Made in Abyss Movie 3: Fukaki Tamashii no Reimei

After bonding over a tragic loss, the long-suffering Nanachi s Riko and Reg on their journey into the depths of the Abyss. Awaiting the children is the Sea of Corpses—the Abyss's fifth layer, and the deepest level from which a traveler can return without losing their human form.

The masked sadist Bondrewd stands between the children and the rest of their adventure. Bondrewd's horrific laboratory serves as a final checkpoint for those wishing to traverse deeper into the Abyss, and the sociopathic scientist has no desire to allow Riko's party to through at no cost. Deeply scarred by Bondrewd's impact on their childhood, Nanachi is engulfed in turmoil over his resurgence in their life.

Bondrewd's only apparent weakness is Prushka, a brash child who claims to be his daughter. Riko, Reg, and Nanachi befriend Prushka and work with the girl to overcome her father's machinations and breach the Abyss's sixth layer.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Nanachi Main

Izawa, Shiori Japanese

Reg Main

Ise, Mariya Japanese

Riko Main

Tomita, Miyu Japanese

Bondrewd ing

Morikawa, Toshiyuki Japanese

Ouzen ing

Ohara, Sayaka Japanese

Mitty ing

Kitamura, Eri Japanese

Prushka ing

Minase, Inori Japanese

Lyza ing

Sakamoto, Maaya Japanese

Meinya ing

Hara, Natsuko Japanese

Habolg ing

Inada, Tetsu Japanese

Yamashita, Shinpei Producer

Ogata, Mitsuhiro Producer

Uchibayashi, Noriyoshi Producer

Isogai, Noritomo Producer

Reviews

Sep 18, 2020

coldmia_

Recommended

I don't know what to say other than this is the best piece of media I have ever seen, and I don't think anything will ever be able to top it. I'm not even going to go into that much detail because whoever is reading this just needs to go watch this movie immediately.

This movie follows our challengers, Riko, Reg, and Nanachi as they challenge Bondrewd and the 5th layer of the abyss. Bondrewd, being the monster that he is, obviously won't make that easy on them, and as such we have this movie.
In of the Made in Abyss arcs, this is absolutely the ... peak of the story thus far. All of the events that happen over the course of the journey through Idofront are so perfectly executed, I can't help but wonder how Tsukushi does it.

Anyways, the main things I like to talk about here are the soundtrack, and Bondrewd himself. The soundtrack, first of all, is perfect. I genuinely can not think of a single issue with the soundtrack, every song is incredible and perfectly fits with the tone of whatever scene it is used in, Kevin Penkin is quite possibly the best composer on earth. From The Rumble of Scientific Triumph to Riko's Motherfucking Cooking, every song in this movie is perfect.

Final thing I want to talk about is Bondrewd, so spoilers if you haven't seen the movie yet.

I genuinely can not think of a better and more interesting antagonist. In all of anime. Or even all of media itself. Even when he lays dying on the ground after losing the final fight, all he wishes for is for our group to successfully continue on their journey, no ill will, no revenge swearing, just a simple wish for their journey to be filled with curses and blessings. After all the horrible things that he had done, even Nanachi, arguably the one most affected by this horrible monster, came to a sort of mutual understanding with him, because that's just the type of person he is. He doesn't do anything out of malice, he merely just wants to know all the mysteries that the abyss has to offer, and will go to disgusting lengths to do so.

Final thoughts, as for final thoughts, I really don't have anything else to say. The movie is perfect, everything about it is perfect, the staff put their heart and soul into this and what came out was the peak of all media. Thank you Kinema Citrus, thank you Kevin Penkin, thank you Akihito Tsukushi, thank you all for the incredible experience that you have given to us. From the bottom of my heart, i love you all for your work, keep putting in the groundbreaking effort to bring this story to life.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Sep 17, 2020

12saints

Mixed Feelings

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 on ... the 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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Sep 18, 2020

Armadillidiidae

Not Recommended

[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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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