Made in Abyss: The Golden City of the Scorching Sun

Episode 12

Just a few days ago as of this writing, Tim Rogers posted a review on his Action Button YouTube channel for a classic Japanese adventure game from the PlayStation One Era, Boku no Natsuyasumi. There's a line from that review that has been stuck in my head ever since I watched it, and it's been burning a hole in my break like a busted neon sign ever since I finished my first viewing of the finale for Made in Abyss: The Golden City of the Scorching Sun. Late in the video, as Rogers is in the midst of a terrifyingly nostalgic trip back to the city in Kansas where he spent most of his childhood, he observes, “Places do not remember us.” Later on, in reference to the memorial placards you might find bolted on to any one of the thousands of public benches scattered across the parks and playgrounds of the country, he makes an amendment: “Places don't remember us. And if they do, we're dead.”

I mean, is there any more perfect an encapsulation of this show's entire mission statement? I've been struggling to get this review started ever since Rogers' words began swimming ceaselessly through my brain, and even now I don't know if I can find a better way to put into words what “Gold” made me feel, or what I'm still feeling even now. “Places don't remember us. And if they do, we're dead.” Made in Abyss has been telling us this from the very start. It has also been challenging us, forcing us to reckon with that terrible and callously indifferent truth, and asking us: “What will you do, now that you know this? How far down are you willing to go, when the only thing waiting for you with any certainty at all is the darkness of the Abyss?”

In some ways, you could certainly make the argument that “Gold” is a messier and less inherently satisfying finale than the ending of Made in Abyss' first season. It was basically inevitable that this season would end up that way, given the scope of its focus and the nebulous motivations of its characters. Back in 2017, we only had Riko, Reg, and Nanachi; even the terrifying intrusion of Bondrewd into the story was a development simple enough to fit a fairy tale. The Village of the Hollows, though, has always been more fraught with the complexities of its denizens' desires and the burden of their sins. Nobody down here fit the mold of the archetypal villain harboring a terrible scheme; even Wazukyan, for all of his crimes and delusions of grandeur, remained a fundamentally human monster, even all of these years later.

In his dying moments, the prophet confesses to Nanachi that his goal was to transcend humanity, so that he might finally escape the gilded cage of flesh he had made for himself and his followers. He failed, in the end. His meddling with Riko and Vueko, the strange bridge he made for the beasts of the Abyss, whatever visions he might have had of Faputa's future and the prize waiting at the end of the Abyss—he won't be around to see any of it, much less explain himself. For some, this will understandably feel like an anticlimax. The same thing goes for smaller moments, like the deaths of majority of the Hollows in the Village, or the brief and heartbreaking goodbye that Vueko has with the Hollow named Pakkoyan. For a double-length finale, “Gold” can sometimes struggle to find the time to get its house in order, and it leaves a lot of details unspoken or seemingly unresolved.

I'm perfectly fine with all of that, myself, because whatever messes or missed opportunities exist in this finale are all overshadowed by the sheer beauty of the ending they are in service to, by the sweet and simple honesty of it all. And it is beautiful and sweet, even with so much death and bloodshed to wade through. In giving their bodies to Faputa in her time of greatest need, Moogie and the other Villagers find true peace in their deaths, even if they can't ever be truly forgiven for the parts that they all played in Irumyuui's exploitation. In their final moments before they meet their long overdue oblivions, Majikaja and Maa are granted one last opportunity to display true and lasting friendship to the children they've come to love (and yes, the moment where Maa uses her final seconds to put Riko's glasses back on was the moment that caused the old floodgates in my tear ducts to burst).

Most importantly of all, Vueko is given the chance to truly understand Irumyuui's hopes and wishes before she dies, when she learns that, even though Faputa was given almost all of her mother's memories, nearly every ounce of her fear and anger and pain, she was never given Vueko. Irumyuui held on to those memories of the mother she found at the bottom of the world with a righteous jealousy. Vueko always knew that Irumyuui was her own greatest treasure, and in her very last moments, she is able to feel all of that love returned in kind.

That's what it's all about, in the end. It's why Faputa can hold her head high and walk free into her future, now that her mother is at peace. It's why Reg can hold out his hand and give all of the love he has to the Princess he cannot remember, and promise to be her Prince again, in whatever way he can. It's why, when Wazukyan asks Riko whether coming all the way down to this place was worth the pain and sacrifice, whether it will be worth everything else that is yet to come, she hardly needs to think before she answers. It's a moment of joyous arrogance that perfectly clarifies the role she serves in this story, as our heroine. Of course, it was always worth it. Of course, it always will be. How else could she ever have learned what her life had in store for her?

It's why, despite its flaws, I cannot help but love this second season of Made in Abyss just as much as the first. It gave me a lesson that I didn't know I needed, and at just the right time in my life. This year has been a particularly hard one. The whole world feels out of sync. I've been thinking more about my own mortality than I ever have before, and I've become too aware of my own body's creaks and cracks, of how different my sensation of the world feels from even just a few years ago. I've grown increasingly anxious about where I am in my life, versus where I thought I would be back when I was Riko's age. I've never believed in a higher power, and if I think too hard about what could possibly come after we die, I start to feel nauseous. I've been more scared of being alive than I can remember being, if that makes any sense.

Then I see how, before our heroes set off once again on their great and final journey, Faputa pauses to leave some stones behind for Vueko's grave. Places don't remember us, and if they do, we're dead. That isn't the end of it, though? Whether it is the great maw of the Abyss or simply the walls that surround us at our homes and our jobs, we are not, as people, defined by where we are in the world when we live and die. We are not even defined by the walls of flesh and bone that bus our brains around on a day-to-day basis. We are not the scars that mark our skin, nor are we earth that we will find ourselves buried in, or scattered across, before our souls come back around.

All of that is part of us, to be sure, and we must all gather up that great heap of love and pain as it transforms us into our value. But that isn't all of us. Places do not remember us. Our bodies do not last long enough to remember us forever. That does not mean that we cannot find meaning in our lives. It does not mean that we must be taken into the void without leaving a mark upon the world that we lived in. Made in Abyss wants us to know this, I think, and it has, in its own strange (and frequently disgusting) way, given me a foothold to steady myself upon. For that reason alone, I will probably love it forever.

It has reminded me that, when faced with the unfathomable and the unendurable, you must make a choice. It would be so easy to simply turn our backs to the Abyss when it calls for us, to shut out the thought of what might be waiting for us at the bottom, even if it means staying our feet forever. Or, we can be like Riko. We can choose to go down, to move forward in the face of the unfathomable and the unendurable. We can embrace every blessing and curse that we encounter along the way, and we can be thankful for each step we are able to take beyond them. We can find our most treasured friends and loved ones to link arm in arm with, so that we may each greet our final destinations without any regrets to weigh us. We can carve our stories into the memories of every person that we touch, and we can make markers of what we have learned and what we have lost for other travelers to find.

We can, in other words, choose to go on an adventure. Regardless of what becomes of us, it's bound to make for one hell of a story.

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Made in Abyss: The Golden City of the Scorching Sun is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.