Made in Abyss Movie 3: Fukaki Tamashii no Reimei Episode 1 Discussion

nejino21 said:
I'm in mixed feelings about movie. The first season of anime was a great improvement over manga, a lot of people hated slow pacing, but I liked it. More exploration of the layers, a lot of original material helped to flesh out world, which was barebones in manga, more time to feel emotional moments and just think about beuaty and horrors of the Abyss.

I expected the same treatment for Bondrewd's arc, but movie feels even more rushed than manga. A lot of emotional scenes lost their weight because everything is happening too fast. It jumps from one scene to another without a break, some scenes are molded together and you have awkward switches from cute girls doing cute things to Bondrewd being Bondrewd, than cute girls and their hamster are cute again, but minute later it goes full horror. I checked manga and as much as it was fast paced, it wasn't like this.

If I was anime only I don't think I would like Bondrewd half as much as manga reader. In manga he was creepy, insane, merciless lovecraftian monster, but also passionate and caring. He could look like a nightmare fuel, but also like a total goofball. In movie he is static, he barely moves in non-fight scenes, animated version of him feels way less lively than black and white silent bunch of pictures from manga. Morikawa has a great voice, but he often sounds too lazy and monotonous. And what kind of genius decided to cut his backstory from movie?

Movie is good for fight scenes and might be a great cryporn, all thanks to Penkin's OST. Green Mitty was handled a bit better than manga's counterpart, at least she doesn't move her giant bare tits right in your face during emotional moments. I still don't care about her, mainly because I got fed up with abuse of break the cutie trope.
There is your grain of salt from manga reader.

Instead of building up the characters and making me care about them so that when something bad happens to them I get an emotional reaction, author is simply shoving sad tropes down your mouth without realizing what actually makes those tropes sad in the first place. It just throws in a tragic backstory out of the blue, just to make you feel sad, without having the reader connected to the character beforehand. Normally, empathizing with a character requires first understanding that character as a valid human being, an individual with a perspective the reader can relate and believe in, but Made in Abyss bypass that part by making all participants of Suffering Olympics adorable and pure little girls, often fetishized and reduced to moe fanservice. I started to lose faith with an author once I sensed that he is making bad things happen to a character just as a cheap plot formula and WOW SO EDGY HURTING A LOLI MY GOD ARE YOUR HEARTSTRINGS TUGGED YET?!

WolfieJones said:
Wonderful movie, but I just realized.

Did Reg ever get his arm back?

Confucius said:


So who is this person? reveal next season?

shayed__ said:
Hmmm. I feel like 80% of the people that absolutely loved this movie were manga readers.

I might be in the minority here but I kind of lost track later on in the movie. Things got a little crazy with "cartridges" "your worth" forbidden relics that lets you transfer your consciousness to another body, how exactly bondrewd was able to achieve immortality by forcing the curse of the abyss on the childrens organs etc.

All that left me kind of confused at the end of the movie. Maybe it was due to a lack of intelligence that I didn't immediately understood everything or maybe the pacing was just super fast, or the directing could have been a tad better, I don't know. Either way that kind of deminished my enjoyment for the movie.

Art, animation, soundtrack etc were all very good though, but that is expected from a movie. Soundtrack didn't hit as much as the season 1 one.

Besides my lack of understanding for some plot points. I'd have to agree with other fellows here in this discussion that the sense of exploring and world building was missing in this movie. I'm sure season 2 will continue the greatness that season 1 was, and I guess that it was the right decision to make this arc a standalone movie instead of mixing this arc and the next one in season 2.

Alaries said:
The biggest flaw of Prushka's character isn't her lack of development, Mitty wasn't very well written too. She got even less backstory than Prushka and their personalities are pretty much the same. But Mitty worked way better as a plot device and as a plot point that main characters needed to overcome, she brought to the table at least 3 interesting conflicts - the eutanasia dilemma, Nanachi's possible suicide and Reg's unwillingness to kill something that used to be a human. But there wasn't any magic salvation and magic cure, no hidden ability ro restore her human form, her situiation was completely hopeless and characters had no other choice, but to deal with it.

Prushka works in the exact opposite way, she IS the magic salvation. Without her sacrifice there wouldn't be a chance for Riko to obtain White Whistle, more over, useless shit should be fucking grateful to Bondrewd that she doesn't need to kill anyone by herself. This I why the first season was so much better, it was about vulnerable children that are trying to survive in the wilderness with bare minimum of skills and knowledges. If Riko did a dumb mistake, Reg had no other choice, but too break her arm, if Nanachi didn't find a way to kill Mitty (and she was searching for a cure by using people as test subjects), Reg had no choice, but to kill her off. Ozen was completely unstoppable, the abyssal beasts were a nightmare.

In the movie the tension of the first season was completely lost. Reg can now kill everything and everyone. Riko can cry in the corner as much as she wants, her insane luck can solve everything. It reminds me how The Promised Neverland went from a well-thought mind games with a horror bits to a nonsense with 12 years olds beating the shit out of formerly dangerous demons.

Neverius said:

What? Missing arm of Reg, Riko literally falling into a depression from everything in the events of this movie, the Bun with he continuous trauma finally moving on from Bondrewd power and presence. It is kind of funny you mention Mitty and how it is a challenge for the three of them when one was in a coma all that time. And tell me, did Reg before was reaching the point of insulting someone because they were grieving their death as he saw Prushka grieve Bondrewd? Nope. Was Riko questioning her whole culture and history by finally seeing cartridges, whistles and reality in the search of Prushka? Beating the shit out of? Literally it was until the end in an overload, overload that almost let to Reg killing the rest of the party and that it required the three of them to finish the enemy on a gamble card and with Reg beatten to a pulp. Mate I get some elements like not feeling Prushka as much as Mitty but come on, at least use valid points for that defense like lets say you didn't feel their bond as strong or idk, not things that literally contradict what happened.

Alaries said:

Reg's missing arm isn't a big deal, he can remote control it and he got a few super upgrades. Looking at how the author forgot about Riko's disabilty, I'm pretty sure Reg's loss wouldn't be a problem and they still can reattach the arm later. Crying for 5 minutes ≠ depression, at end of the movie Riko is happy and smiley again, Nanachi didn't mind to leave Bondrewd at all.
My point is very valid, Prushka is a shitty MacGuffin that exists only to give a useless mc what she wants without forcing mc into committing an actual sacrifice like it was supposed to be. The first season was also in a guilty of this, when Reg was about to cut off Riko's arm, but Nanachi came to the scene out of the blue and saved the day, but the movie is just Deus Ex Machina galore. Oh no, Riko needs to kill one of her closest friends! Oh wait, there is a useless spare character that will be killed by a villain. Nevermind, problem solved.

Neverius said:

Only for shooting the incinerator or in other words the last resort, only for battle, as the delving for the rest of the Abyss that will only get tricker (and so can be an even bigger problem than fighting) is very screwed up. Forgot? Tell me, was Riko doing Rambo, delving all around, exploring like in the first season, nope, her actions were a minority to say the least in this movie for a reason. 5 minutes..., mine remind you of literally waking up of a dream chocking and screaming, Dennying reality in a pure anguish when knowing the truth of white whistles and cartridges, and freezing up completely when she know the end of Prushka, plus still crying when descending, after all the time of waiting for Reg awaken, organizing, reaching the last dive and possible extra time to plan what they do. Your point is very subjective, important difference mate. You may see it but I see it as part of very deep bound that didn't require time, might reminded some words of Riko and Prushka conversation" I don't even know if I want to become a white whistle anymore, just continue the journey until the bottom with Riko and Reg". Sacrifice? Mate They are three people, the sacrifice you are mentioning here is the equivalent of ending the journey, and who will receive the whistle? The suicidal bunny or the Robot lost without her companion, Riko or Reg dies and that is end of the journey. Deus Ex? If there was one it would be only the whistle and not even that as is the natural outcome of Bon plan of years ending and Prushka desire to go on a journey connecting with a desire to reach the bottom. Or just a little project of multiple years that involved building love year after year with a character to eventually discover the blessing of the abyss, putting all pieces to make our characters finish to strength that love by killing the father of that character letting to the finish of the project and so reaching the scientific triumph to see the curse and in so beat it.

Alaries said:

My points may be subjective, but at least they are based on what was shown in the movie and not on fanfiction headcanons.
In the first season Riko got her arm injured and we were promised that she will suffer from the partial disability later. That's not a thing at all in DoTDS, she never struggles from having her arm heavily mutilated.
Reg got his arm chopped off in the first minutes, but since then it's not a problem at all, even more so, his severed arm became a key to defeat Bondrewd.
You can imagine how it will be hard for them to traverse through the Abyss later, but for now that's just your predictions and fanfiction. From what it was actually shown, the characters are never struggling from their injuries and traumas.

Same goes for Riko's mental state. I don't see her being really traumatised, I see how she cried for two minutes, but bounced back to her light headed, happy state in the very next scene.

Franck_Nicolas said:


yeah, so i personnaly had french subtitles. They said he kept only a few organs : the brain, half of the spine and there was another thing but i don t remember. It s w a bit weird because it doesn t look like that in the boxes. I would say it could be brain mixed with some guts. It s very weird to write this XD

I m not 100% sure so if anyone can give more details you re welcome.

tra- said:
To future watchers,
There are no extra scenes after the credits, unfortunately (only a "to be continued").

Dracus said:
I am probably a tiny minority here, even though I am not entirely alone. Here are my main gripes with the movie:

1. Too much magic for my taste. Relics completely turned into convenient plot-devices that may be pulled out of nowhere at any moment and do any shit whatsoever. I know that MiA is not a hard sci-fi, and relics in the TV series did things pretty impossible in our universe too, that's the point I think. And yet it felt much more "grounded" there, because we rarely encountered them - each "magic" Relic that breaks the laws of nature was perceived as a truly rare object. Here, they are treated like no big deal.
2. Sudden drops in animation quality here and there. For instance, some scenes of the battle in the Miniature Garden look like Naruto in its worst times, despite incredible quality of adjacent scenes. Overall, the animation and art are very good and it goes without saying how mind-blowing Dark Reg is.
3. Some aspects of characterization. Riko does nothing useful the entire time, only cries, and in fact it is as if she lost her maturity she attained towards the end of the TV series, a lot. But Prushka is much worse. I am expected to feel something about her cruel fate when for the majority of the movie she is not even one-dimensional, she is treated like a pure plot-device. And that sucks. If only her backstory could've been shown before our party arrives to Ido Front, to let the viewer get familiar with the character, to perceive her as a person, even though I know that it is difficult from the script and structure perspective - the backstory as shown flows immediately into the recent past. But as it is right now, it doesn't work and I felt nothing. In addition, Prushka's decision to become Riko's whistle isn't backed by sufficient relationship build-up.
4. Worldbuilding is not as good as it was. This is the first time I needed to turn to Wikia and author's interviews after watching the movie to understand some aspects of the lore, like how exactly the cloud Bondrewd works, or how he is able to peer into Nanachi's vision, or what water supports are made of, exactly, etc. I never felt such a need when watching the TV series, as everything we saw was sufficiently explained by the characters on screen. On the other hand, yeah, learning what a White Whistle actually is was a revelation.
5. They cut an important bit near the very end, which explains why they left Bondrewd and his base standing, but they left Papa's Rod and Reg's erection. I had nothing against sexuality in the TV series, as it was shown naturally and in right places. But here it feels jarringly out of context.
6. The pacing is too fast, but I admit that's nitpicking.

The points raised above can make the impression I didn't like the movie. That's not it. It's Made in Abyss after all - one of the best anime in existence. Bondrewd is fantastically done. He is the star of the movie, and the best incarnation of Mad Scientist archetype. As a researcher, I can totally understand the power of curiosity, and this is what makes him all the more frightening - there is rationale to everything he does, but he isn't able to feel love and compassion at all. I like how in this whole Abyss-related culture, not excluding Riko, the cave raiders and Oorth in general, the Western concept of human rights is nowhere to be seen, as is the intrinsic value of human life. This is very interesting, makes the whole human society there as alien as it is. Dawn of the Deep Soul reinforces this feeling greatly.

And yet, I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed by this arc and its execution. The series finale set a very high bar and raised my expectations, and the movie somewhat failed to meet them. I wasn't impacted emotionally by it all that strong, unlike the finale, which I rewatched right before Dawn of the Deep Soul - and still cried.