Made in abyss, the anime. I was pretty pumped for this one, after all, i just happened to pick up and binge the manga a mere few days prior to the anime release, without knowing about it. The manga for this series was superb, even if it did play on the angst and drama a bit too much, and contained some questionable material (mainly underage nudity, although i still find it not too clear how people are more disturbed with this rather than the other themes in this manga such as torture, gore, death, and all the other insanity going on)
Unlike the manga, the anime version starts out even more colorful and light heated, and stays that way as long as it can manage, to the point it throws away its awesome pace of about 2 chapters per episode, and starts to drag out horribly near the mid point. Now then, for the actual analysis - am i satisfied with the anime? Not really, and here's why:
1: Art. While being almost stunning in the start, mostly on the part of backgrounds, the quality quickly degraded, both looking less appealing overall, and starting to stretch out scenes longer, in order to skip on more drawing. The scenes in the anime where almost fully copied from the manga, and if at first it managed to be even better looking than it, after about 1/3 in, it was looking way worse. Nanachi also looks way worse than in the manga, especially in certain scenes.
2: Voice acting and sound. The sounds and music where mostly sufficient, and even good at times, so was the voice acting, however the voice actor for Nanachi was somewhat bland, especially in the last episode where she did a horrible job in the emotional parts, at least in my opinion. Also the one for Ozen was somewhat mediocre.
3: Story and pacing. While the story was pretty much the same in the anime as in the manga, the pacing made it worse - it started off really good, using about two chapters per episode (and do keep in mind the first chapters are also longer in most manga), ensuring a lot of content, good interest for the viewer, and a natural flow of time. After episode 4 of 5 though, it slowly started crawling to a halt, using less than two, and even less than one manga chapter at times from then on (and remember what i said, the chapters of the manga are shorter at this point too). The training arc that was merely a set of images in the manga was stretched to about a third of an episode, and the descent to the fourth layer that only took a couple of scenes in the manga was stretched into a whole episode with the addition of a filler (that wasn't too bad, but still).
All of those combined, made the anime somewhat lacking compared to the manga, even almost boring around the middle point at times due to the horrible progression. Additionally, i was dissatisfied with the ending theme, that didn't really fit the manga's mood at all (though it did fit the anime more, since it was so much less grim and barely scratched the harsh parts of the manga), and showed Nanachi early on (unlike other new anime that hide characters in the op/ed until they make an appearance and we know who they are), despite that she only appears in the last quarter of the anime (so about over two months of real time from when she was first shown in the ed to when the audience gets to see her). From how the story was progressing in the first four to five episodes (and the last episode being announced as a hour special), i was sure the anime would end after Bondrewd's arc and the decent past the point of no return, yet they slowed it down so much that it barely fit in two thirds of the material till then, leaving Bondrewd for the movie.
So, final verdict? Still a decent anime to watch, and totally worth checking out, but nowhere near as amazing as it could have been. About 7/10 compared to the 8/10 i'd give the manga.
