I have my criticisms of Made in Abyss but I will also say that I haven't seen enough people comment on my favourite aspect of it (and I may be looking in the wrong places, I haven't term searched), which is that it's a breathtaking deconstruction of settler colonialism, and of the romanticism of the weird adventure stories of Europeans plumbing every as of yet unexplored corner of the earth and finding strange and wonderful things at great risk. It is a profoundly critical piece and one of the few that while capturing the allure of that genre and the call of the void and the human search for answers, also has the fucking balls to say, "Your choice to do this is to choose death and the loss of your humanity", "This place is built on atrocity in the name of gold and glory and colonial prestige, every attempt to get further into its depths requires horrendous sacrifice, and the act of settling was fundamentally amoral", and, as of where I've read up to (the end of Faputa's story), "this capital we've built, this land and its blessings that we have, are literally built on endless suffering, it is justified for the victims of that to retaliate, and to dust we shall return". Every aspect of its world-building is seductive but shows both implicitly and explicitly the horrifying truth of behind the siren song of colonial exploration, from the implications of what happened to the native people of the island to the sickness affecting the current inhabitants to the wrecked ships and remnants of failed predecessors, to the indoctrination of children into dreaming of seeking death, and the overwhelming sense that the Abyss will always, always get its dues Intentionally or not, it's one of my favourite explorations of the brutality and futility of the search for El Dorado
