“I had wanted to find the light. But within the darkness, the thing I finally found and came into contact with was darkness, after all.”
I know that Made in Abyss doesn’t shy away from showing the most vile of scenes and situations but this episode truly left me speechless. I don’t know which is worse, this or season one’s ending. But we’re not even done with this flashback and I can only expect even worse things to happen. I was preparing myself for what I was about to see based on comments I had seen and yet I still wasn’t prepared.
We finally get to see how the Ganja group fared against the sixth layer, and after learning that it was completely impossible for them to return to the upper layers, they made their new home upon their destination along with the help of the Interference Units. Their biggest tasks were finding shelter, food, potable water, and avoiding the dangers around them. And yet they had no idea that their biggest danger was right under their noses.
Irumyuui is such a tragic character, and her emotional attachment to Vueko is both sweet but also a little disturbing once you know the true reason. She’s been through so much suffering, being cast aside by her family once she wasn’t able to have children. It seems that in her tribe it was important to have children and her mother had had many of them. Not being able to have them, Irumyuui was seen as cursed and suddenly abandoned. She clings to Vueko because she has the same scent as her mother, of “mating many times” which is awful when you know Vueko was raped multiple times and that’s definitely the reason why she can’t have babies either. Even with a strong emotional bond with Vueko, and generally getting along with the others, Irumyuui is still haunted by her past. I knew the Cradle of Desire was going to be bad news, but I can understand Vueko and the others agreeing to it because of their desperate situation, but I did not expect what I was going to see. Actually, I had no idea what I was expecting but it shattered my heart. Seeing Irumyuui’s body morph was one thing, but to see what it finally become and how happy it made her hurt me bad. I can also understand why the Interference Units said that it would work best with a child, as they are more pure and more simple. An adult using it would be a disaster because of how complex older adults are with our thoughts. We all have different desires and thoughts that swirl around, maybe you wouldn’t even know what to wish for exactly and not being clear would cause something to go awry. At least while Irumyuui’s result ended up being more complex, her wish was pretty simple.
Irumyuui wanted to bear children and be a mother, just like she’s always wanted to. Just to finally be happy with herself and not be considered a “curse” like her family and tribe thought, and my god that is horrifying and depressing. This is a CHILD we’re talking about, just a little girl. And yet this was her wish. Of course there’s other facets to Irumyuui’s wish, which was the lack of pain I noticed. Even with her body morphing she showed zero pain like she was experiencing before and always had a smile on her face, something Vueko pointed out. And then the bombshell being Irumyuui giving birth to her little babies, which would unfortunately die the very next day. She would birth them every single day but they would always die, and she would scream and cry every time. And to make it more disturbing, they looked like the little pet that she had lost to a monster. So she would have these babies, that looked like her pet, and just lose it like she lost her pet. Just experiencing loss over and over even when she finally had what she always wanted, which was to give birth and be a mother. It’s so horrifying. I just want to hug Irumyuui and I’m just so nervous for what else we’re going to see. Even just going through my screenshots made me extremely depressed, I hated seeing it again. I hate that she harbored these feelings and this little girl based her value on her fertility. Again, she is A CHILD. Things are already going badly, even though…there’s been a shift.
I’m not sure what it is their religion is, or why or how Wazukyan is a prophet, but he definitely does have a lot of power with what happened. It’s easy to go after Wazukyan and call him a monster for what he did, and I admit it’s truly disgusting and awful. But in the end, feeding Vueko and the others Irumyuui’s children is what saved them. And judging from Wazukyan’s words, that may have been another part to her wish. Maybe Irumyuui’s main wish was to be a mother and bear children, but part of it (like lack of pain) must have been saving Vueko and the others. And…she did. It’s unfortunate the way that it had to happen based on the Cradle of Desire’s control, but this truly saved their lives. This is an extremely complex issue of life or death and this particular solution falls in a really gray area, and you can compare it to people trapped on a freezing mountain resorting to cannibalism to survive. And this is kind of like that because it’s technically cannibalism, even if those babies look more like hollows. Maybe it’s the issue that Wazukyan fed it to everyone without telling them what it was exactly and possibly going behind Irumyuui’s back. It’s a terrible solution to a terrible situation and I still can’t blame him. Though the fact that he held a calm smile on his face while he dropped the truth on Vueko was disconcerting. Maybe Wazukyan would seem more sympathetic if he had at least shown some remorse as he revealed what he did, but he kept such a calm and happy demeanor.
And it seems that this is only the beginning because we still haven’t seen how the village formed and how Wazukyan and Belaf turned into hollows themselves, and Vueko’s fate. Of course I’m also really concerned with Irumyuui and how she’ll continue to be and what will happen to her. We know that Vueko was punished for some reason and kept away and I know it has to do with Irumyuui. I’m both excited and extremely nervous to see the rest of this story. The Abyss continues to be a horrific place, where even something as simple as water can kill you. I’m surprised nothing like that has happened to Riko and the others, but they’re not in a totally safe spot just yet either.
