Anime 36862 Made In Abyss Movie 3 Fukaki Tamashii No Reimei Reviews Filter Check 3

[This review is spoiler free, and does not discuss any specific plot beats!]
Going into this film, I was hoping that this adaptation would fix the problems of the arc that it was based on: the pacing issues, and the rampant sexualisation of child characters.
It became apparent that this would not be the case at around the 30 minute mark. In the original manga, this arc was not told in a chronological order - flashbacks regarding the character Prushka would happen at opportune moments to ramp up emotions, almost as if the author had forgotten to make us care about her earlier, and was using ... Chekhov's Time Machine to slip in plot points and exposition right before it became relevant. At 30 minutes in, when one scene struck me as a little short, I realised that this film would be an incredibly faithful adaptation - to its own detriment.

It was also at this point that a very specific grim event made me take a break from the film and return later. The sexualisation of minors across this film is equal parts grim and unnecessary - young characters (at multiple different points) talk about genetalia, and it begs the question of... "Why"? It doesn't add to the overall plot, nor is it an opportune way to convey the characters' age and immaturity to an adult audience. In comparison to the original manga, I believe the only thing cut was one count of explicit nudity. This aspect of Made in Abyss is disgusting, upsetting, and disappointing - there are so many interesting bits of lore and story accross the manga, anime, and now this film that are soured by this. My contempt for this is enough that I hope with all my heart that this review will discourage anime-only Made in Abyss fans from watching this film, and continuing to follow this story at all.

This film could have been a second chance to take things slow, cutting more uncomfortable (and ultimately irrelevant) aspects, and ramp up tensions to strengthen a couple climatic moments - instead, all that Made in Abyss: Dawn of the Deep Soul brings to the table is Kevin Penkin's incredible soundtrack - in all honesty, I think I'd have a better time just listening to that, and imagining that I was watching a better movie.

It's pretty rare that I write a review but this was so appallingly bad that I felt the need to. This is a very serious drama series and the protagonists are children. Pause and think about this for a moment. Why would someone make young children the lead characters in a serious drama that involves pain, death and torture on a level that would make The Human Centipede blush?

The answer is because humans naturally care for children and it's far more excruciating watching cute things suffer.

Made in Abyss starts out well, with an interesting story based on Dante's Inferno, and then slowly begins turning into ... torture porn, similar to the Saw film series. In this film right here there's almost no plot apart from an evil Nazi-like character horrendously mutilating and torturing children and one of his past experiments coming back to fight him.

This film is the cinematic equivalent of getting kicked in the balls and has no grace or tact to it. Children are tortured horrendously, viscerally, and then we're given very long sequences of tender flashbacks of happy days and soft moments that make us feel emotionally connected to the children, directly before it returns to the present moment where we behold their blood, guts and gore spilling all over the concrete.

Made in Abyss is an excellent anime that I would strongly recommend to anyone who like to torture small animals

I don't understand why this series is hailed as such a masterpiece by some people. It has an intriguing setting and mystery set up, but this movie does almost nothing to further any of it. All of our time is spent getting past Bondrewd, who is a great antagonist and probably the best developed character in the series so far besides Nanachi. But even then there's hardly any time spent on why he is the way he is or why he is willing to use such extreme methods to achieve his goals (which are... just to be more powerful I guess?). That would be fine ... if it wasn't confirmed we'll never see him again after this. Reg just gets powerups for no reason when the plot needs it. No time is spent developing Prushka until literally the last 10 minutes of the movie, and I had no attachment to what seems meant to be the emotional center of this movie. Neither did our main characters either apparently, as they immediately forget about her after the climax.

Cheap torture porn and shock value, which the series built its wider reputation on, is here in spades, in the stead of any story or world building. I found the nudity and "comedic relief" or "fanservice" or whatever the fuck you call this author's obsession with making children get naked or piss themselves completely unnecessary, just as I did in the original anime series.

Art and animation is well done.

The setting of the Idofront (when we are not in boring concrete corridors) is beautiful and well illustrated. The fights flow smoothly and are very well animated. The monsters are cool looking. Bondrewd and his lackeys have great designs. These are the best aspects of the movie. I had hoped to see more of the ritual site and buildings around the central tower and other things in the setting.

Sound is fine.

The music doesn't stand out in the same way as it did in the original series, but it's still good enough. If the emotional moments weren't executed with the subtlety of a hammer the music might have tugged on my heartstrings more.

Characters. Oh boy the characters are (mostly) bad.

Riko is pointless. She is a walking lore dump. She does 2 useful things in this movie, and the rest of the time is spent crying, screaming, or getting victories and rare artifacts handed to her. The author would get more use out of killing her off for his precious shock value at this point. This was a problem in the original series and remains a problem.

Reg is just boring. His only appeal lies in his mysterious backstory that is eternally unrevealed. Otherwise he's such a blank slate shonen protagonist that I would almost think it's on purpose. His design is dumb and even when he gets his big powerups he's dumb looking.

Prushka is also a complete blank slate. She is the ideal Japanese daughteru. That's it. She is the emotional punching bag of the story. You are supposed to feel bad for her and that is it.

Nanachi is great. She has an actual personality, emotional stakes in the plot, and an interesting complicated relationship with Bondrewd. She has tactical smarts and a practicality to the way she does things that is appealing. She even develops as a character some instead of remaining an infallibly optimistic brain damaged Simpsons child like the rest of our main characters. I am confused why she refused to warn her friends about hanging out with a known child abusing scientist, but whatever.

Bondrewd is pretty interesting. He would be a standard "insane scientist that will do anything to learn the truth", but the strange, alien like way he goes about his horrible methods adds a lot of intrigue. He holds no hate for his test subjects and even has a twisted love for them, including Nanachi. He is a total psychopath yet holds no actual malicious intent. This, combined with complete composure in any situation, no matter what is done or said to him makes him a really great antagonist. Even when our main characters wreck his house or dungeon or whatever he doesn't seem to give a shit. I just wish we got some idea of what made him the way he is, but the author of the series is only good at setting up mysteries, not actually revealing them.

Enjoyment? I didn't enjoy it a whole lot. The movie leaves me with a sick feeling in my stomach, and not in the right way that say, Berserk does.

Overall, this movie felt like an excuse to show off the author's cool Mary Sue scientist OC.

In contrast to the rating and my expectations based on the anime, this movie touches the limit of utter disappointment. With classic elements of a tearjerker drama that tries too hard so sell a sad story and with shounen based, insta op type of development to assist the plot, this movie deviates too far from the beauty of the anime.

Plot: The plot can be easily guessed given the information one had from the anime, and it literally requires no imagination to guess how the event will play out 20 minutes in to the film. The comedic relief for such a try hard tearjerker story ... is none existent at best, given that the scenes where Regu has a boner approach the realm of pedophilia instead (considering all the protagonists have the appearance of 10 year old's). This direction is further strengthened by the very clear depiction of the operating chair scenes and it is something that the production should reflect upon. When it comes to the ending, in my opinion, it actually voids the whole purpose of the movie. Not only does it not provide any closure, but also fails to cultivate the feeling of justice, eluding a proper catharsis to the story.

In conclusion, you can easily skip the movie, and just read a 5 min summary to keep up with future content.

Characters: Literally the only character that has any development is Bondrewd. Bondrewd fits perfectly the role of the antagonist, and his screen time carries the whole movie. There is very little to say about the rest of the characters.

Animation: The animation is very nice and the quality is on par with sutdios like MAPPA.

I literally made my account here to write this review and warn people to avoid this anime. This movie in particular. If you finished the original series and were feeling a bit skeeved out by a few things it doesn't get better here.

My heart breaks because this whole series is ruined by the fact that the main protagonists are children. The more you think about it the less reason there is for this to be the case. The way children's bodies are portrayed and mutilated in this movie especially is fetishistic, and honestly disgusting. I'm not offended by much but you honestly have to ... draw the line somewhere.

Instead of developing real characters the writer seeks to create depth by creating scenes of drawn out physical suffering. Probably hoping to heighten that feeling of shock by making them children. The effect however is something truly disgusting that could have been a 10/10 easily for the world building alone. Bondrewd is a good villain but nothing revolutionary. Trust me there are better things to watch don't waste your time on this one. The hype is completely undeserved.

So, like I said I might after I finished "Made In Abyss", I ended up watching this just because it was there, and I just keep asking myself "what the fuck is the point of this thing?" I get that the appeal of "Made in Abyss", to the people who like it, is the worldbuilding and the sakuga. This movie had essentially no significant worldbuilding at all, and most of it took place inside a building where the background art had no hope of reaching the highs of the series. When it finally let loose a bit for the final fight, that stuff looked pretty ... cool, but it was fleeting.

If the point of this is supposed to be the characters, then I don't know how that is. None of them goes through any particular challenge to their point of view or changes in any way as a result of this encounter with the shadowy Big Bad alluded to in the series. Not even Nanachi, the one who actually has a connection to him.

Not to mention, that on top of all of that, it was just so fucking boring. I watched most of it at 2x speed and was mostly bored, even during the parts where excessively bad things happened to the loli characters, which was one of the few things about the series that actually moved me before.

Why the fuck was this a movie and not a small arc at the start of the sequel series? This is fucking pointless.

[SPOILER-FREE REVIEW-ISH RANT]

When I first watched Made in Abyss as it was airing, I enjoyed it for mainly a couple of reasons: the beautiful animation of the breathtaking sceneries, and the music that masterfully accompanied it...ultimately creating an anime that embraced the word adventure.

Later on, I loved the addition of Nanachi and her interactions with Reg. I was curious enough to wonder how they're gonna survive this perilous abyss, but not enough to read the manga, but enough to be excited for this anime.

What I found with this movie is just.... pure disgust. It's basically needless gore and child abuse, with little to no value ... to the actual story. I thought maybe the antagonist has an interesting philosophy or some sort of a redeeming quality since he has favourites of MAL that's equals to the favoruites of Reg and Riko combined... but I found none whatsoever. He's a mere sick psycho who says "Subarashii" a lot, giving a false impression of being interesting and/or deep.

And while the animation and sound were good in a vacuum, but one cannot enjoy them much when he/she wants to throw up.

Mind you, I'm not a faint-hearted fella, I watched cruelty in fiction many many times, not that I'm proud of that. However, it's usually there for a reason. But this movie makes wonder: "What in the world am I watching and why? When is the movie gonna end?"

If you're looking for an interesting adventure, don't watch the movie.
If you're looking for major plot development, don't watch the movie, you can have someone summarize the kinda important points in less than 1 minutes.
If you're looking a cool and/or deep villain, don't watch the movie.

As for me, if the story continues giving us this sort of nonsense, then I'd have to say goodbye to it.

Over the top gore with a cutesy art style does not a good anime make. Honestly, the first season of the anime had me intrigued because of the premise and I was interested in seeing how it would achieve the 'twist' going from a cutesy adventure show to a darker tone with human experimentation, but this movie solidified the fact that I wasn't really that into it. The characters themselves were kind of bland, and once the twist happened it didn't have enough going for it to really carry the series beyond that, and this movie really solidified that fact. Honestly, the whole thing kind ... of dragged on and gave a sense that it didn't really know what it was trying to be.

I watched Made in Abyss like 5 years ago. I forgot about much of stuff after the years but 2023 started and after Bocchi The Rock (which I highly recommend) it was 2nd anime on my list to watch this year (i mean rewatch of the 1st season and 2nd with movies). I remembered Made in Abyss as really great drama with a lot of heartbreaking scenes, great characters and beautiful art style. I wasn't wrong about that for sure and I enjoyed it very much.

Sadly, after watching this movie I'm worried what would happen in 2nd season. Last episode of anime was cruel and ... hard to watch, but this movie was like 10x worse. I have to admit that Bondrewd is one of the best written antagonist this days and the music as well as art style is great, but that's everything positive. I really don't want to go into spoilers, but torturing kids, no, torturing anyone is just to much. I understand when it's just said that "they were tortured", but it was clearly showed step by step with a lot of details how they were doing it. If 2nd season would be similar (or worse) than this I am sure i will drop the series and never come back to it.

One more positive thing about the movie. I really liked the fighting scenes. It's very well animated.

Definitely won't recommend for people that are sensitive for children abuse but if you have watched 1st season, you have to watch it before 2nd one.

I liked the story but WOW some scenes were quite uncomfortable or incredibly disturbing. Felt like I was watching something illegal at points. Yes it was that bad. I'm so conflicted too, it was such a good story but HOLY COW bro I feel a little traumatized. For context, it was way worse than some of the other scenes in the first season. And for that reason I can't really recommend it to anyone in good faith but I know some people will appreciate the undelying story. There really isn't much else to say without getting into spoilers but, you'll like it if you want ... to continue the grim story of the anime but if the first season already has you reconsidering this show this movie is your answer. Don't watch it.

It's not unusual for an anime to introduce mysteries and then utterly fail to meaningfully resolve them. That's the default state of any given anime.

But it is striking for any thematic weight, emotional growth, or even moment-to-moment stakes to be completely sidelined by disgusting moments that are quite literally gratuitous. Imagine what could have been accomplished in establishing the motivations of our characters if screen time was not instead given to MORE THAN ONE conversation about a child's penis. You never learn the motivation of the antagonist, the lynchpin of the movie, but you may not notice if you're a perverted freak.

Ultimately, Made in Abyss ... is without depth. Talented craft people trying to stitch together awful ideas with no story. I will not be returning for season 2.

My one and only review: I don't know what else to say other than I hated this, this movie should never of been made, it made me feel so gross that I wanted to scrub my flesh clean with grease removing soap. The world building is great, I hate the fanservice, I never want to use the bathroom again, prushka didn't deserve that. Don't watch this movie, or this series. If you liked it, you are either numb to it all, or very very weird and I hope I never come across you in real life.
thank you for coming to my Ted Talk :D