Made in Abyss: Dawn of the Deep Soul

This movie and the arc it adapted is the pinnacle and the very top of all media for me. Nothing will be able to top it, to say this movie is perfection is a massive understatement. The movie picks up right after the end of the first season and covers everything in the 5th layer expanding on what the finale of the previous season built up to and does it beautifully. I was initially worried when Kinema shifted from a traditional season to movie format but boy did it deliver while only cutting out very few things from the manga original story while adding inanother scene for some additional context. Getting into the main elements of this movie, animation and the soundtrack are of course an absolute masterpiece to watch and listen to. The characters really managed to capture everything I love about seeing them dive down deeper into this hellhole and the story still instills that sense of wonder and imagination while answering questions but raising even more about whats really down there at the bottom and why the curse does so much to the human mind and body. It really is a true joy how this movie makes all my theories of whats down there explode into so much more. [Animation] The animators really captured every moment with the highest quality possible to match or even beat most Ghibli movies, especially the fights which are some of the most beautiful parts of the movie. Absolutely flawless! (10/10) [OST] Kevin Penkin already had an amazing soundtrack with season 1 and came back around and delivered the greatest soundtrack I’ve ever heard beating out the likes of Nier Automata and AoT. This man really is the greatest composer and I can’t wait for the MiA OST 3! (10/10) [Story and Characters] Reg and Riko, its hard to believe how the Abyss has made them grow so quickly and how different they are since leaving Orth. Over the course of one season and a movie they still have that innocent child-like personality they did in the beginning but throughout this movie it shows how much they’ve matured since departing. Reg, between being apart of and witnessing horrific events and then forcing himself to do things that he absolutely hates in order to protect the two he cherishes most. Riko getting to show how intelligent she is with Prushka, figuring out secrets that even Nanachi didn’t know, and expressing what she really wants to do with her group and what she will do once at the bottom it really is emotionally touching to see. Nanachi, we finally get to know the additional backstory she hinted at the end of season one and what she did after becoming a Hollow during that time at Idofront and it is one of the most heartbreaking scenes I’ve ever seen and also one of few moments in any manga to make me cry. These three are truly some of the best characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing grow throughout a series and it only makes sense to have an equally rivaled antagonist. Bondrewd, where do I even begin? This is my all time favorite antagonist and what really captures the greatness of this arc. The first time all these characters meet is enough to let you know whats going to happen and the things he does after match that intensity. Bondrewd is so obsessed with attaining what is called the Blessing and will do whatever it takes to obtain it. But he never harpers any negative emotion or ill will in doing these things, if anything he really loves all of these characters especially his daughter Prushka and it is shown at the end with Prushka’s backstory and his new aspiration of hope that all of them reach the bottom as he loses what he spent years trying to obtain. Truly a character that won’t ever be topped. (10/10) Final Thoughts and Score: This is the easiest 10/10 I could ever give, it truly is a sequel and series that has no rival and to give it a 10 feels unfair for how much this movie raised the bar across everything I could analyze, it deserves some extra credit. I may end up raising some of your expectations to high and affect how you go into watching it, but I can’t help it, this movie is absolute perfection in my eyes and I never see anime literally build this much depth to where the characters, the world, and I as a viewer are so intertwined together throughout the series that it invokes this much raw emotion and investment to where I listen to the OST everyday and refine my theories as to what will happen going forward and how it will end. As well as where Tsukushi draws his inspiration from his story to see if I can guess anything from what he references. This will be a series I will remember fondly and revisit throughout the rest of my life and I’m truly thankful that its getting the recognition it truly deserves.

Just like the first season Dawn of the Deep soul struggles from a major identity crisis as it doesn’t know what it wants to be - a realistic and mature take on fantasy adventure or a child story with bits of nudity and gore. The movie tries to be all at once, but the story and genre are at odds with each other; it strives to have a tragic flair, but also wants to beat you over the head with fanservice and cutesy staff. The result is a boatload of forced drama and conflicts which gets resolved in 10 minutes and has no effect onthe overall story or painfully bland characters. Story supposed to be an epic journey, but not this time, the original show built a colourful fantasy world that the movie ignores completely. The worldbuilding in the movie is almost non-existent and the plot is really simple since the goal is to beat the bad guy. If main characters were dimensional enough, maybe they could carry the story, but they feel pretty underwhelming and boring to watch for the most part. - Characters - Riko is useless. If she would have died in the first season, no value would be lost. Riko actually plays one of the least roles that she could in her own story. Seriously, our "protagonist" has no control over anything and she always needs to be saved by others every time something bad happens. Many characters are used as mouth pieces to tell the viewer how great Riko is, how smart she is and that she is way more than seems on the surface. But no one of these qualities translates through the screen. The only notorious trait Riko has is that she basically is always super lucky. Luck that lets her survive events of the first season and recover completely. Broken arm? What broken arm? Riko uses arbalest, her mom’s pickaxe, other weapons, she cooks and does all kinds of physical activities without any restraints. For a story which tries to be realistic the lack of consequences is insulting. Then, Bondrewd’s henchman for no reason decided to help her and later there is even more Luck from a random person “giving” her an extra valuable and rare relic just because they spend like an hour together. Finally, there is extremely good luck that Riko happens to be the owner of a super awesome robot with unlimited hidden powers. Every single victory gets handed to Riko or just gets bullshitted for her without much effort on her part. She never puts in close to much hard work in anything, yet still gets rewarded. But you can give her screentime with Prushka (all 3 minutes of it) to Nanachi and cut her off completely. Nanachi is the one who does all the strategic planning, Nanachi gives commands to Reg, Nanachi is an emotional anchor of the story. Riko’s character adds nothing to the story, her quest for a mom doesn’t progress at all, her personality is one note happy go lucky girl. Prushka is useless. What does she contribute in this show? Why is she even here? If her entire existence is based solely on the fact that she is a kicked puppy to feel bad for then they did a bad job with it. I have no idea how I was meant to feel anything for Prushka when she barely shows up. She doesn’t have any depth, or the depth they're given feels very forced (flashbacks right before death). The appeal of Prushka seems to be more from her design and vomit inducing sweetness; she has no flaws, and no personality except angelic innocent victim. She just acts like a Japanese ideal daughteru would, rather than like an actual child with an actual child's personality. Like a lot of manga it lets Japanese ideals regarding character archetypes get in the way of writing interesting characters. There were a few moments throughout the anime I felt were there because the author thought "this is what cute daughterus do, right? Gotta put that in there, the lonely middle aged NEETs and horny teenagers will love it". I said that this movie can get rid of Riko, but the same trick will work with Prushka too. She exists only for three things: to add more depth and dimensions to Bondrewd’s character, become Riko’s White Whistle and die for an emotional impact. Everything that was done with Prushka, could’ve worked with Nanachi, but better. The worst thing about Prushka is that we’ve already had an uncanny similar plot line in the first season and when the same thing is done again it feels more like the author is beating a dead horse with loli torture porn because that’s what carried his story to popularity. Nanachi is the most solid character out of the trio, though she sometimes acts in unrealistic ways when contrasted with flashbacks. This is especially bad in Idofront part and can really throw off your immersion. The best two examples of that being when she left her friends alone in Bondrewd’s base, despite her being well aware what kind of person Bondrewd is, and when she randomly softened for him in the end, seconds after she refused to take his hand. Looking at how Bondrewd is weirdly affectionate for his ex assistant and how Nanachi switches from hatred to mixed feelings for him, I suspect that their relationships are more complex than it looks at first sight, but the movie never gives any meaningful context to understand them. Sometimes it just screams that at some point the author planned to kill her off, but as a fan-favorite character she has to live and we’ve got Prushka and her half-assed story. Reg is the one, who does all the fighting. Does it make him any better? Nope. He is a boring, self-righteous hero from every shonen/isekai ever. I liked him more in the first season, when his powers were limited and his arc was dedicated to self-exploration. In the movie he has no personality, no charm, and isn’t particularly interesting nor likable in any way. I have no reason to cheer this pervert on because he lacks any meaningful motivation, aside from simping Riko and creeping on Nanachi. Motivated solely by his desire to fuc... protect his friends, his personality is essentially a blank slate for the audience to project onto. Bondrewd is legitimately the only character I enjoyed watching in this show. It's rare for me to find villians that are really terrifying by all means and that have strong and appealing auras such as Lord of Dawn. His voice, his design, his combat moves are pure joy to watch and listen to, ASMR Darth Vader is easily stealing every scene he is in. No matter what he did, I couldn’t bring myself to hate him, this guy just radiates charisma. He has everything: a cold and calculated mind, an urge for a good fight, inhuman, corrupted sense of love and a strange inability to hate. Bondrewd is a very interesting take on immortal character, the fact that he once broke the boundaries of life and death and how it changed him is the most intriguing theme of the movie. But it’s just a crime that he didn’t get enough time on the screen. If there was more of him, I would rate this movie way higher, but instead of giving more space, backstory and scenes for a character who deserves it, Dawn of the Deep Souls wastes it on boring children. - Story - Like I said it’s simple and rather predictable. We know that Reg and Riko are main characters and therefore they can’t die. Nanachi is too popular for any risky decision on the author’s side. Prushka’s fate is yawn-worthy. The only surprise is Bondrewd’s survival and this was actually the only thing that I liked about the ending. There wasn’t enough foreshadowing and connection to the characters and I was underwhelmed by the conclusion for the most part. Riko got her White Whistle so easily that I'm shocked there is less than dozen of them. But does she get it for no reason... Nothing annoys me more than dumb characters who are loved by their author too much. Maybe if Made in Abyss was an actual child show, I could ignore it, but it wants to be mature and realistic. Still, no clever decision-making or believable reaction from MC to their surroundings and enemies. Instead, they blindly attack the villain, hoping they'll somehow manage. And they are doing it with the power of… Deus Ex Machina. Everytime when a challenge needs to be overcome, something appears out of nowhere that makes it effortless. Reg’s overcharged mode, Reg’s knowledge of how to use his body properly, Reg’s ability to remote control his body parts, seems like Reg conventionally can do everything for the plot progress. This greatly reduces the impact of overcoming any obstacles by a whole lot and also the satisfaction of overcoming them. Let’s talk about another serious issue. The pacing of this movie was all over the place, at the beginning it was so slow to the point where it felt like it was still a full season, the first thirty minutes do very little to set up the story, and serve only to waste time on. Once the main characters enter Idofront, they rapidly progress through this allegedly dangerous place, meeting little resistance. The second problem with them going so quickly is the fact that you don't ever get a sense for the unique aspects of the fifth layer. With a setting filled with such diverse places, you'd expect to get to experience those places with the characters. You don't. - OST and Visuals - Soundtrack is as good as it was in the first season. There is nothing to say about, no matter how low my opinion on Made in Abyss, the music is spectacular. The combat animation may be fine but I didn’t enjoy the fight that much. Reg’s design is anything, but aesthetically appealing, and no matter how smoothly he is animated, he is still a screaming dwarf who looks ridiculous in a serious battle. Aside from the fight scenes animation is sometimes lacking and I actually liked the look of the first season way more. Dawn of the Deep Soul for the most part is grey or too dark and it is nowhere as pretty as the first season with its Ghibli-esque backgrounds. Bondrewd’s base looks dope and the intro scene is eye-candy, but there wasn’t anything on the level of the sunset scene from the very first episode of the original show. - Overall - Made in Abyss truly wanted to be something, it tries new things and throws the characters through so much pain and misery that the Abyss they are crossing resembles more a torture dungeon for loli fetishists, it reaches for something more complex and story-driven, but falls short on delivering any engaging drama. But in the end Made in Abyss is wholly unremarkable shounen fare interested more in shocking the viewer with gore and child nudity than in telling a genuinely meaningful story. What Made in Abyss does to compensate for this is killing off side characters or harming the main ones in increasingly brutal ways (and ignore it two scenes later). It is violence without meaning, as manufactured as can be, extreme and over-the-top to the point that it can almost at times resemble a comedy. Too bad there is no message behind any of this. Made in Abyss definitely has strong sides, but for some reason it is weirdly ignorant of its positive points. It has one of the best world building concepts in recent years, but doesn’t develop it further, it has interesting and compelling adult characters, but we are cursed to follow the dumb, the dumber and a fuel for furry porn. In the end it leaves you more disappointed and frustrated than any other bad show because there is definitely a lot of potency for a great story, but it was wasted on manufactured and effortless tragedy porn. If you liked the first season for episodes 10 and 13 you will like it because Dawn of the Deep Souls essentially rehashes the same shock content. If you want more of an adventure you will be deeply disappointed. You can give it a chance for the villain, if you are a fan of charismatic bad guys. Anyways just like everyone else it's just my opinion, the movie is anticlimactic, it breaks all its proposed ideas, the protagonist never learns anything and it could be so, so very much more, both in entertainment and in actual substance.

TL;DR: A sequel film that severely damages the legacy of its predecessor by introducing cheap plot contrivances and exacerbating previous issues with uncomfortable "fanservice". Let me give you a quick insight into my background coming into this review. I have not read the source material of this anime. Like many, I was enchanted by the original TV adaptation of Made in Abyss and eagerly anticipated the release of the sequel film Dawn of the Deep Soul. My expectations were set quite high, as many fans familiar with the manga had already proclaimed the Bondrewd chapters the most brilliant arc the series has to offer. Additionally, manyreviews on this site gave the film glowing reviews and high scores across the board. And yet, I came out of the experience severely disappointed and, frankly, a little disgusted. In fact, the impression this film left on me was so strong that it has compelled me to write my first review on this site. Let me explain why in two points. First, Made in Abyss: Dawn of the Deep Soul commits the cardinal sin of destroying a universe that has been introduced to the viewer as a largely consistent world with consequences. While the previous chapter confronted our protagonists with a cruel, unfeeling environment that consistently drove them to their limits and towards despair, these elements are largely absent from this entry. On a technical level, the insurmountable difference in power between our leads and the antagonist is ultimately evened by Reg gaining tremendous new abilities at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile, the emotional tension established between Bondrewd and Nanachi and, by extension, Reg and Riku ultimately goes nowhere. It is not resolved, it is deleted. In the end, everyone goes their separate ways in quiet acknowledgement of the other without having resolved the conflict that was originally proposed. Most crucially, Prushka’s narrative, clearly designed to be the film’s emotional focal point, falls flat because her relationship to our leads feels unearned. Instead, she is discarded for shock value and becomes a cheap tool for our protagonists going forward. It is in this regard that the film fails most miserably to provide the audience with emotional authenticity. Second, this film is uncomfortable to watch. And not in the way intended. Even during the initial 2017 run of Made in Abyss I was aware of Tsukishi Akihito’s troubling sexuality. Back then, I was able to overlook the blatant pedophilia-ridden "fanservice" that had apparently been toned down compared to the original manga. Dawn of the Deep Soul, however, left me no room for that willful ignorance. Fanservice scenes appear at a more frequent pace than they did in the TV adaptation. With them comes a tonal shift into comedic territory that feels starkly out of place during an otherwise bleak and tense experience. Furthermore, they also increase in intensity: Thus far, fanservice had mostly consisted of “funny” allusions to sexual attraction between children. The film, however, confronts the viewer with a shot of one of the main characters being strapped to an operating chair, a tube stuck to their genital area while their "fluids" are being drained from them. Now, in the context of another franchise, this would have been a pretty uncomfortable moment to begin with. But keeping in mind that this is Made in Abyss, there is less room for interpretation. Dawn of the Deep Soul highlights the unhealthy relationship Japan still has with the subject of pedophilia. Keep in mind that this is not just the work of a lone-wolf pervert. Kinema Citrus as well as everyone else involved in the production and publication of this film looked away or actively supported his behaviour. The systemic problems that are on uncomfortable display here forced me to re-evaluate my relationship with Made in Abyss. I guess I could give the film props for finally pushing me over the line. The fact that only a minority of reviewers on this site have come to a similar conclusion in their reviews is baffling to me. There is a brilliant sequel hidden amongst all this. The art direction is once again stunning, the world building is compelling, the animation fires on all cylinders during the large action set pieces and the music once again manages to lure the viewer into the deepest chasms of the abyss. Bondrewd is a fascinating villain and his relationship with Prushka has massive potential to become one of the most memorable dives into the human condition the medium of anime has to offer. The pieces of the puzzle are all there. I am certain that, with a few competent rewrites regarding plot convenience and narrative cohesion, the plot and themes could have been salvaged. References to the author’s worst tendencies could have been excluded. This sequel could have been a masterpiece. The fact that it is not breaks my heart a little.

[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 usingChekhov'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.