This is not a good manga. Most reviews here and elsewhere would have you believe that this is the best series since humanity invented sliced bread but I would beg to differ.

The manga starts with an exciting premise. Our 12 year protagonist lives in a town that surrounds an unexplored hole called the Abyss. No one knows how deep it is or its origins or the dangers that lurk in it. She discovers a mysterious robot on the edge of Abyss that has lost its memories. We also learn that our protagonist has a mother who is the most famous explorer of the Abyss but has not been seen for the past 10 years. Our protagonist wants to meet her mom and therein lies the plot. Simple enough. We have three mysteries, all of them tied to the mysterious Abyss.

While it starts simply enough as an adventure, the author brings in mystery, horror and thriller elements to keep the reader engaged. And the manga is brimming with creative art which clearly demonstrates the talent and imagination of the author. Sadly, those are the only positive things that I can say about the manga.

My biggest criticism is that this manga’s narration proceeds like a rudderless ship stranded in the middle of a stormy ocean. It zigs one way and the zags another with no sense of purpose or direction. For instance, in one of the most infamous chapters one of our main characters is subject to physical torture. I’ll spare you the gory details but body mutilation is involved. And yet in the very next chapter, this character fights the villains and almost wins! Hmm. So, was the point of that torture-porn simply to make readers squirm? Here’s another – in this same arc the main side character starts out as the villain’s accomplice, switches sides, then switches side again, is killed, then revived and finally ends up becoming friends with our main characters. Wow. In the currently ongoing arc, a character who was thought to have been dead suddenly reappears, ends up putting one of our protagonists out of action, only for them to leave and our protagonist is now back just in time to help out our two other protagonists. And in the middle of all this, the author shoehorns a 200 page flashback so that he can somehow make the plot cohere.

Al this is clear evidence of bad writing. It indicates that the author has no overarching plot and just makes stuff up. He gets an idea, runs with it, only to find himself stuck and then retcons the earlier events when he feels like it. As of chapter 56, all the original three mysteries that were posed at the start of the series have been conveniently forgotten. Our protagonists are in someone else’s adventure acting like pawns in a game of chess that they should not be a part of. Now while adventure is exciting and drawn beautifully, l as the reader have to sit back and ask – what is even the reason for this adventure to exist? How does this fit in with the original three mysteries? It doesn’t. And for me, it doesn’t look like it will either.

I’m dropping this train-wreck. I’ve better stuff to read/watch.