Wish them luck!
Impression
Okay, so this episode helped to answer some of the questions I had from last week. Given that the Curse of the Abyss results in cave raiders suffering all sorts of physical and mental ailments when ascending (and only when ascending and not whilst you’re actually down there, it seems – which suggests that the Abyss is okay with people exploring and inhabiting it, but not with people returning to the surface with their findings) I wasn’t sure how exactly Lyza managed to have her crew bring a bunch of stuff back to Orth. The mail balloons make a lot of sense. Even if her balloons didn’t manage to get all the way from the seventh layer to the surface, it could have gotten partway up (say, the vertical cliff face marking the start of the third layer) and she could have gotten Black Whistles or whoever joined her at the time to pick it up there.
The one thing I’m starting to question, though, is whether Lyza’s intention was really to have Riko join her at the bottom of the Abyss (assuming that there is a bottom). I’m happy to accept that the message was from Lyza herself (for argument’s sake you could say it might not have been from her at all, or that it could have been tampered with on the way up in the balloon) and that she hasn’t gone insane, but I feel like it’s a particularly hard request to make of a child. She might have instead wanted Riko to grow up first, and then think about looking for her once she’s a competent adult like Leader. Riko is… well, Riko, and in her excitement I think she’s jumped the gun way too soon. Of course, without that there would be no story, but throughout the whole episode I basically had the same reaction as Nat. It’ll be ridiculously difficult for her to succeed with her current ability, and Reg’s presence won’t remove the dangers entirely. Even if she’s able to get all the way to the bottom, her success means that she’ll never be able to return to the surface again. I can see why people say that a White Whistle’s ‘last dive’ is equivalent to suicide – it’s a conscious decision to spend the rest of your life within the Abyss and permanently depart from society. Whatever Riko’s skill as a cave raider, that’s a heavy decision to make as an excitable and uninformed 12-year-old.
In light of all of that, it’s now clear that the story of Made in Abyss is essentially one never-ending cave raid, featuring Riko and Reg’s descent to the bottom of the Abyss. I can now also see where all the reports of the alleged incoming suffering are coming from, because we’ve essentially got an inexperienced team of Red Whistles trying to achieve what only the most legendary White Whistle has ever managed to do. I’m way more worried about Riko than I am about Reg, though. If he really was the silhouette shaped like a human child near the seventh layer whom Lyza met, then he’s clearly got the physical capabilities to descend since he’s made it up once before (and coming to think of it, Lyza could have asked him to bring some stuff up for her). As far as we’re aware, Riko can’t do anything. She’s just a loli. The only thing that might work to her advantage is her potential resistance to the Curse, but that’s more of a passive ability than something that will help her survive encounters like the one she had with that monster who tried to eat her near the first layer two episodes ago.
I guess that makes it all more exciting? I’m sure they’ll meet existing cave raiders at various points on the way down, too (i.e. not everything in the Abyss is out to get them) and of course there’s the brown rabbit loli whom they join forces with at some point. For some reason, I can also see Leader jumping in after them to rescue them once he realises they’re gone and extracts the truth from Nat. A part of me is also wondering whether his request for Reg to look after Riko (when he said she was taking a dump) was a tacit suggestion that he was aware of their plan. Whatever’s in Reg’s pocket might have come from him. Why he’d be willing to watch them go is beyond me, though. But mainly, I’m really looking forward to all the beautiful landscapes and settings that the Abyss will hold. All of the layers essentially look like different worlds, and it’s going to be super exciting to follow Riko and Reg as they go through them. I’m not sure how much of this the anime will adapt, but I’m hoping we get to see a bit of the Inverted Forest at least (which looks like it’s the second half of the second layer, where everything’s upside down). Things like meeting Lyza and the secret to Reg’s creation are all endgame goals, and so are pretty much irrelevant in the short-to-medium term. It’s the sense of adventure and danger that will really drive the story forward for now. It’s never been so tempting to read ahead with the source material. To end off, here are some full-length images of the latest map that I found floating around the internet. The first is from this episode, and the second is from the ED. I tried to post them as big as possible, but you can zoom in even more if you click once to get to its source page, then click again to open the image as an entire page. Please spend as much time staring at them as I have, they’re really interesting.
I can’t help but worry about Lyza’s message more and more…the sentence she wrote reads “naraku no soko de matsu.” It’s a very ambiguous phrase that, when not joined by context, simply means “waiting in the depths of the netherworld (or deep darkness, hell, etc.)” – Riko interpreted this as her mother saying she was waiting down there… but I have an awful feeling Lyza might have meant they were waiting – previously unknown monsters, documents of which she’s included along with her hastily written words. It feels more like a warning than an invitation to me.
I really do hope Riko’s optimism wins out in the end. Good luck children TT.TT