I came into this series knowing nothing about the story. The anime is praised seven ways 'til Sunday but I thought I'd check out the source material before giving the anime a try. Boy, was that a mistake.

The worldbuilding and lore is interesting. A colony of people live in an enormous pit that descends into the planet and it's the size of an entire continent. Explorers, ranked by colored whistles, are chosen to descend and collect relics that could help their society thrive...only to break down relics to be made into white whistles—the highest rank an explorer can get. If an explorer obtains a good enough relic, they will earn more accolades and it could put them up for a promotion. The lower the explorers descend, the higher the chances of altitude sickness and death. The design for the environment and the monsters are stunning and creative. The art style, while serviceable and sometimes beautiful, is made up of unpolished pencil sketches. Everything after that is where the series fails.

The manga has a mature rating for something about kids. I thought that was odd and, now that I've read the first volume, I wonder how it was ever greenlit. First of all, the society sends orphans into the pit as free labor so there's a complete lack of regard for child safety and labor laws. That's not even the worst of it. Made In Abyss contains depictions of children in...compromising positions. The main character—a 10-year-old orphaned girl—is shown naked, tied up in rope bondage, with ahegao face, and strung up to be displayed by an adult in the first chapter. You need to draw the line somewhere and that line definitely should not go that far.

Look, I am by no means a prude but I hope we can all agree that it shouldn't be acceptable for an adult to so much as think about drawing and writing underage girls in inappropriate ways. I hope that the anime is nothing like the source material, but I don't know if I can get over my initial impressions.