For Fans of Made in Abyss

Most adventure stories use the setting as a backdrop for character growth. Made in Abyss reverses this: the Abyss is the protagonist, and the human characters are its instruments. Every new layer has its own ecology, its own curse, its own logic, and the series treats exploration as something closer to religious devotion than fun. That commitment to the descent as meaning, not just plot, is what separates it from other dark fantasy. Akihito Tsukushi refuses to make the Abyss safe or knowable, and that refusal is the source of the series' emotional power.

The dissonance between Made in Abyss's rounded, Studio Ghibli-adjacent character designs and the severity of what happens to those characters is not a gimmick. It is the thesis. Tsukushi has said the softness is deliberate: it keeps readers inside Riko and Reg's perspective, seeing the Abyss as wondrous rather than immediately threatening, and that makes the moments of real violence and loss land harder. Fullmetal Alchemist works on the same principle. So does Hollow Knight: cute void bugs in a beautiful ruin, where nearly everything is dying.

Kevin Penkin's soundtrack for Made in Abyss is one of the most carefully considered scores in anime. He uses children's voices and fragile woodwinds for the surface, shifting to bass drones and choir as the party descends. The music functions as a layer map: you can track how deep the characters are by how much warmth has left the sound. Listening to the OST without watching the show is a legitimate experience, and it belongs alongside composers like Ennio Morricone and Yasunori Mitsuda for the way it makes landscape feel emotional rather than decorative.

The anime adaptations are excellent, but they cover only a portion of Tsukushi's manga. Readers who stop at the animated content miss the series' most structurally ambitious arcs, including the Ilblu village sequence and the ongoing Golden City storyline, which expand the worldbuilding into territory the show has not yet reached. The manga also gives more space to the supporting cast and to the Abyss's cosmology. If Made in Abyss hooked you, the manga is not optional reading: it is where the story actually lives.