Made in abyss continues strong as the animation remains beautiful, the music perfect and the story progressing with revelations at a good rate. I particularly lie that they provided necessary details about the different ranks of miners based on whistle colour through a puppet show. It’s a good way of providing the audience information without having to sit the cast in a room and have someone drone on endlessly. Take pointers Re:Creators, get the audience the info it needs without dragging down the pacing. This episode mainly acted to setup the main plot of this series as we have Regu get integrated into the orphanage and the discovery of Riko’s mother’s white whistle. Along with the notes that seem to suggest that Riko’s mother is waiting in the depths of the abyss for her.
I really like the pacing of the anime so far as I found the manga wasn’t really moving fast enough for me while the anime seems to be quickly getting to the point. It does mean we have a montage over events but it doesn’t really felt like anything of worth was truly lost. The biggest piece of info here is that we may have the first hint as to what the title of this show actually means. I originally thought that it referred to Regu who was a robot Made in Abyss. However here we find out that Riko was born in the depths of the abyss because her mother was ordered to dive despite being pregnant. Due to the curse of the abyss which appears to affect people in different ways depending on how deep they dive into the abyss, Riko’s mother had to carry a heavy relic in order to protect Riko from the effects. As a result she had to abandon the relic she came down to find in exchange for saving her daughter. Actually a really badass back story that shows how legendary Riko’s mother truly was. Though one thing that is most certainly going to come into play here is that Riko wasn’t completely unaffected by the abyss’s curse and had to wear glasses due to the abyss curse affecting her eyesight. Riko seems to think this gives her some immunity to it though her trainer is quick to correct her on that. I however think that her eyes are bound to play a role in this story somehow.
I really do adore the animation in this show that even small events like Regu using his extending arm to grab a pot just looks great. This show certainly captures the feeling of a Ghibli movie though from tidings I hear it’s going to be more serious than that. Though the question is just how serious? I personally like the current lighthearted nature so if it decides to go full dark it could potentially lose that. So with the tidings this episode that brings me to the strange third character appears in the ending of this show. Looks to be so sort of funny bunny creature of sorts and I can make a good guess that it could be a child affected by the curse of the abyss. It was briefly mentioned that traveling too far down can turn you into something other than human. Theres also the question of just how Riko is going to get permission to travel down so far but considering her personality displayed to this point I don’t think she will let a little something called inexperience get in her way.
