Made in Abyss

Made in Abyss is 10's across the board. The manga is just gorgeous, and I am now a manga fan thanks to this manga.

I already absolutely LOVED the Made In Abyss anime and this manga only delves deeper into the extra crispiness seen in the anime.

Made in Abyss will forever be a top 5 anime/manga to me, I recommend it to anyone who is fiending for a unique adventure story in a cute and simplistic art style.

I'm begging for more chapters and absolutely cannot wait to see all of this goodness animated.

It would be irredeemable if you didn't give this manga your time :)

Lets start with the art on this one. The art is confusing and looks like rough sketches with marker shading, especially in the beginning chapters. A lot of pages feel like partial rough sketches with unfinished parts. Want to see what the abyss looks like? Nope, you’ll get very little clear shots of it(if any). Most of the time, the abyss will be undetailed/foggy/unclear/rough sketch like. No majestic scenery a la Berserk or Kingdom here. Also, the facial expressions on some characters are really unimaginative/1 dimensional. The art does get better in the latter chapters, still confusing and unclear but better.
Now the story. Its like a story for kids, complete with overly simplified plots, Generic 1 dimensional lifeless villains and cutesy wootsy stuff all over. Looking for complex plot or characters? You in the wrong place buddy. The twist in this story, is that it brings out MATURE content every once in a while, making a nice contrast with the cutesy wootsy stuff (some of it is just PERVERTED tough). The exciting, mysterious, imagination provoking abyss is what really carries this story. As a double edge sword though, the abyss also gives the author too much freedom so sometimes important events seem meaningless.
If you like cutesy wootsy stuff and 7 year olds save the world type stories but want one with a mature content twist, then you are probably going to like this one. NOT so much as mature, just MATURE CONTENT.

I was wrong. This manga is infinitely more disturbing than Madoka Magicka. Hhem. Anyway. Saw the first two episodes and then slid right into this manga like I've done nothing else in months. There was this quality that just hooked me.

After a while I lost steam but didn't grow disillusioned. The Abyss itself is like an echo chamber...more specifically, its layers--there aren't many things going on overall besides the mysteries and the adventure (spoiler: there's no big bad most of the time). I think this is natural as per the narrative/world structure of this manga which I'll give it brownie points for--structuring arcs of interest and certain characters is only natural. I just wish there was more linking them (in maybe a more One Piece like way). Like, an additional faction or a recurring dark horse character. I would have also liked another character perspective on the surface or something. Human society+the government itself seems so dead and irrelevant. I thought we were gonna get something more on Leader, a hint or a perspective shift, and then there's nothing.

But I gotta say that this is forgivable. The vacuum nature does add to the general sense of being isolated and trapped and packs on interest/power/urgency to the journey which is cool. The revelations happen at a nice pace as well and they at least have wider consequences. Well, retrospectively. Still waiting on whether or not the last "boss" defeat changes anything. Also, the White Whistles waiting below is so freakin' hype--the two ones that have shown up were absolutely wonderful. All the characters being left behind also adds to the belivability of the descent...if we were cast to someone on the surface, our sense of being lost in the abyss would weaken. More brownie points to this freakin manga for turning what should be its weaknesses into strengths. Hhem. Tangent over.

Characters: adorable mostly. Though, yeah, a few of them seem like moe fuel - you can tell when most of the important side characters look like female moeblobs - not gonna lie. This doesn't mean their character development is any less nice or tragic when it does happen.

The first (and only??) real villain was a freakin' badass. Shame about the being temporary part. Boo. Maybe the real villain is just the abyss? Conflict: kids v. setting

Controversy: Let it be know that while Made in Abyss is one of those manga you wouldn't really recommend unless the person has disturbed tastes or is into adventure, or just likes cute things being thrown at horrific things (I think it's an actual taste you can have? I kinda like it for non fetish reasons). It definitely doesn't shy away from any sort of body stuff. Yeah, I can't ignore it. You can portray weird stuff like this manga does in a totally harmless and innocent way. But, sometimes, it just doesn't. Be warned if you're easily disgusted.

Art: will melt your heart (n-not that this happens in this manga). The looseness of some of the designs is amazing--especially in the case of Oven's personality shifts being portrayed by the wild inkiness. Cool stuff.

There's a lot of visual thought put into the ecosystems and "science" of the abyss, which is cool. The only downside, like I mentioned before, is that we don't know much about the f'ed up government which enables this delving, or of society itself outside of Lysa's auntie--"But is it really a good idea?" We get that the Abyss is sorta like a religion, the delvers heroes, with an underlying dark doubt in some, like auntie. We don't really see anything much, visually, of the other delvers. It's kinda weird.

But why the hell do I still rate it a 10 with all my complaints? Well, for one thing, I'm an expert complainer. Let me now try to be an expert praiser.

Its loving attention to detail, amazing art won me over. Moreover, the fact that there's BARELY ANY manga like this--call it perverted or not, but you don't get much with this sort of creativity. The emotional peaks are legendary and there's a lot of cute character moments. You as the reader are compelled to go to the bottom of the abyss, too, and that sense of sublime unknowing and curiosity is a rarity in manga. (Let me also say that the abyss is crazy! It's almost like this gigantic being that wants to suck people in and keep them in it) I think we get a lot of that type of thing, but rarely so consistently powerful and alluring. So...do I recommend Made in Abyss? Er. Maybe? I don't know. One hell of an experience is what it is.

10/10 because I want more manga to make the reader feel full of velocity and adventurous spirit. Also, to be darker without losing its sparkling hopeful highs.

Now first i'll say I really enjoyed the anime.
The next thing i'll say is that I consider the manga a step down.

Put your pitchfork and torches down, I have my reasons.
1. Visuals
The manga has great visuals but sometimes the detail is so much that you pretty much can't see or understand what's happening, especially with all the concepts flying in and out.
The humanoid characters are drawn pretty well, the other characters are as if H.R. Giger became a furry. Phallic shapes everywhere with weird mutant fleshy deformities.

I guess that's nice, but it still confuses me and I wouldn't mind something a bit more ... normal, I guess?

2. Story
As I said, the concepts are tiresome.
The Bondrewd arch was great, but it was also very linear.
I also noticed that in this supposedly uncivilised world waiting to be explored they spend almost all of their time at some kind of shady bed and breakfast.

I wouldn't mind a little less towns and a little more cool world to explore.
I don't like me being showered with lore either. I don't care about that, I care about the world at hand. Not to mention we still haven't seen traces of Wakuna or Srajo.

I went into this expecting Dante's Inferno meets Girls Last Tour but instead I got Fallout: the manga, traveling from settlement to settlement and having to sit through epochs of fucking lore through conversation.

3. Character
I really like the characters. I could dive deeper into this but I complain better than I praise.
All I have to say is that the characters are diverse and well written. If you like femdom, I really recommend this series. I particularly liked the merchant fellow from the Narehate Village but he's pretty much the only good thing about that entire place.

4. Enjoyment
This manga can be tedious at times because of the incredibly slow pacing. You'd have to wait months to get a glimpse into this new cryptic story that ends in a cliffhanger. I wish I didn't have to rack my brain and quell my haste every time I tried to read this. Don't hold your breath folks, nothing spectacular really happens here.

Even the shock value has diminished.
"XD daddy's rod, aren't I edgy"
":DDD whip sexy naked kids"
"oh shit, it's the anarcho capitalist world DDD:"

I think that sums it up.
Don't enter this with high expectations. This really is quite mediocre, despite what contrarians will say, trying to show how open minded they are by following this new, avant-garde cringefest where the author tries to keep us entertained with the occasional shock.

I've been on the internet for too long for this to work on me.
Liveleak and Bestgore pretty much ruin this manga for anyone.

Well, it's time to drop Made in Abyss.

Two years ago I fell in love with the world of this manga, I was charmed by premise of mysterious, cursed pit, the sense of adventure, beautiful backgrounds, cool looking monsters and coming to age story of young protagonists.

Even if Idofront arc was a bit of step down in terms of exploration, it fixed a major problem with early parts - lack of interesting and compelling characters.
Not only Bondrewd is by far the best written character in manga, but through the interactions with him main characters finally got some very much needed bits of development. Despite some minor flaws, this arc was a great finale to adventures in the known part of the Abyss, and full of excitement I was ready to see terra incognita.

Oh, how wrong I was.

The sense of adventure is gone, because characters had to stuck in the same closed place for more than 2 years and ending is nowhere to be seen. Instead of actual exploration there are massive walls of text or endless flashbacks after flashbacks.

Riko didn't get any development; after 7 volumes long adventures in gruesome, horrible hellhole she is still one-dimensional naive, pure kid. Reg is somewhat here, I guess. Remember how his entire motivation to delve into the Abyss was to learn about himself? In recent chapters he missed every opportunity to reach this goal. Why? There is no explanation for this, perhaps author just wanted to drag the story for the sake's of dragging it.
What happened with Nanachi is just pathetic. I wish author had some balls and gave her fulfilling, climatic death as he originally planned, but as long as characters are selling tons of merch, they are immortal.

Ah, I see, following Nanachi's popularity mangaka added another cute furry, but now with 100% more tits and nonexistent personality. The first thing this character did was attempt to get into Reg's pants and it was enough to make this pathetic fandom scream about "best girl".
To be fair, not all characters of this arc are this bad, but the most interesting ones are sidelined, while story focuses on glorified rehash of Nanachi and Mitty backstory.

The shock value lost any weight. It's always the same story about the same naive little girl, who got screwed by Evil Man. If you've seen Mitty's story in anime, you've seen everything this manga can offer. New cute loli appears, something bad happens to her, everyone is sad for a while. Rinse, repeat.
And let's be honest, no one would care about these characters and their tragedy, if it wasn't fo the moe art style and their young age.

I'm actually kind of sad, while writing this review. This manga introduced to me one of the best fictional worlds and my favorite villain, but it's such a letdown in every other aspect. The awful pacing, release "schedule" and weird writing successfully killed my interest.

I survived several months of a filler fight with random monster, one year of boring flashback and after almost three months of waiting I got 10 pages of another flashback. I'm not invested in Big Loli Drama pt. 3, I don't care if obnoxious newly introduced furrybait gonna survive or not (I wish not), or how main characters will plot armor their way to the bottom this time. Now I'm exhausted, bored and disappointed. Someone may say: "but it's all build up for great climax! be patient!", but I gave up. There are a lot of great stories out of there, where I don't need to wait half of a year for a small portion of not so entertaining anymore content or to turn a blind eye on creepy pedofanservice.

May be later I'll check how the things ended on Wikipedia article and i think so far it's the best way to "read" Made in Abyss, since my eyes wouldn't bleed from loli nipples, shota boners and piss jokes thrown every five pages.

EDIT: COMPLETELY REWRITTEN (2021)

-INTRO:
Made in Abyss is a manga I often think about. I’m not talking about theories to solve the mysteries that belong to the world. I’m talking about the manga in itself. How did the author come up with such a powerful, engrossing, impactful, memorable and wonderful story. Everything about this manga is perfection. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Let me explain. Have you ever seen or read something, and as soon as you’re done with it, the only impression you have of it is “wow”. This is it, Made in Abyss is this and more. If you’ve watched some of the interviews of the author, Tsukishi Akihito, even him is amazed with what he created. And I can’t help but agree with the fact that this manga is a one in a million experience you hardly will ever forget. Whether you liked the manga or not, Made in Abyss leaves a mark. In my old review I was almost upset at how underrated this manga was, and when I tell you that I’m truly happy that many more people saw the potential this story holds, I mean it. Let me explain and justify why this manga is the best in its category.

-STORY:
The abyss, a giant chasm. Brought to life thanks to countless creatures, wonderful places you’ll hear about, mysteries no one knows the answer to and a logic that belongs to the abyss and the abyss only. It’s no surprise that the unknown is something humankind doesn’t want to have deal with, and that’s why the first thing you will want to do is to explore all of it, to face with the unknown and to analyze it. Curiosity is the very essence of our species and the main protagonist Riko is the embodiment of it. We follow Riko in her journey, what she discovers, is what we discover. The adventure she feels, is the one we feel. The answers she’s looking for, are the ones we’re looking for. Made in Abyss is first and foremost an adventure manga. This doesn’t mean the adventure in the world of Orth, the city built surrounding the abyss, is all about exploring and nothing more. No, it’s much more than that. Every time I mention adventure, is not the superficial meaning of it, but it’s also the study of one self and what it means to deal with it. Being Made in Abyss mostly a character driven story, is really no use talking about the story alone without properly talking about the characters.

CHARACTERS:
The characters in Made in Abyss have always been a grip for many. The main issue for some people is Riko. Riko is a naive 9yo child that wants know more about the abyss and her supposedly dead mother who’s waiting for her at the end of the so called “netherworld”. The more Riko descends into the abyss, the more she discovers about things she didn’t know about herself. That’s exactly what makes Riko a controversial character for many. She is a seemingly bland and empty character who acts very childishly (and what a surprise, she’s a child!) that doesn’t seem learn nothing from her mistakes. That’s what most people think of her and that’s where all of them make wrong assumptions about her character. As I previously said, Riko is the very essence of curiosity and naivity, and that’s okay. She’s not supposed to be more than that. Riko IS the main plot of Made in Abyss, without her carelessness we would have probably stayed in Orth and never exploring the abyss. If you can’t understand that Riko is adventure itself, we’re are reading a different manga. We have then Reg, a robot, maybe a human, or maybe both, that Riko finds in approximately to Orth in the first layer. Reg, having lost all of his memories, decides to stick with Riko in her adventure. Reg is another character many people are not happy with. Let me tell you again why he’s another outstanding character in the series. While Rilo embodies the adventure, Reg embodies the mystery. Who’s Reg? Where did he come from? Is he a robot or a human? What is his relationship with Lyza? Why did he lose all of his memories? Reg is supposed to be the big question and the key to the whole plot. That’s what makes the character the story itself. The known (Riko) and the unknown (Reg) gets together to embark on a long journey to get the answers we want and to feel the adventure of out two little children. Or course, Made in Abyss has many more characters that embodies even more aspects of humankind. Nanachi is a character that give a meaning to a journey strictly related to death; what it means to lose an significant other and to move on. Ozen, the lost of sanity in order to keep adventuring no matter what. She tries to give us an explanation of why the abyss is so feared yet adored. Bondrewd embodies science. To give answers to some of the mysteries and questions we might have, through science Bondrewd tries to challenge the abyss and its curse. Science always come at a cost, and in this case it means sacrificing someone to reach our own goal. Also, we could discuss about him being one of the best antagonist ever. We’re also introduced to Faputa, the embodiment of value, another character similar to Nanachi, but also not. Faputa is another character goes through the stages of grief and loss, but unlike Nanachi, Faputa stops at the second stage (anger), and itms throughly explored with a very detailed and inner journey of oneself and all the psychological aspects. We have then Prushka, which I can’t discuss about for spoiler reasons and Vueko, another character, more similar to Riko. Vueko is more of an adult version of Riko. But on the contrary, she at some point gives up. Lastly, Wazukyan, one of the three sages. He’s a sacrifice himself, gives up everything for the abyss, and becomes part of it.

ART:
It’s no secret that Made in Abyss has one of the best arts in the whole manga world. On par with other authors such as Boichi, Inio Asano and Kentaro Miura, Tsukushi Akihito succeed with flying color in giving an identity for Made in Abyss. Each manga page is filled with life. The abstractness, the details, the imagination and the shades all come together to give life to the Abyss and its characters. It’s art that depicts both the beauty and the horror of the abyss. Characters designs are unique and memorable, the creatures are different from one another, the imagination seems to never end, and they never fail to feel cute and fluffy or horrifying and dangerous. There isn’t really much to say here, the drawings really speak for themselves. They are a feast for the eyes and should be a reason alone to give Made in Abyss a try.

ENJOYMENT:
Some people have got many issues and struggle to find a reason of why someone could enjoy Made in Abyss. This manga is not all about suffering and torture porn, it’s absolutely not about the sometimes questionable nudity scenes of underaged children and it’s not a story that doesn’t know what do with itself. The enjoyment directly comes from the story’s unpredictableness to the antagonists that aren’t really antagonist, to the charming character and the many mysteries of the abyss. It doesn’t really take much to give an answer to why would someone could enjoy Made in Abyss. Made in Abyss is in my opinion a one in a lifetime experience that no one should miss out. It is truly the wet dream of everyone who wants to go on an adventure that comes with stakes rewarded by beautiful sceneries and strong bonds. The suffering is just another fun part of the manga, but as I already said, it’s not just that. And agree ti disagree, as weird as the nudity is (and I want to point out that it’s not to be viewed in a sexual way), it really is another aspect to the identity that is Madd in Abyss and make a different kind of story from every other manga. Some might feel uncomfortable, but personally I don’t really care about it and I laugh at it at best. It really is nothing of importance that takes away from any of your enjoyment. If you find it an issue, then you’re probably the issue.

OVERALL:
Taking place in a lovecraftian-ish setting, this manga is not to be missed out. If you’re looking for a sci-fi fantasy adventure manga, Made in Abyss is straight up your ally being the best of the best in its category. Everything it does, is perfection and the author aims at that. I can’t help but agree with the fact that, in my opinion, Made in Abyss is modern classic that will be remembered for a very long time. Deserving all the praise it gets and more, I couldn’t recommend you a better manga.
Thanks for reading and I’m sorry for eventual grammar mistakes or weird phrasing order. Anyways, go read it.

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.

I don't hate Made in Abyss, but it wasn't done as good as it could've been.
Everything about the Abyss itself is great and makes you crave for more. The mystery of what lies at the bottom, the atmosphere of the unknown, dangerous monsters, cute fluffy animals, rich fantasy flora, rare treasures and unique relics, each detail of this amazing fantasy world was crafted with love and dedication. Let's not forget the beautiful art, not only it's impressive from technical standpoint, but even less detailed panels are full of life and emotions. The setting is definitely intriguing and raises a lot of questions by the readers, which may be enough for some people to keep following this manga, despite sporadic release shedule.

The problem is that the plot doesn't quite deliever on the level of premise and the hype surrounding this series.
While the concept leaves a lot of space for an interesting worldbuilding and seems like a perfect set up for an adventure, the story mainly focuses on character drama, which isn't a bad thing, when it's done right, but that's not the case. Simply put, Made in Abyss characters are lackluster and even uncompelling, you have basic tropes like a naive girl with a dream to become as great as her legendary parent, an amnesiac nice guy, who wants to protect his friends and does it by magically remembering how to use his powers in the right time, a strict, but secretly caring mentor figure, possessive yandere and bunch of talking plot-devices, some of them died or leave the series when we barely spent time with them. I couldn't even feel anything for them, which was completely jarring. Interactions between characters don't seem to have been enough to generate the feelings they show to each other, a good example is a girl from the fifth layer, who developed a deep connection to Riko in a matter of few pages. If you build a drama on a weak foundation such as cardboard cutouts instead of characters and forced, tropey relationships between them, it is bound to collapse.

However, I wouldn't rank Made in Abyss so low if it wasn't for blatant emotional manipulation. Instead of building up the characters and making me care about them so that when something bad happens to them I get an emotional reaction, author is simply shoving sad tropes down your mouth without realizing what actually makes those tropes sad in the first place. It just throws in a tragic backstory out of the blue, just to make you feel sad, without having the reader connected to the character beforehand. The characters aren't so much characters as they are just sob stories with pretty designs (since lolis are cute and innocent - and will clearly elicit sympathy from readers) and the plot isn't so much a plot as it is a mechanism that allows to read these sob stories, before it throws us contrivances to get some weak emotional pay-off. At which point I didn’t understand why I should give a damn about characters suffering. Normally, empathizing with a character requires first understanding that character as a valid human being, an individual with a perspective the reader can relate and believe in, but Made in Abyss bypass that part by making all participants of Suffering Olympics adorable and pure little girls, often fetishized and reduced to moe fanservice. I started to lose faith with an author once I sensed that he is making bad things happen to a character just as a cheap plot formula and WOW SO EDGY HURTING A LOLI MY GOD ARE YOUR HEARTSTRINGS TUGGED YET?!

That's being said, after certain point the genre of the story shifts from grand adventure to a loli tear-jerker, abandoning all previously estabilished positives and delving deeper in the territory of meaningless mysery porn. The criticism is not that the manga is too bleak and dark. Lots of manga are bleak and gory. The criticism is that Made in Abyss seems to revel in that bleakness like an exploitation movie. Sure, edgy stories can be fun when athours are self-aware and creative enough to entertain reader with their twisted imagination, but when all you can offer is 50 shades of suffering lolis reading it becomes a complete chore, especially when no one of those bloody and disgusting scenes has any impact on the story. Riko's nerve damage and lack of agility in her arm is never used as plot point and Riko herself learned nothing from this failure. Reg lost his arm, but got Dragonball boost and never experienced any troubles while fighting. Faputa lost her arm and ear, but regenerated, two volumes later entire chapter was dedicated to her almost being eaten alive, but she regenerated AGAIN. What makes it worse, 50 shades of loli guro tries to aim to be something more and deeper than is actually is, but the lack of character development is a clear indication that violence and sexual innuendos were written for the sadistic joy of author and some readers. Character progression is basically nonexistant, blink and you miss it all. We are talking about small children here, small children adventuring in the hell pit, where thousands of adults died or lost their minds, children, who went through the loss of limbs, death of their friends and near-death experience, but not a single trait changed in them. By the end of current volume Riko is still a starry-eyed child, who wants to make friends with everyone and totally delusional about her ideals, Reg is no different from any shounen lead and Nanachi is going through the same character arc for the third time. A good author will use a cruelty of the setting to make characters grow from their hardships, but Made in Abyss author uses dark fantasy as an excuse to torture cute kids and show them naked.

Between the rushed pacing of the upper layers, the snail pace of the village arc, disjointed story full of cheap deus ex machinas, shallow characters and their forced drama, the sexualization of kids was just a last straw to the cocktail of disappointment. I've seen some people who are justifying the tittylation of 12 years olds by bringing a good ol' "for the plot and development" argument. Oh, if only Reg's or Riko's quality of writing was equal to the amount of pages where they are displaying private parts. Dostoevsky himself would be in awe of their depth. Ironically, the manga itself is the best proof that you don't need to show off character's erection every 5 pages to make them compelling. The less mangaka sexualizes the character, the better they are written, for some reason a fully dressed villain is the only character who left me in a positive impression, unlike all those poor children that are drawn mainly as a kink fuel.

The simplest way to describe Made in Abyss is unrealized potential: the manga. There are definitely some good parts, a lot of great ideas are burried under the layers of poor writing like a rough brilliants in the mud. I still think that it's one of the most visually impressive manga out of there, the setting itself is really interesting, and does an amazing job making you wonder what's further down and building up a sense of mystery. The antagonist of Idofront arc is also great, he is the closest the characters get to... actually having a character, charismatic personality and plot relevance for more than one arc. An absolute monster, but charismatic one, with his own warped sense of love and care. But as much as I want to love this manga because many of its pieces speak to me, it just doesn’t hold together with the polish it needs. The engaging introduction to this beautiful fantasy world is wasted on a story that makes it difficult to enjoy it. For every great world building element, there is a horny moment which makes you scratch your head. As interesting as the setting is, the disconnect between fascinating dark chasm and the one-dimensional main characters never truly goes away. The greatest tragedy of Made in Abyss is that it tells us the least interesting story possible in this world.