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After more than 400 anime series under my belt, you become a bit sensitive to tropes and desperate for something original. This series has a few really creative elements and is very engaging with only three exceptions:

1) Some of the characters are solid tropes... not too terrible, but annoying.

2) The mechas have eyes and mouths. It's a terrible design choice and the trend needs to stop. It breaks immersion and looks stupid and childish.

3) There's nothing that tanks a show faster than completely unnecessary and in-your-face fanservice. The idea that it takes both male and female to pilot a mech could have worked, but forcing ... her to bend over in doggy position, using her as a control stick, and all the talk about them entering them when activating (complete with sexual moaning) is just too much.

In the end, I'm enjoying the show, but I'm watching it alone because it's practically an ecchi show. Apparently the mangaka or anime studio didn't think the story wasn't good enough to sell itself. Too bad.

**************** THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW ******************

After watching more than 500 anime, finding something unique and interesting especially with great execution is difficult. This show did it.

Granted, I have a propensity for dark fantasy so take that as your basis for deciding whether to listen to what I say. What I CAN say with conviction is that if you liked Full Metal Alchemist:Brotherhood, this show has a similar feel: tech/fantasy mix, fascinating and unique world mechanics, beautiful art, but some harsh moments that can be hard to watch.

To some degree, my scores are a reflection of my immense relief to find something new ... for a change, but I really think Made in Abyss stands up objectively. If I had to point to any single issue, it would be that the characters look 6 years old rather than 12, but it's an art style that I can overlook.

There's gratifyingly little fan service, enough that it doesn't seem like fan service at all (thank god... I'm so sick of crotches in my face). It has incredible powers, skill, capability, new worlds, new laws, new problems, and a wide and interesting cast. I don't know what else you could ask for. The only thing I'm left debating is whether to rate this as a solid 10 or not (sticking with 9 for now).

THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW

I don't remember why we started watching this show. It was probably because it seems to be popular and we thought maybe there was a reason. The premise is interesting enough after all; a dark force is turning people into monsters and the Exorcists stop them.

There's a bit of mystery about where the main character comes from and what his unique role is in everything, but the reason I dropped this show is because IT NEVER GETS ANY BETTER.

Look, I gave this thing over 50 episodes to show me something. Character development. Plot development. SOMETHING. In the end, it's ... hard to put my finger on it, but I can say that if you watch three episodes and aren't gripped by it, you should probably drop it too. It won't get any better later.

THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW

If you have never seen a Harem show ever or you happen to enjoy them, you might be able to like this. For everyone else, the most important thing you need to know going in is that this show is so typical and uninspired that I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

There are some great figures of a few of the characters and it was actually because of the girl with blue hair (who you meet fairly early on) that I watch the show in the first place. She is the only redeeming factor in the show because (mostly), they don't ... really treat her as a love interest and she's adorable.

As for the rest, you have the clueless "sudden girlfried with powers" who is naiive about all things in our world and the main character has to teach her everything. There's the little sister/childhood friend who's angry all the time about the attention he gets from these new girls and abuses him. He's such a blank slate he just takes all the abuse and does nothing useful ever except "be nice". There are a few others, but they're too boring to even bring up.

The show centers on a boring premise of him having to date each girl one after another to 'save them' (so yes, they even managed the typical beach/swimsuit/onsen classic episode just like every other show like this).

Personally, unless you just want to understand the basics of the show to talk with other people who've seen it or you're interested in the art/figures and want to know the characters, this is eminently skippable.

THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW (minus some detail from the first episode).

From the tags alone, you know this is a little ecchi and a harem show. As such, you have some standard tropes such as the very deliberate buffet of girls of varying ages and breast sizes. You have the super-trope character types such as the loli, the childhood friend, the school friend, and the magical/space/angel girlfriend from nowhere who instantly falls in love with the boring, bespectacled main character who's too nice and stupidly oblivious to:

* Notice or care about any of the sexiness around him

* Stand up for himself when one of ... his girls beats him and throws things at him for things that totally aren't his fault.

* Ever become anything more than a piece of the background. He's really only there to give the girls something to fight over.

There are harem shows that are pretty damned decent or uniquely entertaining, but this isn't it. It's watchable, but only barely (especially if you've seen enough anime to get pretty sick of this formulaic nonsense). Just about every episode and every plot device is tired, overdone, and low-effort. It gets progressively worse throughout the series such that my score for the show dipped an entire point based only on the last episode.

With a renewed level of suspension of disbelief that I wasn't willing to provide, the show goes whole-hog on stupid with every character engaging in actions that make no sense and drama that's so fast-forward that it's impossible to have any emotional investment.

This is really a show that's only worth picking up if you have nothing better to watch or have a particular love for harem shows... just don't expect much. This is about as typical as they come.