Television series

Made in Abyss

Name: Made in Abyss
Genre: Adventure, Anime, Fantasy
Released: 2017
Cast: Mariya Ise, Miyu Tomita, Aki Toyosaki, Maaya Sakamoto, Manami Hanawa

Made in Abyss dresses itself up as a cheerful children's adventure — a round-eyed orphan, a plucky robot boy, a magic pit stuffed with treasure — and then quietly starts breaking your heart on a schedule. It's gorgeous, meticulously imagined, and its cruelty is never decorative. Watch it for the wonder; stay for the gut-punch. Not for children, whatever the poster promises.

TVMaze rating

7.0

If you liked this

Attack on Titan2013

Same trick, bigger scale: an innocent premise that escalates into brutal, irreversible horror for kids who never asked for any of it. If the tonal betrayal in Abyss thrilled you, this is the show that made it a genre.

But More war and politics than exploration and wonder; the tender found-family warmth of Abyss is mostly absent.

Delicious in Dungeon2024

A dungeon-crawling party eats its way through monsters with genuine culinary care, but the world's rules have real teeth — loss and grief sit right under the comedy.

But Much gentler and funnier overall; the horror is occasional seasoning here, not the main course.

The Promised Neverland2019

Children in a cheerful, loving institution slowly uncover the truth of what's actually being raised there — the same patient reveal that turns a safe place monstrous, step by step.

But Far stronger in its first arc than its stretched-out back half; the cat-and-mouse plotting wears thin eventually.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Watership Down1978

Both weaponise a gentle, 'friendly' animated register — soft faces, lulling music — to deliver real, unsentimental violence. If Abyss's tonal betrayal got you, this is the film that invented the trick decades earlier.

British animation about rabbits fleeing a doomed warren, told with such tenderness that its sudden violence — throats torn, burrows gassed — lands like a slap. Nothing here is for children, despite the poster.

But The animation is soft and old-fashioned by modern standards; some will find the trauma more shocking than illuminating.

Hunter x Hunter2011

A boy adventurer chases his absent parent through a world of monsters and moral rot, drawn in a style that keeps promising a safety it has no intention of delivering.

But It's enormous — over 140 episodes — and demands real patience before its darkest, best arcs land.

To Your Eternity2021no page yet

An immortal shapeshifter absorbs the memory and shape of everyone it loses, treating grief and body horror as the same open wound. Devastating, tender, genuinely unforgettable.

But Structurally episodic early on — you fall for characters only to lose them again and again, by design.

Land of the Lustrous2017no page yet

Immortal, shatterable gem-people wander a ruined earth in some of the most beautiful CG animation ever put on a small screen, wonder curdling steadily into existential dread.

But Only twelve episodes and deliberately unresolved; the source manga finishes a story the anime barely starts.

Somali to Mori no Kamisama2020no page yet

A golem escorts a fragile human child across a world hostile to her kind, in the same tender register as Rico and Reg — found family walking steadily toward danger.

But Gentler and more episodic; it never quite commits to the cruelty Made in Abyss is famous for.

Warriors of the Wind1984

Miyazaki's own descent into a toxic, ancient world of monstrous beauty and real ecological horror — the granddaddy of 'wonder that might kill you' storytelling.

But Eighties pacing and visuals ask more patience of a modern viewer than the show they're coming from.

The Rescue2021

Same descent into an unforgiving, alien darkness where curiosity and love cost real bodies — except this pit is real, and so is everyone who doesn't come back up.

A documentary about the real 2018 Thai cave rescue — ordinary men descending into flooded darkness to bring children home, shot with a thriller's tension and a true story's weight.

But No monsters, no fantasy, just claustrophobia and logistics and grief — it can feel slow after Abyss's spectacle.

The Descent2005

Strip out the found family and the beauty and what's left is the same structural nightmare — a hole in the earth that changes what it means to come home — played here as pure horror instead of tragedy.

A group of women go caving and find something ancient and starving waiting below — visceral, nasty horror that treats the cave itself as a hungry, living character.

But Considerably gorier and crueler, with none of Abyss's wonder or warmth to soften the trip down.