The set up of the story is incredibly interesting: a whole civilization build up on the verge of a mysterious Abyss, which hides magical items and wonderful creatures. Along the story the mystery of the Abyss just intensifies, showing bones of unknown humans that were supposed to live there a long time ago, reminding you of some Dante's Inferno (aided also from the morphological similarity with the Abyss itself) as well as religious faith and the intriguing "curse of the Abyss" which affect every explorer that try to come back from the underworld.
Finally, the superior premise of the show is also coupled with very fine art and music: so what can possibly go wrong with Made in Abyss? Well, to put it simple: all the rest. And it is a shame.
Unfortunately, most of the important points of the anime fail to keep up with the incredible world they live in. Let's talk about them in the specific.
- Story development: the pace is really slow. It would not be a problem in general, and I am a big fan of slow stories when they're done right, but this is not the case. Most of the episodes time is wasted by Riko & Reg running away from some (not-so-real) danger, or developing characters which will not appear later on in the show, thus leaving a big chunk of nothing with which to develop the descent of the protagonists. Even the weird compass hold by Riko at the beginning of the show is lost in a river with almost no reaction from the child. Similarly, many interesting themes (where the Abyss come from? there were previous civilization who lived there? why do magic items work, and how do they propel the human civilization? why is risking life for reaching the underworld worth it?, etc.) are just barely touched and their under-development is just a big missing shot. Overall the story is flat, and after 13 episodes you're left with very little apart from what the premise already tell you.
- Characters: they are kids. It would be fine if they were treated as such, thus exploiting this characteristic for a better story development, but this is not the case in my opinion. I can even accept that finding your own mother is a good motivation for throwing your life away in a 99% failure rate travel, but it seems at least weird nobody even tried to made Riko reflect about that. Riko & Reg are obviously too inexperienced for trying a descent in the underworld, yet nobody of the adults really try to stop or to warn them. The only exception is made by Ouzen (which is by far the best character of the series), but even here, when she starts beating the hell out of Reg, the situation is solved by a simple "I was testing you" and everything is back to normal with then an entire episode wasted for the traditional survival-test of 10 days, where almost nothing happens. And this situation perpetrates the whole show: any time the kids are in danger either some other character comes in help or the difficulties are just solved by chance. As a result, characters do not grow, and their attitude at 4th stage of depth is the same they had at 1st. This is another big chance missed, since the premise made you think that the Abyss would be a great school for the adventurers.
- Themes: this is something that is missing in most of the review, even the not-so-positive ones. What are the themes Made in Abyss dealt with? I can barely find the "usual" adventure-show ones, thus mystery and ambition. Especially, it seems sometimes even explicit (terrible thing tho) that the show main theme is "Ambition". But where the ambition of explorers come from in that world? Is Riko really ambitious or is she just moved from the desire of meeting her mother?
No other themes has passed to me, or at least no one seems developed deep enough to leave a sign.
To conclude, my personal experience with this show has been definitely poor, sometimes I was even bored by the story, and only the good graphic and music were able to keep me on track.
I was then also extremely surprised by the tons of positive reviews the show had received, especially already in 2017 (so excluding the movies, which I have not seen yet). Where are they coming from? I tried to read some of them, but I fail to understand the point. Am I missing something?
It can be, but for the moment I would say Made in Abyss is a mediocre anime, which in summary lacks of depth despite having the potential to do so. I am just hoping the later movies will compensate this, but we will see.
