Made in Abyss is a manga that recently got my attention. It’s narrative, characters and themes are all well executed and refreshing. But here I want to talk about the visual elements presented in it and how these aspects contribute to the overall tone of its story (spoilers until chapter 42).
There’s three things related to how Tsukushi Akihito constructs its pages and visual presentation of Made in Abyss that caught my attention while I was reading it: the paneling, the shapes and the media used in it. Each one of these elements are essential to the feel I get when reading it even when nothing really important is happening. Besides that, we have an excellent character, monster and environmental design of its world. For sake of clarity, I’ll separate this text in two parts: style and design (this distinction is completely arbitrary, because those two are really intrinsically related).
Style
The style of Made in Abyss is surprisingly light for what it does. Characters are constructed mainly with circles and round forms, avoiding the use of rigid forms (squares and triangles), like Berserk, focusing more in doing expressive characters than realistic one. Backgrounds follow the same pattern, often using middle tone to bring a broader tonal value for the environment, creating a more organic and lifeful feeling to each level of the abyss.
It may seem that this style is poorly chosen a story with a dubious sense of morality in how the characters act and think. But actually, that is a great choice. The light character and environmental designs create a dissonance between the heavy content portrayed and the style, making the disturbing moments much more shocking and meaningful, since the reader, like the characters, aren’t habituated with what they’re seeing, making these scenes more relatable. Obviously, it would be possible to create these moments in a lot of different ways, Berserk utilizes grotesque visuals with a dense amount of information in each page, Junji Ito utilizes amorphous pictures and cosmical events in daily life. Made in Abyss uses dissonance between its style and themes to transform heavier moments in more believable situations.
The moments between these disturbing events also gain a lot, since they’re more focused in character interaction, which works pretty well for the style used. A great part of the design presented in Made in Abyss focuses on character expressiveness, giving a calm and relaxed feeling to the light conversation Riko, Reg and Nanachi have.
Every one of these scenes are also enhanced by how light is used in them, not just pure black and white, but also with middle tones. I don’t know if Akihito uses watery ink, graphite or do straight of digitally, but independent of the
media used, it helps a lot to develop atmosphere for each specific scene. When the story asks for a heavier art, he brings down the tonal scale of the composition, giving it a grimmer tone. By the same logic, when more relaxed scenes are happening, tones closer to white are used. The light is also really good in the composition of pages, a perfect example of this is chapter 42’s last one, using contrast to guide the eyes of readers to the most important parts of it. I know this isn’t a revolutionary thing in manga (neither in any visual media), basically every author uses this technique, but a greater number of values really helps his compositions.
Compositions in Made in Abyss are excellent not just because its utilization of values is excellent, but also because his panels are shaped in a way that give
him more flexibility when composing its pages. Made in Abyss often utilizes non-squary panels, increasing the ways a draw can be represented, giving flexibility to the author when composing a scene, resulting in actions that flow really from one to another. The same way tonal values change accordingly to a scene, panels’ format are suitable for what is happening in the story too. When more stable and “on the ground” things happen, they have the regular rectangular shape, but when battles or psychological draining scenes are occurring, they bend, contract and oscillate, making every one of these scenes more effective not just by the excellent writing, but also because the frame is also part of the action.
Paneling, media and shapes. All of them work cohesively to help viewers see the abyss and the world surrounding it as a magical place.
Design
I believe Made in Abyss’ designs are where Akihito’s creativity really shines showing he has a clear purpose in mind when doing its story. A perfect example of that is Bondrewd’s character design.
Bondrewd is a strange character in Made in Abyss’ world as well. He clearly
doesn’t have any moral boundaries. He doesn’t care to those who will die in from abyss’ exploration process. He’s manipulative. He transformed Mitty, and a lot of other kids, in monsters. He tortured Reg. He kills children that were systematically raised loving him just to create cartridges. But in the world of Made in Abyss, he’s seen as an extreme valuable person. He created a safe post for delvers in fifth layer. He’s also a white whistle, which makes him an example in Orth. He gave up of chase Reg and Riko (although this can be just manipulation of his part). All these characteristics creates a dissonance between how we see Bondrewd as a character and how the world sees him. Even Habo says that even if his methods aren’t the most noble, he really helped delvers as a whole.
That strangeness of him is perfect represented in his design. As said, Made in Abyss has a really organic style of art, focusing a lot in expressiveness. Full of round and smooth shapes, their clothes aren’t detailed in a way that distract readers from characters’ silhouette. Riko, Reg, Nanachi, Lyza and even Ozen follow this mold, giving them a more organic feel. Bondrewd is the opposite. His clothes and equipment are rigid and robotic, his mask is full of straight lines, always covering his face. Allrelics used by him are more like a machine he created than something you encounter in real life. If the majority of characters in Made in Abyss are part of nature, Bondrews is more like a piece of architecture, making him looks like an outsider in the world of Made in Abyss.
I also want to look Ozen’s design, although hers isn’t as beautifully crafted as Bondrews’. She also has one that is difficulty to forget. Ozen is, like Bondrewd, a morally ambiguous character. She’s the strongest white whistle
in terms of physical force and a bit sadistic on how she conduces her trainings, almost killing Riko and Reg in the basecamp, telling Riko she was a burden in travel to the surface and nothing but a doll that wants to reach abyss’ bottom because she died and was resurrected by a relic, and even if Lyza asked her to tell Riko this, there were a bunch of ways to say this, Ozen has chosen the most shocking one. Even if she did that, she really cares about the well-being of her apprentices. She knows what takes to be strong and survive this journey, so she will be as relentless as the challenges they’ll face.
Two major characteristics that reveals these traits of hers are: height and armor. Her height shows that she is as a superior being, always looking down to those who face her. That’s a good way to introduce her as a tower, unmovable, but that can also show that she can protect others, serving as a safe point for them.
Her armor is also very telling, different of Bondrewd who had an equipment more integrated in his body. Ozen uses an almost literal armor, making her body more expansive, intimidating opponents and making her looks like a tank that can stop anything. Her armor also shows just her smile, revealing her sadistic nature while in a fight. Different of Bondrewd, Ozen’s armor has a rounder shape, conserving that organic feeling that Made in Abyss has and showing her as part of that system.
Conclusion
I hope that in this text I was able to explain why Made in Abyss has a visual presentation excellent that helps it to reach its full potential. Why the stylistic choices made in it are well thought and pertinent to what it tries to do. Why Made in Abyss is a really distinct manga and how its story is told in a special way.
