Think about it. The villains are mostly people who put their dreams and aspirations above the lives of others while the heroes go out of their way to protect those who help them. In essence, the story is saying that it's good to follow your dreams but you shouldn't trample over others to reach them. This also makes sense in the context of how cutthroat the Japanese corporate world can be (or any corporate world for that matter).
The four main white whistles kind of represent archetypes / aspects of the abyss itself:
- Ozen is the 'hero' (kind of a subversion): Obviously, she's seen some shit, but she's also the *only* white whistle whose legends actually mention saving lives. She's kind of like the hero of another story, after having traveled into the enemy's stronghold and defeated the big bad. It's easy to assume every hero of such a story comes out pretty jaded, hard, and battle scarred. Her strength enhancing barbs are reminiscent of a hero who has both leveled significantly and loaded up on legendary gear.
- Bondrewd represents the mysteries and horrors. He's not an 'individual' but a collective. So far, he's the only white whistle whose death would make the world an objectively better place... but he's also the only white whistle that can't be killed in a conventional way. His own persisting existence is representative of a world that can never be quite from of its horrors. The sheer number of destroyed lives in his wake probably dwarfs the body counts racked up by any of the character.
- Lyza, represents some form of wrathful / zealous variant of the 'hero' archetype. Where Ozen's adjective is 'immovable' and Bondrewd's is 'novel', and the third white whistle is 'mysterious,' then that makes Lyza the 'annihilator' the only one with a descriptor associated with violence. Considering she's the only character to actually *look* the part of a stereotypical hero, then it would make sense that she subverts it in some way.
- Riko, with her strengths focused around knowledge collection, and application, will probably get a descriptor like 'curious' or 'knowledgeable.'
- Reg might get roped in as well. Since he's sometimes referred to a 'Dog' for his loyalty, it wouldn't be a stretch for him to get the 'loyal' descriptor.
- Nanachi will probably get 'healer' or something along those lines.
Riko - Lyza
Lyza the Annihilator, with her history of drinking, fighting, and well... annihilating; definitely has a strong emotional context to her actions. Riko has this as well, though from the perspective of someone inexperienced and feels powerless. In the manga she's starting to show a strong grasp of how to overcome the team's challenges. While she depends on delegating to team members, she's arguably responsible for taking down at least one of the largest monsters in the series so far. This kind of makes them both the 'glass cannons' / dps class of their respective teams. Since Lyza is less developed as a character at the beginning of the series, she gets a clear symbol attached to her: a giant exploding pickaxe.
Reg - Ozen
While they don't have a biological connection, and little exposure to each other, Reg remarks on how similar they are. They both have animal associations (Ozen - bull, Reg - dog). Ozen notes that Reg is one of the few characters durable enough to make her enjoy the fight. With Ozen's implants and armor, she quickly looks more like a moving artifact rather than human. Reg IS a moving artifact. They're both fiercely loyal to Riko / Lyza, and serve as the 'tanks' for their respective dungeon crawling teams.
Nanachi - Bondrewd
Yes, Nanachi was horribly victimized at the hands of Bondrewd. Yes, Bondrewd is a monster that can dwarf other anime villains by the sheer scope of his complete lack of ethics. But, let's fess up: what does she do when she escapes Bondrewd? She turns into him.
He experimented on pretty much everyone he got his hands on. Nanachi started their own experiments on delvers. He tortured Middy to see how to harm her. Nanachi tortured Middy to figure out how to mercy kill her. While the Bondrewd arc only has Bondrewd and Reg go toe-to-toe, the real conflict is between Nanachi and their surroundings. During their multiple PTSD-induced breakdowns, it's almost as if they're struggling for their identity to remain separate from his.
At one point, they briefly resume their responsibilities in his camp to protect their friends. This mostly a metaphorical knock-down in their existential fight with him, because they find themself carrying out his will once again.
This is further reinforced by the fact that virtually all of Bondrewd's personnel are extensions of his 'hive mind' rather than actual individuals. Even at the end of their fight, Bondrewd can still see through their eyes. While this will probably resolve itself before the end of the story, as far as Nanachi is concerned, they're still not 'separate' from him.
Then you realize he's been able to see through their eyes this whole time. Including their escape and everything immediately afterwards.
Speculation: Nanachi ends up being the one to overcome the curse, which is Bondrewd's goal. Their existential crises will end, not with Bondrewd's death, but with returning Middy to normal. This will prove they can surpass him and be ethical at the same time.
? - The Chosen? - The Mysterious? - The Ancient
Special node: Faputa is gearing up to become a main character, so she's probably one of the empty slots on this list.
Historically, in the real world, miners would bring canaries into mines with them because the canaries would die from gas inhalation before any humans would. This way, the miners could know something was wrong before they started succumbing to the gases themselves.
The sudden rash of child deaths around Ord are an early indicator that the Abyss' curse is rising upwards. Ord can't get an exact number on the deaths because a lot of its children are neglected orphans. As we saw with Bondrewd, groups of orphans can go missing and nobody will notice.
This means there might have been children dying off for some time, but since the number of fatalities are just becoming noticeable, it means the number is now so high that it's no longer obscured by the unmonitored orphan population.
We know children are more sensitive to the curse's effects, than adults, so its not unexpected that adults could continue believing nothing is wrong for a while.
Bondrewd will know ahead of time that this is about to happen, and ready his forces to raid the lower levels. This will position him as the story's Big Bad, unless there's an Eldritch Abomination imprisoned by the 'curse' machine. This will trigger the 'disaster' that originally caused all the corpses in prayer positions, mentioned at the beginning of the story.
Ozen will have a Big Damn Heroes moment, when her team eventually catches up with everyone already fighting.
Considering the role Body Horror already plays in the story, expect this arc to amp it up well beyond eleven.
- The force field provides the lower levels of The Abyss with sunlight, air and so on, so maybe the machine's programming was damaged somehow and if it can be restored to normal, the beneficial effect stay and the curse will disappear.
- Unfortunately, this would likely mean that all the Narehate's and monsters will die as well, as they're seemingly unable to survive without the curse.
When we see the wish go horribly wrong for the village girl, and the denizens on Iruburu begin eating her 'offspring' to survive, Vueloelco keeps getting flashbacks to her own abuse. She attempts to mutate the girl to rescue / put out of her misery.
Mentally destroyed, the girl develops dissociative identity disorder and peaces out of Iruburu. The village figures out Vueloelco did this and locks her up as punishment for removing the only source of food.
To undo the permanent damage of the hardening disease, and possibly inspired by Faputa's successful mutation, pretty much everyone opts to mutate in a similar way, with varying degrees of success. Food still remains a problem, so gaining some forms of healing, they begin eating each other and monsters who wander into the village. This creates the organ trade, which takes on a life of its own.
As we've seen in Ilblu, having value extracted from someone is a pretty messy affair. When the interference unit teaches Faputa symbols, it doesn't make sense that Ilblu would suddenly invent its own literacy, so that education had to come from the city itself.
The curse itself is pretty visceral, much like value extraction.
This would imply that...-Mitty's mutation and Nanachi's blessing is a sort of "balance transfer"
-Those who are cursed, are having value forcefully taken from them. Where is the value going?
-Is it possible to heal Mitty via this system?
Now, let's consider Nanachi and their unfortunate friend. The scientist guy very clearly told them the unfortunate friend was screwed, while Nanachi had a chance of coming out of the experience... upgraded(?). Nobody knows how it all works. How would he know anyone would have a good outcome? It's not really suggested anywhere that he had a previous 'success' story. Otherwise, he would have at least a few obvious mutant shock troops running around the lab. Its suggested he has an artifact that can direct who gets the blessing and who... gets the makeover from hell... but its never actually pointed at.
Now, when everything takes place, they're kind of psychologically primed with what a "failed experiment" looks like. Do *all* the 'cursed' participants end up looking like that? Because the 'blessed' ones do not look the same. So... when everything runs its course, the unfortunate friend is like: "That's going to happen to me!?" Nanachi is like: "Well, if I'm getting 'blessed' then I'm not going to wind up looking like that."
Then there's what happens later, which just salts the wounds of the already unfortunate friend. "When she regenerates, the pieces come back more deformed." Later on, when her emotions are tapped, it's a unending cycle of negative emotions. Nanachi on the other hand is extremely cynical, and definitely hanging out in Dispair Event Horizon territory... but, they haven't had to regenerate. At no point were they ever expecting the worst possible outcome for themself.
This leaves the big mystery: moth girl. The story states she was 'blessed'. Were her circumstances the same as Nanachi's? Or did she solo it?
Going a little further, Ozen has a very distinct look to her. She's one of the two white whistles, where we can see her face. Lyza, at least in the flashbacks is clearly the most 'normal' looking, but even the curse affected her hair.
Its safe to assume Ozen has definitely been affected by the curse longer than Lyza. Ozen mentions how she styles her hair to "cover up scars". What scars? She has the barbed inserts, but they clearly reside on her arms and legs(?). With her hair style, we can see her neck and face. Her hair is short enough to easily assume *any* hair style would conceal her scalp. That leaves the horn protrusions, which suggests she has actual horns. Her hairstyle covers up those horns. That wouldn't be a 'scar', that would be a mutation.
Considering a large chunk of her theme is bull-related... if you take into account the grey complexion, and her periodically arched back, you have a character who's been shaped by her own personality: extremely strong willed, dark gallows humor, brazen, violent, and utterly unyielding.
Of course, brings about a lot of Fridge Horror and Hope Spot: Fridge Horror in the sense that the really bad mutations could have been avoidable. Hope Spot in that, 'yes' many characters are going to mutate, but they have more control over it than they thought.
- Partially jossed after the Ganja flashback. The mutants in Iruburu weren't mutated the same way as someone mutated directly by the curse. Despite tens, maybe hundreds of characters exposed to the actual curse in-story, Nanachi still remains the sole 'good' outcome of that process. Every other known 'successful' mutation was done through the village.
- Even the characters who knew nothing of the curse, and had no reason to fear rising up in elevation, still ended up with the same negative outcome.
- At least with Faputa, it appears she's now immune to the curse since she can fly.
We know the white whistles are needed to operate a lot of the artifacts in the abyss. The whistle itself is produced from the bodies of loved ones. If the elites took on slaves, brainwashed them, and then turned them into whistles, an uprising was bound to happen.
This implies, the curse came about as an attempt to keep slaves from escaping the city. If this is the case, some of the slaves had already made it back to the surface before the curse was turned on. The tribe encountered by the Ganja Corp would most likely be the descendants of those slaves. Literacy issues would explain why the current generation of natives had no idea of the big picture.
This would make the curse, a forcefield that weakens the further away from the city it is. This gives at least one explanation for the curse's behavior.
This is a variation of the above, but discounts the civil war, in favor of a technological disaster. In this case, it would be something like white whistle production going horribly wrong. If the white whistle production machine somehow got thrown into overdrive, and the curse kicked in immediately, that would mean entire swaths of the civilization would be mutated all at once. This explains the mutants, and the empty city.
Anyone who figured out the mutations were happening, could still be caught below any food sources and wind up either starving to death or mutating once they got desperate enough; as we've witnessed with the Ganja Corp.
Most of what's left are the ruins and service robots retasked to get help, which wasn't available. Of the survivors of the disaster, no one was knowledgeable enough to task the robots to turn off the curse, so it remains in place.
Unlike the fully robotic Interference Units encountered, Reg has obviously human traits, and the free will to travel between levels. While he retains the freewill of a human, it's clear he's got tons of robot parts, including silicon skin. These don't mutate when exposed to the curse, so this "cyberization" is beneficial for any human born in the lower levels of the Golden City.
Some of the vague flashbacks imply Lyza found him, and didn't make him. She captured him while he was stalking her in the lower levels and coerced him to go fetch Reg. He runs into Faputa who could easily turn into an exposition machine is she was a stable communicator.
Then he conveniently loses his memory.
It still raises the question: How was he cyberized? Why is his condition unique?
We miss the entire conversation, but Reg responds like he can related to Marulk's story. The conversation concludes with Marulk saying: "Relax. Nothing bad has happened to me". We already know the kids were afraid Reg would get taken apart, so they hid him. The same went for Nanachi, who refused to make contact with other humans... well... 'constructive' contact anyways.
We know Ozen is comfortable with deception. She extended an invitation to a male assistant in a flashback, so it's unlikely she's trying to make Marulk "as female as possible", just to tolerate him. He doesn't seem to prefer dressing as a girl. So... the conclusion is there needs to be a practical purpose behind it.
We know he's sensitive to light, so obviously he has some unique traits. He's probably either been significantly altered by the curse, and the dress is a way of covering the changes, without raising too many questions. Or, he's another race, aside from human.
Ozen explains that the pod doesn't actually protect its occupier from the curse, but instead, causes dead things to move around again. The reanimated torso Riko encounters could be only 'partially healed.' Its able to move around, and presumably its a torso of one of the monkey creatures, yet much like Mitty, it's only really 'biologically alive', and lacks the faculties to resume being a monkey creature. Ozen mentions it didn't survive long. This would be consistent with something with regenerated cells and nerve tissue, but missing a vast majority of what it needs to actually survive.
In Riko's case, when she was placed in the vessel, she was whole, so when her cells regenerated, she had everything necessary to stay alive. This adds a Nightmare Fuel element to Ozen and Lyza's ascent with her: the vessel didn't protect her infant body from anything, it just made sure all injuries healed, and kept bringing her back to life. Luckily, she doesn't remember any of it.
- Because the device healed also the psychological trauma.
We know Riko was resurrected this way, and she's sensitive to sunlight. Her glasses are made out of special crystal for her needs. Ozen kept possession of the vessel the whole time. Marulk had an 'accident' and Ozen 'rescued' him. He mentions he a sensitivity to sunlight which sounds very similar to Riko's. They don't go into further detail on this.
The girl clothes (assuming they're not his personal preference) could be a disguise of some sort. Maybe someone on the surface thinks he's dead, and finding him alive would raise too many questions. Ozen states she likes to avoid these types of questions, when she hands Riko and Reg blue whistles to avoid having to explain why two red whistles are hanging out where nobody would expect.
This suggests that consciousness extension is the norm rather than its own thing. When a character is copied, it doesn't spawn a new consciousness, and instead, the consciousness extends across physical forms.
This also means that Faputa is both the physical form, as well as the village. This suggests that Faputa's creation scene is less of a 'birth' and more of a sprint to the exit sign.
...or... they DID return, and upon seeing the disturbing form of capitalism that developed within the city at the 6th layer, the white whistles decided that some of the relics further down are simply too dangerous to share with humanity, without having a way to keep the final result from dooming the world.
If this winds up happening, Nanachi will most likely keep their rabbit form because their social interactions are better as that, and also the fan base might riot if that changed.
Mitty's healing would also serve as one of the massive potential rewards for the characters seeing the Abyss through to the end, despite all the awful things they encountered / endured on the way.
This is a variation or the below theory, while acknowledging that this isn't 'that kind of show.' ^o^;
We know the white whistle object is created from the bodies of loved ones destroyed by the curse. In order for Nanachi to get a white whistle like Riko has, the best candidate for the role is Mitty.
This is foreshadowed with the shadow puppets at the beginning of the story. When Lyza's whistle comes up, Orth holds something liken to a wake, telling of her accomplishments. How they choose to represent her is... odd... to say the least. In all the flashbacks, she is conventionally beautiful. That shadow puppet though, shows a much more menacing grim reaper-like figure. Yeah, Orth doesn't know anything for certain about her current status, but it's such a contrast to what the viewers are shown later on.
Then we go back to Ozen's monologues throughout the story and how even she wasn't able to avoid permanent changes to her body. Lyza's circumstances, if they haven't already passed Ozen's level of exposure, are getting to that point.
We know traveling up from the 6th layer causes horrific mutations. We're told rising up from the 7th causes death, but no one can really confirm that. Mutants (yeah, I'm just going to use that term) from the 6th layer return either without the ability to speak, or with the fear that they're going to get dissected. It really doesn't help with the flow of information.
At the 7th level, the rules for rising start at least with mutations, but everything else is a complete mystery. Lyza might have had to mutate just to survive going any further; similar to the suicide corps.
The story made clear that the physical 'white whistle' is obtained via the Abyss, and not through any official channels, which means Srajo could have obtained one without anyone knowing how, or when.
Ozen made it clear she already dug up the 'grave site' to check for a body; either Lyz's or her husband's. She found the site was empty.
We know the healing cube brings things back from the dead. There also might be more than one, or Ozen's account implies a straightforward timeline, when there was actually more going on.
It kind of becomes its own Head Scratcher: if Riko could be revived by the cube, why not the husband as well? ...assuming he wasn't disintegrated.
Lyza already established a need for secrecy during a flashback with Ozen, where she mentions Riko has to be an 'orphan' or else she would be kidnapped and held for ransom because of her famous mother. This is a secret the husband would need to keep as well. Who could be better at keeping secrets than a guy who literally has 'mysterious' as part of his title?
Lyza's return to the Abyss, might have been to explore the Abyss with her husband. This would mirror Riko's desire to explore with Reg. Reg might have even been sent up specifically to make sure Riko survives the journey. The interruptor Reg encounters mentions Reg is unique in that he can travel throughout the entire Abyss. Implication: if Red isn't a 'race' then he's a custom-designed robot.
Another small hint is Ozen's monologue about a "2nd burden". This is wildly open-ended, making the 'first' burden just about anything, despite it implied it might be carrying the cube up. Its implied though, that since Riko is just starting her training by that point, that means she's referring to her as the 2nd.
Side note: all of the legends mentioned around Ozen involve being a hero via feats of strength. There was the cube story, as well as the story about her hauling a lift containing 30 people, by hand. These are stories of someone who goes out of her way to rescue people, and not someone who *truly* revels in the misery of others. She could be doing a lot to help out, behind the scenes.
But there is just one problem, Riko fumbled the Star Compass over a waterfall in a fit of excitement at the outset of her journey. However, it has been shown that petals and written memorials cast from Orth on the surface reach the sixth layer through the ocean, so there is a better than good chance the Star Compass could be lying in wait somewhere in the sixth layer or beyond.
Roughly, the Abyss is a factory that processes people. The souls and bodies of humans who fall in the Abyss and close evirons have a chance to become the artifacts and monsters that delivers regularly encounter. The ones being found today are mostly from the fallen ancient peoples who died in waves every 2000 years.
The evidence for this is decent. Certain artifacts are known to be made of people, namely white whistles. One of the curses is loss of humanity, and while none of the victims shown so far have become Abyss-typical aggressive monsters, it is plausible such an outcome could result after sufficient mutation and loss of reason. Several species (the Eternal Fortune flower, the flying snake, the insect flower mimics, Reg) are described as originating from deeper layers than they are encountered, so they may have all originated from the bottom before becoming established higher up. Deeper layers of the Abyss reveal the remains of a technologically proficient ancient civilization.
How intentionally malevolent the Abyss is, and whether is it a relic left running or if the abusive precursors still live in the depths is unclear. Certainly the Abyss feels like a trap for ordinary surface dwellers designed to harvest their lives after certain intervals. Artifacts serve as bait to attract large numbers of humans and permanent cities like Orth at the lip. The curse funnels souls and explorers in while not allowing them to leave easily. The monsters, environmental hazards, and curses prevent civilizations from sending in armies and other powerful forces which might overrun and disrupt the Abyss's inner workings. The interval of apparent mass death (2000 years) is long enough to allow previous myths warning against colonization to vanish with time. Even the remains of dead humans are conveniently covered up out of sight and in the modern age were only discovered by excavation and more in-depth poking around.
He served as the Climax Boss in the manga and the first season has to end on a proper finale. And the battle against Bondrewd would be the perfect final boss for the season.
- Jossed. The anime will end at a more proper and much more reasonable point that won't require cramming five volumes of moderately information-saturated manga chapters into thirteen episodes worth of screentime.
In Ch. 23, Nanachi once described to Mitty this belief from what they had learned of the Abyss. It is to be taken as more cultural information explaining the faith in the Abyss as a surrogate of God, but it may indicate a vital detail to understanding certain developments. When things were brought back to life in the "curse-repelling" relic, Ozen states that the corpses seem to be attempting to find the bottom of the Abyss again. Perhaps they are re-ensouled with their original soul from whatever form they took down below, splitting or hijacking that soul. For one thing, creatures of the abyss sense the force field such that other senses are not completely necessary, but even those that cannot sense it may in fact be able to anyway due to "their lives changing form". It could be that the dead reincarnate on the bottom of the Abyss and, in journeying towards somewhere they desire, become Narehate, who sense the force field. In both cases, a corpse, knowing where their desired place was down below, seeks it once more. And, funny enough, the crew has currently reached the Narehate village where currency is founded from desire itself. How thematically consistent...
Yet the oddball of the theory ends up being Riko, who was stillborn. Does the soul of an unborn baby start their journey towards a place they desire right away? Maybe not, especially considering that desires of the unborn may not even be realized in the first place. If anything, Riko yearns for her mother. Ozen only made a coincidental connection between Riko and a piece of meat in how they seek the bottom of the Abyss to reduce her to zombie status, not mentioning her behavior as a baby or child. In fact, if it were a single-minded corpse-like drive to reach the bottom, Riko should have remained a relentless baby-corpse gunning for the edge of the city over and over again if she was so compelled. But she wasn't. The theory here? Whatever fatal condition led to her stillbirth was overcome and she grew up naturally as a human being who simply died once. She has no memory of the afterlife as told for the Abyss, but she may have experienced it briefly. Furthermore, she may yet have a subconscious sense of the force field and the consciousnesses that are conveyed through it, if her "dialogue" with Mitty is an indication of such. This could be an after effect of her "life changing form" in the Abyss, similar to a conversion to a Narehate.
- She will become some sort of non-human creature through the 6th layer's curse. This will likely happen because she has a track record of being hit by every layer's curse thus far.
- She has recently emptied her digestive tract, thus she will be a very hungry zombie. And as demonstrated by the 9th episode of the anime, she will prioritize finding food until something immediately dangerous comes up.
- She has been left alone unsupervised as Reg and Nanachi are both some distance away dealing with other oddities in the 6th layer. Riko has been left alone unsupervised.
- It has been demonstrated that the 5th layer's curse can cause minor cosmetic changes in one's physical appearance, as shown with Prushka's curling hair. Riko, who was hit by the 5th layers curse, did not receive any physical changes that weren't the result of injuries from falling down that flight of stairs. This may be a yet unrecognized effect of the curse-warding box.
- Not necessarily. The hair curling only appeared over REPEATEDLY hitting the curse, and Riko only hit the curse only once
The Seventh layer is called "the Final Maelstrom", but it's mentioned at the beginning that nobody knows how deep the Abyss is. What Lyza went to seek might be beyond even the deepest known layer. And that Layer could actually be a hidden paradise.
Considering the bizarre architecture, the people found praying to the abyss in 2000 year cycles, the presence of ships completely embedded into walls and the fact that the area surrounding it is an island, this troper posits that every 2000 years, everything surrounding the Abyss is suddenly snagged and "absorbed" into the Abyss, adding yet another layer to its unfathomable depths, casting everything within back into mystery, at which point an extremely long time might pass before it is rediscovered again for another civilization to build surrounding it in worship. As for why the corpses are left in positions of prayer, it's possible that the exploratory fanaticism associated with the abyss might be another aspect of its curse, a luring memetic hazard that eventually forces those who spend their time around it long enough to worship it to the point of not attempting to escape during the collapse.
Related to the above theory, the 2000 year cycle is actually a feeding cycle of sorts. The Abyss somehow sustains itself by consuming the civilisations that develops along its edges. The artefacts found within it is actually bait it uses to lure in curious humans, and then to encourage them to develop complex civilisations which can sustain larger populations.
- Sort of like the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park but 1,000 times larger.
Regarding the ritual to become a life-reverberating stone. One must die to the curse of Abyss while praying to it for the person they're most devoted to. Now who would you pray and sacrifice yourself to if not a literal god?
There will be a very bitter ending. As for what will happen, Riko and Reg will reach the bottom and will basically have a subtle form of Go Mad from the Revelation, maybe finding her mother and all those who managed to reach the place before in a sort of stasis, having become part of the abyss itself. Thus I also believe that Riko will become part of the abyss just as those before her. As for Reg, he might either die or choose to become a guardian of sorts, staying at her side even while she is in this state. And then it will all end with the 2000 year cycle beginning anew as Orth is claimed by the abyss. Though I do also think that there will be one ray of hope, namely that Jiruo realized that something was about to happen and that despite his failed efforts to warn everyone, he still managed to get all the children of the Belchero Orphanage onto a boat and away from the abyss. Perhaps as they are leaving, they see their former home sink down into the ocean.
- Sort of Jossed, as Tsukushi stated in an interview
that he always intended Made in Abyss to be a classic fantasy adventure, not mentioning anything about Cosmic Horror Story or any horror at all. He just has a really wide definition of "adventure".- Sounds like what Gen Urobuchi said about Puella Magi Madoka Magica. And Made in Abyss has been called Madoka's Spiritual Successor, so hold onto your Lovecraftian butts.
- The ruins of an ultra-advanced civilization, and a technological explanation for all the Abyss' mysteries. This series has a lot of similarities to Roadside Picnic and STALKER. (Disclaimer: I think it's awesome.) Some similarities:
- Mysterious exclusion zone / eldritch location? Check.
- Mutants? Check.
- Science wet dream? Check.
- Groups of ranked delvers (aka stalkers / artifact poachers)? Check.
- Sub-group of insane, and insanely competent delvers / stalkers? Check.
- Mysterious disaster (aka blowout)? Check.
- Anomalies unique to the zone, that nobody understands? Check.
- The ability to be cursed / blessed (aka touched) by the zone? Check.
- The zone is too dangerous to police, so on the inside, it's the law of nature? Check.
- Pretty much everyone key to the story is trying to get to "the center" (aka nuclear power plant)? Check.
- Moving on to the next piece: one of the prevailing themes of Roadside Picnic is how 'magic' items to humans turned out to be pretty mundane items to the aliens who left them. I think, in keeping with the theme, the 'forcefield' in the Abyss, its either something that broke down over time, or was always meant to discourage people from leaving the center after they approach. Reg's immunity suggests that it might be his people's technology. I seriously doubt he's an *actual* robot, and he *IS* the best equipped character so far, for surviving the Abyss.
- An empty, dark, huge area where no absolutely no light, similar to the Abyss of New Londo, inhabited by malevolent, unseen beings.
- The creator of the Abyss, a creature who suspiciously looks like Manus, Father of Abyss. He might even be some kind of Obliviously Evil being who has no control over his power.
- A burning garden of Eternal Fortunes, with Lyza standing upon this place, urging to put Riko out of her misery. Should the latter refuses, Lyza would pull out a pickaxe that can transform into a gigantic scythe and proves that her title "Annihilator" is Not Hyperbole.
- A Praying Hand who has managed to reach the bottom of the Abyss, mangled and twisted to the point he's barely alive, he's also the very last usable body for Bondrewd. In other words, he's now stuck at this layer for the rest of his life, collapsing, lamenting for having run out of possibilities and purposes.
- A barren wasteland with little to no lights, and the sole inhabitant is a one-eyed cave raider carrying a huge broken sword, in a red hood made of blood-soaked Narehate furs note . Should Riko's party confront the cave raider in a fight, they would discover that the mysterious figure is made of the amalgamation of every deceased Narehate, slowly growing from an ordinary cave raider to the embodiment of the Curse itself. At halfway, the one-eyed cave raider would briefly retain his consciousness and take out a blood-soaked artifact, urging the party to kill him and take the red ink to the surface so that his Only Friend would complete a drawing for him, before being succumbed to the Abyss and turning into a monstrosity whom Riko's party has to put down. At his dying breath, the mysterious figure would have the hood falling off and reveals that not only the one-eyed cave raider was a girl, her old promise of being "a future White Whistle" was also not just a boast. By becoming a White Whistle, she meant bearing the Sixth Layer's Curse for her first and only friend, Nanachi. Except even with the red ink being given to the painter, it would be pointless because the painter can no longer deliver it to their friend, whom Riko's party had just killed.
- A bonfire that keeps the Abyss from consuming the surface, but requires whoever being able to reach the bottom as a sacrifice to kindle the flame. Naturally, it is guarded by an amalgamation of whoever linked the bonfire, burning inside an Animated Armor for eternity. Suddenly, the entire journey is no longer about finding treasures, but putting the amalgamation out of their misery and deciding whether to submit one's life and prolong the flame briefly or to put off the flame and let the curse of the Abyss consume the world, speeding up the inevitable end of the world.
- Nothing really fancy: just a return to the surface level. Seven layers neatly fit into the commonly accepted role of seven as a magic number, and it's kind of symbolic to just return to the starting point after the long and eventful journey.
- The Star Wars Holiday Special
- The remains of a Teleportation machine built by the same ancient advanced civilization that constructed Reg. Unfortunately, this experiment to open a portal to another plane of existence went horribly wrong, it imploded the entire island country, and wiped out the mountaintop city that towered at its summit. The explosion crater, or Abyss, as it would later become known as, is a malformed inverted mess of what once was. To reach the Bottom of the Abyss, is to fully enter another reality.
- A small, empty backroom that can only be entered by a removable ceiling.
- A special relic that gives the user full immunity to all curses of the abyss.
- An ecosystem of robotic life, including (but not limited to) a civilization of humanoid robots that're just like Reg.
- The Big Bad waiting to be unsealed.
- An extremely technologically advanced civilisation.
- A black hole, perhaps a spinning Kerr black hole which could've been the "heart" of the powerplant of an alien interstellar spacecraft. This is evidenced by a few factors:
- The presence of a black hole would explain the severe time dilation, as time appears to progressively slow as one approaches the Seventh Layer.
- Gravitational lensing which would allow for photons from the planet's star to follow a conduit 20,000 meters below the planet's surface allowing for enough illumination for delvers to see without the aid of artificial light sources.
- The mysterious energy field that makes it exceedingly difficult for delvers to ascend through the Layers could be explained as a form of ionizing radiation which causes symptoms like nausea, vertigo, burns, hemorrhaging, miscarriages and fetal deformities, tissue death causing one to "melt", and lastly death from ARS (accute radiation syndrome).
- The "maelstrom" could be a number of things, but my guess is that it's the presence of severe energy emissions from a microquasar.
- Lastly, the presence in the Seventh Layer of a glowing ring around a black void suggests the formation of an accretion disk which would glow and give off visible light as the intense gravity compresses matter the closer it gets to the event horizon.
- In addition to the black hole, it will be revealed that the spacecraft generates a cloud of nanobots that fills the Abyss. Rather than any 'energy field,' it's this cloud that produces the Curse and its various effects. This is likely a deliberate strategy intended to draw explorers towards the spacecraft and keep them from leaving for an unknown person. (Knowledge acquisition? Biomatter for spare parts? Trying to recruit a new crew? That last possibility might have some merit...)
In the form of a BFS-wielding former Cave Raider who dedicated his entire life to hunt down the Narehate, believing that the Abyss can be destroyed by wiping out everyone in the Narehate village. in return, the curse corrupts him as the more he hunts, the more closer he becomes the very thing he tries to hunt until he turns into a Narehate resembling a wolf and starts attacking everyone indiscriminately.
For an extra irony, the Artorias expy would be voiced by Ai Nonaka note to emphasize that he is everything that Mitty isn't, in the form of an cynical, unforgiving and vengeful person who inflicts the curse upon himself until he becomes a irredeemable monster.
Alternatively, a band of hostile Cave Raiders resembling the Abyss Watchers would appear as the first truly malicious enemies, unlike Bondrewd, they are nothing but a band of Knight Templar Narehate Hunters without any redeeming quality, and they would try to hunt down any Narehate on sight indiscriminately.
But it's an extreme one. Maps of the Abyss make the layer look like a steeply sloping funnel leading down into a steep drop, similar to the one on the Third Layer. The name, though, hints at its main danger. Powerful windstorms.
Like the Inverted Forest on the Second Layer, it likely has strong air currents coming from below. Strong air currents all blowing upward, in an area where going a few meters up will result in horrific death.
No or very few people have managed to get through it alive, and messages sent up by them would never reach the surface by balloon anyway. Hence why nothing below is known.
She lives inside an Eldritch Location where time seems to pass differently, and as a White Whistle she presumably spends a lot of time in the deeper levels where the time dilation effect is stronger (to the tune of two weeks in the fifth level equaling several months on the surface). So if she rarely leaves the Abyss, it wouldn't be implausible for her to appear to barely age over the course of 50 surface years.
Or perhaps the collapsed remnants of an defeated Witch's barrier, with some eldritch residue remaining. The Witch would likely have had a cave exploring theme.
Lyza has been Dead All Along and was calling her undead daughter to join her, and perhaps Nanachi is also Living on Borrowed Time due to the effects of Bondrewd's testing. The finale will have a heart-wrenching scene of Riko and Nanachi hugging Reg goodbye as they leave him to stand as guardian to the afterworld. (Now who's cutting onions in here?)
Several cultures have afterlife legends involving the recently deceased taking arduous journeys and having to pass tests before they make it to the next world, and Lord knows our heroes are facing more than enough of those.
- Since we know, that a White Whistle is a petrified heart of a human that died from the Curse of the Abyss and we also know, that the sacrifice has to be voluntary and motivated by love and devotion for the person the whistle is made for. We also know, that Torka, Riko's father and Lyza's husband, died somewhere in The Abyss in the line of service, here's what happened: Lyza's White Whistle is made from Torka after he saved his pregnant wife from foreign delvers.
- Jossed as of Chapter 61. According to Faputa, Lyza's White Whistle calls itself Doni.
- On the other hand, Ozen's whistle (and most of the others) is most likely also formed from a companion, teacher, or studen who died protecting her.
- Doni, who is revealed to be Lyza's white whistle, could be an Umbra Hand whom Lyza risked her life to save.
- For Srajo, hers could be from the former second-in-command. At one point in the 5th layer, the Hail Hex got into an accident that caused them to fall deep into the wrong spot of the 6th layer.
- Japanese does not handle gendered pronouns (or, really, pronouns at all) like English does. As the dialogue was originally written, there's not really anything for Nanachi to "correct". It's much easier for Japanese speech to go without indicating the genders of those involved (which is often a source of difficulty for translators when handling portrayal of gender-ambiguous or genderless characters).
We know that Ozen is attracted to women, but nothing about men. We know that Marulk identifies as male and complains about being forced to wear women's clothes, and that he is completely subservient to Ozen since he owes her with his life. He's also hung naked at one point and has prominent breasts. White whistles are repeatedly demonstrated to have generally been decadent and depraved. Hence, Ozen is keeping Marulk as a sex slave/Lyza surrogate and forces him to transition to make it more comfortable for her. We don't know the exact extent of humanity's medical knowledge, but Bondrewd should definitely know what hormones are and how they effect the human body (or, at the very least, there should be a low-grade relic that would help)
The reason why Lyza talks to Reg with so much affection in his flashback is that she has put the mind of Torka into Reg possibly overriding his original programming. It's also a reason why he acts so human. Ozen may know about this, which is why she went overboard when she attacked him, since she didn't like Torka much anyways.
Originally, Orth was an island civilization that was technologically and magically advanced. One day, they grew arrogant and decided to conquer the world. They created a huge weapon that could curse their enemies and an army of robots just like Reg out of human children. However, during test runs, the huge weapon malfunctioned and sent the entire civilization deep underground, creating the Abyss you see today. The survivors felt incredibly guilty and created a sort of force field to keep the curses from spreading throughout the world. They died praying to whatever god or gods they believed in as a final penance for their actions.
However, as of the events of the story, the Abyss' curses are slowly leaking out, as indicated by the plague that's killing people on their birthday.
Riko, Reg and Nanachi will find her rotting corpse in the final layer of the Abyss.
Consider the two following facts. First off, that the deeper one goes, the more horrible things get. Worse and more nightmarish monsters prowl the depths, promising nothing but increasingly horrible deaths to those who venture deeper down. Second, the various curses that one encounters as they descend into the Abyss and try to go back up. These two factors, the horror of what one finds down there, combined with the fact that there's an immediate, often life-ruining penalty for trying to go back up, strongly indicates that everything was specifically designed to keep people from venturing down, and to prevent people from going back up.
More horrifying, however, is that despite all of this, people keep going back down over and over again. People who go down are celebrated and idolized, and those who do go down and return inevitably go back down again and again, in spite of knowing the horrors that await them and the risks of going too deep and trying to return. Despite all of that, people keep going down, and treat going down like a good thing. Reasonable human beings with even an atom of self-preservation would leave the Abyss, build a wall around it, and never go near it again. Instead, people seem to gleefully throw themselves down over and over again, even though they know it will be the death of them.
In fact, the people who have gone furthest down tend to be... wrong, in a multitude of ways. They have significantly skewed morals, even more so than the people up above. Is it simply that only the people willing to forsake even skewed morality of those on the upper levels can hope to make it down, or is it that as one goes deeper, the influence of the "Something" at the bottom of the Abyss grows stronger?
In short, the Abyss was made to keep whatever is at the bottom right where it is, and whatever that something is, it is able to influence people into keeping coming down in the hopes that someone will make it to the bottom and release it.
Around 2,000 years ago, a spaceship crashed into the planet and created the deep impact crater known as The Abyss. It also killed many native humans on the planet's surface. That is why, we see many skeletons buried under piles of rubble on the first layer. During the crash, many items were jettisoned while trying to save the spaceship. They ended up scattered around The Abyss, and they are now known as ancient relics. Moreover, the bulk of the spaceship landed in the deepest part of The Abyss, which explains why relics get more powerful/useful as you go deeper to The Abyss.
The spaceship was carrying many alien people, animals, plants and robots. After the crash, the alien animals escaped upwards into the upper layers of The Abyss. The alien plants grew into giant mushrooms and trees. Many alien people died, and only some survived by turning themselves into cyborgs. The survivors turned on an invisible force-field that harms non-alien lifeforms if they venture too near. This explains why alien animals and alien cyborgs don't get the curse of The Abyss while ascending. On the other hand, normal humans get the curse of the Abyss while ascending.
The survivors decided to settle down/wait for help in the deepest part because they failed to get their spaceship airborne again. After a long time, the survivors ran out of power and food. This is evidenced by Reg collapsing after firing a single shot in the first episode. The other survivors decided to hibernate and not bother anyone else.
- This seems like the most likely possibility to me at the moment. See also the speculation about black holes and nanobot clouds above.
It's heavily implied Reg knew Lyza. I find the most likely explanation to be that Lyza discovered Reg, named him after the dog, and sent him up to safely retrieve Riko (his/Lyza's "Haku")
Upon losing his memories, he met Riko, who remembered her old dog and used the same name for her new friend (showing a they have similar sensibilities.)
