Wow, the level of "darkness" that the Season 1 of Made in Abyss wasn't even enough to prepare me for this ride. This is truly one of the darkest Anime I've seen (without delving into the ones that exists purely for meaningless blood and gore). It ranks close to that of the Fate/Stay Night Heaven's Feel arc.
The visuals were striking and the music suitable. The concepts and ideas that drive this series is truly the most interesting of all. The Made in Abyss Anime truly understands what it it means to feel humanity and then strives to strip it away bit by bit until the viewer is revolted by the very willingness of humans to continue pushing forward. The movie had a few flaws here and there, one of my biggest distastes was the complete willingness to murder half a dozen of the Umbra Hands, including Bondrewd (the supposed father of their friend). There was incredibly little hesitation and emotion before and after their homicidal actions. Killing a bad guy might make it easier, but in no way is it something they should be emotionally okay with doing without some serious emotional turmoil. (The manga/LN might've handled it better than the movie, I haven't read any of it.) And just the general handling of the main characters internal thought, emotions, and conflicts could've been handled a little cleaner.
The movie was not quite as powerful as the first season (perhaps the first season took the edge of the series a bit for me), but still came with horrific and enticing plot lines that kept me thoroughly invested.
This was a neat film that had me chuckling to myself at several points throughout. Although I haven't read the novel this movie was based on, I heard that it clarified a few things that were not made explicit in the movie. I'll list the big ones here (spoilers):
First off, the "Aunt" in the movie is actually the main protagonist . That's why she knows so much about time leaps and talks about her senior high crush.
The painting is so important to Chiaki because it contains the formula for time travel or is essential to the ultimate discovery of time travel.
The career path that Makato planned to take was either art restoration, so she could preserve and protect the painting, or maybe she went into the sciences to discover the secret to time travel herself.
The second idea seems more likely as the film tried to differentiate her from the Aunt. Instead of sitting around waiting, she would "come running."
Anyways, I thoroughly enjoyed the story but I still think it could have tried to be slightly more explicit in the revelations they were trying to get the audience to perceive. The film was unfortunately designed in a way that makes things more difficult to understand if you were not already aware of the 1967 novel that started the many eventual adaptations. It's worth a look and if you're confused by the end of it, come take a look back here and you might appreciate some of the details of the film a little better.
This story had a meaningful premise with a girl who comes to think her words are nothing but poison to those around her. So she decides to never speak again to save herself from destroying anymore of the lives around her. I found myself trying to compare this movie to A Silent Voice, but this movie had far more glaring issues.
The largest culprit was the egg. When mixing self fantasy into a reality, it really only works when that object or dream has a strong metaphorical value or connection to the character. In this situation, the egg just felt like the writer chose some random object, and arranged the story with it. If there is a cultural significance to the egg in Japan (as the symbol of creation/birth perhaps), it should have been better explained.
The animation and voice actors were nice, not breathtaking, but quality. The music was excellent throughout and I loved the way the movie used it to express the major plot points throughout the film. Side note: I would be careful where you watch this one, since there is a very poor quality English sub out there (misspellings, poor formatting, missing lines, etc).
Overall the movie was decent. I think it certainly could have been made better.
This was actually a really cool movie to watch. The combination of crazy structures and acrobatic parkour enthusiasts is just a really cool art to watch. In addition, the music was well done. Yes it was nothing horribly new to the genre and didn't add much to the story, but it fit pretty well with the atmosphere of the film in most places.
Where the movie really fell short is its failure to blend fantasy and reality. With world building you either need to build a hyper realistic world with great attention to the tiniest details (this often leads to a lot of explaining as everything has to have a definitive cause and reaction) or you can build a world of pure fantasy and imagination.
This movie tried to make a realistically plausible that the events could occur, which is perfectly alright on its own. But then a severe lack to detail and understanding made the story seem sloppy as the world building was supposed to be more realistic. Simple things like the ability to jump on bubbles that weren't in gravity wells were left unexplained, and the simple fact that these games with children doing dangerous parkour were even allowed to exist by the government in the first place (especially after reaching livestream popularity). If set in a fantasy world these things are fine, but if you try to set a movie in the real world and treat it as pure fantasy, it leaves a bad taste.
So yes, many elements of the film were done masterfully but ultimately the lack of attention to detail made the fantasy world of bubbles that the beautiful artwork brought me into, simply pop and fall flat.
I really, really wanted this to be good. My last hope for the novel idea of the original SAO series fully realized into an epic saga of years of internal power struggles, the real risk of death and murders, an ever changing Kirito personality, etc. Of course, my hopes were a little high above the skies of Aincrad.
The animation was actually pretty plain in the first bit of the movie. It did get better as it went on and the fighting scenes were impeccably animated as always (nothing can compare to demon slayer animation these days tho). Music was kinda lackluster though. Maybe I was just looking for those nostalgic SAO original themes, but it was pretty normal and ordinary BGM.
Personally, I watched this in theaters with subs. And the subtitles were perhaps some of the worst I've seen in a while. Super bland language in the dialogue and plentiful easy to spot English mistakes. I was kind of expecting better for what I thought was a fairly high budgeted film for theatrical releases.
It was nice to actually get some more original plot and character development, whereas the first SAO progressive movie was just copy paste from the series. However, it was pretty poorly executed. I think there was a decent enough bit of material to work with, its simply that the dialogue failed to make anything where they weren't swinging around sword interesting. And of course, we more or less know, that certain characters can't die which can detract from the tension. I think more time needed to spent on lesser seen characters from the original series, if only to provide more attachment when lives are at stake.
It wasn't what I was hoping for and really hurt my hopes for the franchise improving on subsequent progressive movies. I wouldn't recommend this progressive film for anyone other than diehard fans sadly.
