2 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2022
  2. www.animenewsnetwork.com www.animenewsnetwork.com
    The Best and Worst Anime of Summer 2022
    2
    1. nafnlj 27 Oct 2022
      The sense of wonder and discovery that made all the cruelty of the Abyss worth enduring is gone, replaced with increasingly over-the-top attempts at shock horror that crescendos with a concept so ludicrous it stops being horrifying and starts being embarrassing.

      This is exactly right. The first 9 episodes of the first season of Made in Abyss represented some of the best anime of the previous decade precisely because they depicted "[t]he sense of wonder and discovery that made all the cruelty of the Abyss worth exploring..." It was a great, and haunting, adventure story. The end of season one stagnated, the movie went over the line that the first season flirted with, and the second season lost all of the qualities (other than high production values) that made season 1 memorable. The exploring was outsourced to the flashbacks of side-characters, and the whole season was stuck in a single location that was not particularly interesting.

      anime made-in-abyss
    2. nafnlj 27 Oct 2022
      I love the first season of MiA, even more now than I did when it first aired. And on paper I should be down for more of this fascinating, macabre world of wonders and horrors. But somewhere in this second season, the graceful balancing act that made it all so compelling fell apart. Maybe it's that our main trio feel like barely relevant observers of a story largely divorced from them, loading all of Reg's character development into a flashback he doesn't even remember and relegating Nanachi to a half-season-long nap just so we can retread their goodbye to Mitty. Maybe it's the fact that the slow-burn mystery of the titular city feels as hollow as its main residents, ramping up its increasingly aimless body horror to the point that it starts to feel like an Aristocrats joke that's gone on way too long.

      I agree fully with this list of flaws about the second season of Made in Abyss. The first season was terrific, but it flirted with excess in terms of violence and general unpleasantness (excess was achieved in the movie). The second season feels stagnant, sidelines the main characters, and the "aimless body horror" is a good way to describe much of the violence and grossness, which reached Elfen Lied levels of absurdity toward the end.

      anime made-in-abyss
    Visit annotations in context

    Tags

    Annotators

    URL

    animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2022-09-26/the-best-and-worst-anime-of-summer-2022/.189674