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Made in Abyss is a modern equivalent of Elfen Lied, an exploitation series which uses grotesque violence, unapologetic fetishism and moe fanservice to cover up the bad writing, clichéd plot devices like memory loss and plot convenient power boosts, lots of emotionally manipulative flashbacks, tiny veiled harem undertones and laughably bland characters.

I’m desensitized enough to “Japanese culture” and I’m not going to complain about the mere presence of nudity, but Made in Abyss tried to convey the overly melodramatic story, but it also wanted to mix comedy, ecchi and slices of action in the middle. It got very confusing to read as in one scene ... the underage protagonist would be joking about penises and in the next the characters would be having a competition to see who has the most traumatic and shocking backstory. Which is hard to take seriously with the random bare tits and silly piss fetish scenes. Made in Abyss tries to be many things at once, but masters no one of them. It dabbles heavily in horror, ecchi comedy, adventure, action, and it all clashes with the subtlety of a train wreck.

Made in Abyss has a primary children cast, but it’s painfully obvious it was written by someone who didn’t interact with kids a lot (maybe for the greater good). The series repeatedly uses children to pull at your heart strings and make you feel a connection with characters that are about as well polished as driftwood. These characters exist only as props to be thrown under a bus to make you feel sympathetic and sad. It repeats the same scenarios so many times without a break that quite soon it reaches the point of inflation and makes it hard to care about fodder side characters and main characters with their insane plot armor.

To its credit, I think Made in Abyss has got some intriguing concepts to build on, but alas, while the concept of the story is very interesting, the execution falls flat on its face, trying its best to be dark and mature by throwing in excessive violence and naked children.