Normally when I finish a series I take a moment to think back on it and try to imagine just how I would make it better. Maybe better pacing or removing a certain character or story arc that went nowhere or just improving the animation at certain points. But with Made in Abyss I tried to do the same thing and found myself coming up blank. I really cannot see how this series could have been done better and in thinking of this I came to realise this series may have far more value that I initially realised. Potentially the value to be called a future classic of the genre but that may be me getting ahead of myself. Well the finale of this series goes out with a bang as we have a double length episode to close out the series. The majority of this episode detailed about how Nanochi began living in the abyss and how she and Mitty came to be twisted into the forms they are now. Finally ending off with Mitty being mercy killed and Nanochi joining Riko and Regu on their journey to the bottom of the abyss. I was right that with Nanochi added to the group that the group dynamic is far better as a whole. Nanochi adds a playfulness that makes the interactions more fun to watch and I am certain she would be a boon in the future of the story.
There were a lot of emotional moments during this finale and this may just be the best episode of the series. Bondrewd looks to be trying to make up for his lack of presence throughout the series by pumping all his villain credibility into this one episode wherein his actions are so morally disgusting that I was wishing for his death by the halfway point of this episode. The transformation of the two girls was absolutely brutal with Mitty’s horrific dissolving into a tangled genetic mess being the stuff of nightmares. I pray some ignorant parent does not mistake this show for a children’s cartoon or this would be a level of trauma they might not get back from. Provided they made it through the arm breaking scene. Though as disturbing as it may be that didn’t quite affect me due to my resistance built up over the years. However to my absolute shock the death of Mitty hit me harder than I ever thought it would. I didn’t think I would find her death so tragic but i found myself welling with emotion at Nanochi setting up the toys and comforting Mitty in her last moments. The dam broke when Nanochi had a brief moment of regret, calling off Regu and hugging Mitty while apologizing, only to walk back and ask Regu to kill her again. I didn’t cry buckets but tears did roll down my face and being the soulless husk that i am, I consider any show that can wringe that level of emotion out of me something truly special. As a side note i was surprised to see that Riko has a scar after all the treatment.With years of watching anime where in bandages heal all wounds without a single blemish it’s great to see some lasting consequences.
Sadly though I say I have trouble imagining this show being better, if there is one flaw I could truly pick out it would be this. The show ended at the point it wasn’t supposed to end. In the final minutes the main cast has come together, the main villain(At this time) has been made apparent and this truly is the real beginning of this story. Suddenly roll credits. Want more? Read the manga. The chances of a second season are not quite grim and I would like to believe that a show as good as this would get the sales it deserves. However anime continuation has always been tied to the sales of its source and no matter how good it is, if there is no return from that then there is no second season. It’s a sad thing that adapting a source to competition is the exception rather than the norm. I thought about picking up the manga again on this series end but as I saw the small balloon float through the various beautiful levels of the abyss with that evocative melody playing I realised that without the music, sound, colour and gorgeous backgrounds that this series just wouldn’t have the same level of impact. The artwork of the manga is nothing to scoff at but I still doubt it can bring forth the same magical feeling and atmosphere of the anime. So I will hold off on reading this group’s future adventures until I can be certain no second season is coming. Then I will jump in due to necessity. Hopefully that will not be the case. For now despite it’s incomplete nature I am willing to say this will be making it into my best anime of the year list.
Same here. I can’t remember the last time an anime made me genuinely sad. It’s even weirder her because Mitty was just a suffering (more or less) mindless creature and killing her is actually a good thing. While I really love the atmosphere of the manga and even prefer the amount of shadings it has over most of the actual colored bacjgrounds of the anime the Mitty scene didn’t hit me as hard there as it did here. Guess voices, colors and music are really powerful sometimes. Not to mention that you read faster than you watch a series, so I spent like a few seconds or maybe one minute on Mitty’s transformation and death while reading it whereas these scenes were really streched (in a good way) in the anime, giving it way more emotional impact.
Regarding sales, there is a very little bit of hope since the BD pre-orders gained a big boost after the last episode, catapulting the series into Amazon’s top ten and there is still quite some time to go till the relase date of the BD box, so the sales could be good, I really hope they will.
Aside from that, there is one thing I was sad about and that’s the sound directing. I listened to the OST and there were many great tracks the director never used. It’s expecially depressing considering that some tracks seem to have been composed especially for certain scenes, like “Nanachi in the Dark”. The Nanachi flashback is honestly the only part of the story where this track would have fit perfectly, probably the part when she left the room and overheard Bondrewd’s revealing conversation.
Another track is “Crucifixion”, which fits so absolutely perfectly to the elevator scene that I can’t imagine the composer having any other thing in mind while creating that music. See here where someone combined scene and track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5GWHYrQMtc
If there is ever a s2 I hope they’ll use those missing tracks (there are at least 5 tracks I am pretty sure the anime creators never used).