There are few bad reviews on this one, I thought I should make a critical review for people who might not like it. This first installment of the Made in Abyss franchise is good, maybe somewhere between 5 and 6 stars. The animation is gorgeous, in terms of living an adventure it does a pretty good job and the first episodes are quite good in drawing you into their world.
So why am I giving this 4 stars? It starts off wonderfully well, the plot is intriguing and the descent into the "abyss" of our souls seems promising. Already in the first episode we learn how kids are exploited, how rough and savage life can be. However, the series journey through the layers of the abyss is very underwhelming the closer it gets to the bottom. In the last season, Golden City of the Scorching Sun, it gets bonkers instead of touching, the whole promise of the series of delivering a major punch gets postponed indefinitely. You can see the story lost itself the closer it got to reaching the end and delivering its final message, they're stalling and just pushing flashy action scenes with forced, contrived emotivity.
In summary, the promise to get to the bottom of the abyss is broken, it seems the writers have no idea either of what should be there.
Another very annoying thing is the sexualization of children. It's off-putting, I wish they could stop doing this in animes overall, it just takes away value for the larger audience.
So why am I giving this 4 stars? It starts off wonderfully well, the plot is intriguing and the descent into the "abyss" of our souls seems promising. Already in the first episode we learn how kids are exploited, how rough and savage life can be. However, the series journey through the layers of the abyss is very underwhelming the closer it gets to the bottom. In the last season, Golden City of the Scorching Sun, it gets bonkers instead of touching, the whole promise of the series of delivering a major punch gets postponed indefinitely. You can see the story lost itself the closer it got to reaching the end and delivering its final message, they're stalling and just pushing flashy action scenes with forced, contrived emotivity.
In summary, the promise to get to the bottom of the abyss is broken, it seems the writers have no idea either of what should be there.
Another very annoying thing is the sexualization of children. It's off-putting, I wish they could stop doing this in animes overall, it just takes away value for the larger audience.