Words cannot do Made in Abyss justice. It is something best experienced with as little context as possible, and even if I were to go into the specifics of what this series entails, I cannot come close to conveying the sense of adventure, terror, anxiety, and awe that this series evokes. All you need to know is it's about the perils young delver Riko faces as she ventures through a bizarre and dangerous world trying to find her long lost mother.
With Made in Abyss, Akihito Tsukushi has already created an utter masterwork that will surely go down as an all-time great. The world-building is unparalleled, the setting and premise immediately grabbing, and the characters are so easy to love (too easy actually, this will cause you lots of pain!). It along with One Piece are the peak examples of "it's the journey, not the destination" which is something Reg and Riko are constantly battling with as they go deeper and deeper into the unknown, certain that they will never return even just a few feet up without serious repercussions. It's about the journey to find one's self more than to find whatever lies beneath.
I'm very happy with this recent trend of adapting manga arcs as movies (such as the upcoming Demon Slayer: Infinity Train and in a much looser sense with My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising). A movie makes for a more grandiose and fast paced execution of an arc typically seen as one that truly deserves as much as it needs to capture just how great it is. After experiencing this film, I can easily see why the decision was made to make this into a movie. Not only is this by far the best arc of the series so far, but it is also easily the most graphic and disturbing in every sense of those words. Dawn of the Deep Soul does stuff here that no other series I've experienced would even dare.
It is no exaggeration when I say this may have been the hardest film for me to watch and the first film to just completely break me into a sobbing husk since Dear Zachary. Even just writing this, I can feel the emotions and even tears coming back with a vengeance.
The core of this film is the enigmatic Bondrewd himself (who the viewer will already be familiar with if they watch/read the previous content, and oh you will despise him before this movie begins), performed masterfully by legendary voice actor Toshiyuki Morikawa (Sephiroth from Final Fantasy, Yoshigake Kira from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Griffith from Berserk, and Dante from the Devil May Cry series). This guy is without a doubt one of the most fascinating, compelling, and outright terrifying villains I've ever seen. Seriously, nothing can prepare you for him. I'd love to go into him more, but I just can't. If you know, you know. He just rocks. His voice, his theme, his design, his motive, his everything. His daughter Prushka is instantly one of the most endearing girls I've seen in recent anime. There's such a beautiful purity to her that, while shared with the other members of the shockingly young cast, hits harder given how isolated she has been from the outside world. This is especially true with the reminder that at this stage of the Abyss, It's practically impossible to return without some serious damage. Pushka is another great performance by Inori Minase (Rem from Re:Zero).
I could sing praise for all the voice acting, but pretty much everyone else in the movie is also in the anime, so you'll know how good they are by the time of this film. Everything in this film is just absolute pinnacle filmmaking. Art? Flawless. Animation? Flawless. Soundtrack? Flawless. Character? Flawless. Story? Flawless. THE SOUNDTRACK! Kevin Penkin's OST (also composed for Shield Hero and Tower of God) is another home run. Too many good tracks to count, and they all fit perfectly not just in placement or sonically, but also compositionally. There's so much thought put into each song, many of them having care and attention with specific details that relate to the character or action present on screen. The Rumble of Scientific Triumph, Tozo Hanoline, reBirth, and Cartridge Tears will all go down as anime OST legends (Gotta love the title of Bondrewd's theme being a reference to a terrible translation of Made in Abyss that called science "rumble").
The rawness of power, violence, and emotion here is unparalleled to any other. This series already was not for the faint of heart, but the movie cranks everything up to eleven. There were many instances of me just begging for the film to not go that far, to have some decency to not show me something, but it always did one way or another. I respect the Hell out of that, especially since the agony this film instills is done in an overall very tasteful and artistic way, and there is a lot of context to it all. This isn't mindless edge, which while I can enjoy that stuff as-is for other reasons, I just really appreciate it. Masayuki Kojima's direction perfectly walks the line of bold and reasonable, but that being said, yeah there's stuff in here you likely won't find anywhere else. It's easy to see why there's so much controversy over this series, and out of context, many of the actions it depicts are absolutely deplorable and shouldn't really be shown, but context matters, and Made in Abyss has a noble and thoughtful goal and mind behind it all. Outside of these few moments of completely boundary-shattering content, a lot of the horror and disturbance comes more from the personal attachment we gain to the events and content that surrounds it. This series just knows how to make an opera out of your heartstrings!
I probably shouldn't have done a review for the third Made in Abyss film before reviewing the anime or manga, but this film was just such an overwhelming experience that I needed to get words out. I sincerely believe this film as well as the series overall is a prime example of peak storytelling. There are very, very, very few pieces of art that so powerfully moved me in such a short amount of time I was exposed to it as Made in Abyss. It is such an immediately and powerfully gripping series, and this movie is all of that and more. I'm not sure I'd want to watch it again, but that first experience is one I will think about until the day I die. A totally powerful exceptional filmmaking feat.
