Manga Notes: Made In Abyss 4-8

As I’ve worked my way down through stacks of unread manga volumes for several months now, I’ve delved from “waiting to have the whole series available after not quite managing to read the first volume right after purchase” to “sacrificing an anime-first, manga-second mentality given watching anime remains time-consuming” to “getting to the titles eventually supposed to have their anime adaptation continue.” There is, of course, an unfortunate “let’s not wait for tomorrow” sense there.

On reaching five unseen volumes of Made In Abyss, though, I confronted a different sort of apprehension. Its own anime adaptation had attracted a lot of attention, enough to raise my own interest after the initial fact, but there’d been a constant undercurrent of uneasiness too. Beyond the increasing gruesomeness of its “descent into the threatening unknown” story, there were a good many uncomfortable comments about just how the original manga art of Akihito Tsukushi treated and presented the young protagonists, with “if you don’t find a problem with it, maybe there’s a problem with you” warnings. It could be, too, that a comics reader having a somewhat more active role than an animation watcher (an idea I’ve been aware of since reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics) makes content more troubling stuck on pages that have to be turned than flashing past on the screen.
( Passing the point of no return )