a couple of late thoughts about made in abyss // literally no one asked
i regret to inform you that i am a writer. LOL. i'm enjoying having clarity of thought while it lasts/my soul isn't being sucked out of me by existence. i got into a new piece of media! and i'm gonna make it everyone else's problem.
these thoughts got long, and contain some spoilers for the manga as a whole, but specifically for the ido front arc, and iruburu village arc. extra footnotes at the end for all of the extra things i talk about that need links.
nanachi gets developed more in the framework set up by bondrewd. this framework is the concept of exchange in which, in the abyss, one will only achieve something through sacrifice. bondrewd + prushka and nanachi + mitty achieved the blessing/curse by the latter two sacrificing their love to the former two. this gets developed and explored through the iruburu value system wherein every creature inside iruburu has a value, and can exchange it for other things they desire. it focuses that lens of exchange, and explores it in context of how faputa/irumyuui/vueko embody how love and hate, desire and sacrifice, are related to each other.
if the components of exchange are greed and altruism, then irumyuui is altruism inverted and vueko is greed inverted, rather than being subverted (1).
though an inversion of altruism is greed and vice versa, i would argue that irumyuui would be altruism inverted because her wish to save herself/ganja/vueko is altrusitic. however, it manifests in her children, and you could argue that her desire to bear children, to fulfill her destiny, is greedy. additionally, iruymyuui creates faputa to free herself from the curse her altruism brought upon herself, which is inherently greedy.
compare this to vueko, who was forcibly fed stew made of irumyuui's children. she kept consuming and consuming, because she had no choice. you could argue that this is greedy (if we're being generous with the definition of "greedy"; she really didn't have much of a choice in the matter, but i digress). in the end, when irumyuui transforms into the village, she refuses to take part in consuming more of that irumyuui offered her, trying instead of kill herself before she could be turned into a narahate through the village membrane. she remains human, she remains altruistic in spite of her greed in partaking in consuming irumyuui's children.
though gluttony is a good descriptor, i'd argue for greed instead because gluttony is characterised by excess of eating or drinking, and greed is characterised by the desire to have more than what one needs. wazukyan exemplifies this in a way, as he used two more cradles of desire to a) keep irumyuui living as the village of iruburu in spite of her own wishes, and b) convince the other members of the ganja corps to exchange themselves for safety inside of irumyuui.
vueko is being greedy, in a sense, for not making a decision to stop consuming irumyuui's children, for continuing to live instead of killing herself to exchange her life for irumyuui's wretched not-so life, for being (self-proclaimed) too weak willed to do anything at all. thus, she ends up inverting greed by remaining human and not being consumed by faputa, and as faputa says as she (vueko) dies, "she belongs to mother, and not me".
using this framework as the core idea of this story, i'm really interested in what lyza exchanged for what is getting set up to be enlightenment. i can pull some threads of buddhism and other dharmic text if i tried, probably (2). that, and the classic hero's journey (3). so, ideally, when our main characters return to the surface, we'll finally deal with the 2000 year cycles that everyone is talking about, that no one on the surface is aware of, or is barely aware of.
finally, we also have the vague suggestion of a five man band (4) with our main characters:
riko - the leader
reg - the lancer OR the brains
nanachi - the brains OR the lancer
faputa - the brawn
prushka - the heart
reg is set up to be the lancer because he doesn't know what he wants. he doesn't know anything about himself, really. this is complemented by riko knowing EXACTLY what she wants (to find the bottom of the abyss, to find her mother, to eat more food in the abyss, etc). reg also historically has had issues with being indecisive, and it's a strong flaw that has gotten multiple characters into trouble. whether he's actually going to interact with it critically, however, is between him and the writer.
reg is like a simple homemade vanilla ice cream using basic ingredients, while riko is a vanilla gelato. similar sounding at first blush, but vastly different in how their flavours diverge, and with their own individual complexities.
i would like to cast him in the role of the brains because nanachi as the lancer opens up some interesting possibilities for growth compared to riko. nanachi is cynical; they've lost their one true treasure to the abyss by bondrewd's hands. they've grown disenchanted by adventuring, or at least, they were when riko and reg first stumbled upon them. they say as bondrewd dies, "if i hadn't fallen for your flattery back then…", which implies that they might've followed in riko's footsteps as a white whistle delver with mitty at their side, had they not went with bondrewd. on the contrary, had they not gone, then they wouldn't have been in this situation in the first place. it's a really interesting tension between their motivations.
this contrasts with riko, who embodies the spirit of adventure; who, in spite of it all, refuses to let the horrors get to her and instead learns, grows, and experiences all the abyss has to offer, for better or for worse. if riko is a simple (and paradoxically complex) vanilla gelato, nanachi is a creme brulee- sweet with a little bitterness, hard, and decadent in spite of it all.
i could make an argument that riko has lost her mother to the abyss, but the way the story is progressing (and they way i'd like it to be written…) riko could break the cycle of exchange that the abyss has cursed by getting to the bottom of it. only time will tell if the story decides to actually follow through with its motifs it has intentionally and unintentionally developed.
there are a couple more things i'd like to dig into in terms of exchange as it's portrayed in the manga, but i need to read it again and actually take notes on it LOL so far i'm… not impressed with the hail hex stuff but we'll see how i feel after the arc concludes and how it lines up holistically with the story. it'll get there eventually, i hope.
footnotes and additional resources
(1) - tvtropes notes on inversion vs subversion. to put it simply, an inversion takes the idea of a trope and puts it on its head, while a subversion sets up the expectation of a trope and instead invoking a different trope. think of it like drawing a triangle and flipping it upside down compared to starting to draw a triangle, but it's a hexagon instead. additional reading on the concept of playing with tropes here.
(2) - kikuo's songs dance of the frogs and voices of svaahaa both deal with dharmic and buddhist themes of life, death, rebirth, and enlightenment, and salvation and prayer through suffering and sacrifice. i'm afraid these songs rewired my brain, in addition to reading land of the lustrous (link to tvtropes) in terns of picking out this kind of imagery, so i am gonna shill for these things every time i get. i've also written at length about how this appears in alfred from fire emblem engage's concepts and writing.
(3) - reading on the classical hero's journey. sideways explains this and provides examples in his videos on how to train your dragon and into the spiderverse.
(4) - reading on the five man band trope. reg and nanachi are the only ones i'm not sure about, and classically, if you're not sure about the roles, then You Don't Have A Five Man Band. red from overlysarcasticproductions (and the creator of the aurora comic) has a good breakdown series on what encapsulates a five man band.
#project hail mary
#photography
#artfight
