.
The heroes of Made in Abyss.
I’ve now seen two episodes of the show and, I must say, it so far is living up to the hype. Although perhaps not quite on the level of the intricate designs from its source material, the background art in this anime is freaking amazingsauce. I almost don’t care about the story because I’m too busy drooling over the artwork.
But the story is really cool, too. The premise is that there is this enormous pit, of unknown depth, full of dangerous monsters as well as powerful relics, and a city with an entire culture based on its exploration has grown up around its rim. The protagonist is one twelve-year-old Riko, an excitable girl who wants to live up to the reputation of her mother, who was one of the Abyss’s great explorers. Living in an orphanage where she is a “Red Whistle,” an apprentice cave-raider, she discovers a robotic boy who possibly came from the Abyss’s deepest and unexplored levels.
Reg, the robot boy.
Exploring the Abyss is not only hazardous in itself, but it comes with a “Curse”: the lower you go, the greater sickness you face when you try to rise again to the surface. Anyone who explores deeply enough cannot leave the Abyss again without dying or losing his humanity.
The characters of Made in Abyss are drawn in a style sometimes called “puni plush,” an exaggerated anime style in which everyone looks like a prepubescent child—like, moreso than usual, I mean. The character designs accent the sense of wonder and adventure, but belie some of the story’s grimmer themes.
She looks so darn huggable.
The look and feel of this show is much like something that would come out of Studio Ghibli. Again, I’m only two episodes into it as I write this, but it is so far one of the best things I’ve ever seen. It’s has that sense that you’re watching something larger than itself, a story that was told around campfires long ago and that will still be told even after this particular version of it has been long forgotten. It feels timeless.
And the art! I sometimes just want to turn off the sound and stare at the pictures.
Shut up, Made in Abyss. I’m not paying you to talk.
A reader called my attention to this, a history and discussion of the tropes typical of the slew of recent anime, following on the heels of Sword Art Online, that depict a gamer otaku getting thrown into another world that looks like a sword-and-sorcery RPG.
This is a bit outside this blog’s usual scope; I admit my knowledge of this particular genre is minimal, simply because my interests run more toward shoujo anime, whereas isekai typically has male protagonists and a male target audience. However, the video does link isekai to predecessors from the ’90s like Magic Knight Rayearth and Vision of Escaflowne, which typically featured schoolgirls getting thrown into fantasy settings. Not discussed, but probably also an important influence on the isekai genre are the RPG-inspired fantasies from yesteryear like Record of Lodoss War.
In the last third of the video, the narrator explains that many of the light novels that make up the sources of isekai fantasy got their starts as web publications, and after suggesting that the isekai genre is saturated, he argues that this is leading in turn to a rise of “pure” fantasy without inserted modern characters, of which he holds up Made in Abyss as a premier example.
For recent examples of “traditional” or “pure” fantasy, I would also point to the less hyped but respectable Chaika the Coffin Princess, which was a competently made, light novel-based anime series that was something like an old-school fantasy in the tradition of Discarded Princess (because it was in fact from the same author and the same studio).
I have to confess I still haven’t watched or read Made in Abyss, though it’s on my list.
In case you’re wondering where I’ve been lately, I’m entering the last week of the summer school term, so I’ve been too busy to post regularly, or to keep up with current news in magical girls.
All my assignments are due by Friday. Once that day of reckoning comes, I’m going to sit down with Lamplighter’s notes on Jake in the Dynamo, make the necessary changes, and prepare a submission package. Once I have the art from Lowell, off it goes.
So once we reach the end of the week, I’ll start having some more reviews and essays for all y’all. We’ll definitely continue with Revolutionary Girl Utena and watch the second half of Sailor Moon S, at the very least.
Also, I noticed a couple of months back that my brief posts on the artwork from Made in Abyss were getting a lot of hits. This is because the animated adaptation is getting streamed on Amazon Strike. I’ll probably check it out as soon as it finishes its run; I don’t have time to follow it in real time.
As I had suspected it would when I saw some of the related art, the manga is also seeing an English translation, which I believe will be coming from Seven Seas Entertainment.
Also, based on the buzz, it seems the storyline is more … gruesome … than the puni plush character designs implied. You’d think I’d be familiar with this trick by now, but I guess I got fooled.
This escaped my attention back in January, but the web comic Made in Abyss by Akihito Tsukushi is slated to get a TV anime adaptation, directed by Masayuki Kojima and animated by Kinema Citrus.
And though it escaped my attention at the time, it was only a few days later that Crunchyroll reported news of an impending anime adaptation. I take this as further proof that I really live in a solipsistic universe that bends to my will, and you are all figments of my imagination. Bwa ha ha.
I hope Crunchy’s report is indicative of their plans to fish for the rights to stream a sub. At present, Made in Abyss is not legally available in English, though it was originally produced as a web series and can be read online in Japanese. I for one am quite curious about the series because the story sounds charming and the art is gorgeous.
And Tsukushi-sensei’s characters all look so darn huggable.
