Made in Abyss: The Golden City of the Scorching Sun

Episode 8

There's a Welsh word that I've been fascinated with ever since I discovered it as a kid: hiraeth. There's no real one-to-one English translation for it, though as I understand it, the concept can generally be boiled down to a very specific and powerful form of nostalgia, one that is mixed with both longing and melancholy, since the time and place you wish to return to might not even exist any longer. Now, I should be clear that hiraeth is a concept that is tied inextricably to the Welsh culture—the melancholy nostalgia applies particularly to cultural and historical contexts of Wales—but the word just has such lofty and poetic density that I have never been able to keep myself from wanting to appropriate it for a broader context. This is to say, I beg pardon to any of you who may identify as linguistically traditionalist Welshfolk, because there is simply no way I will be able to resist the urge this week, considering what we see in “The Form the Wish Takes”.

It's been there since the very beginning, that inextricable sense of longing and melancholy that colors every step that has ever been taken into the Abyss. It's instinctual, and inexorable, this pull towards the dark chasm at the center of the world, something so fundamentally woven into the fabric of the people bold (or broken) enough to venture down that it supersedes even their most powerful survival mechanisms. Even at the absolute nadir of despair that Vueko finds herself in after discovering just what unspeakable lengths Wazukyan has gone to in order to save the Ganja from annihilation, it is possible to find a reason to go on even longer, to surrender even more of the sense and self-image that most of us cling to during every waking moment of our civilized lives, so long as it means taking a next step, and another after that.

This is not to say that the Abyss is such an equalizer that any and all methods of survival now exist outside the boundaries of morality or common decency; we don't need to look any further than poor, broken Belaf to see that some taboos will always come at a devastating cost (and I can't help but appreciate the work that the animators in charge of his scenes put into capturing every tremble and spasm of the man's shame-throes). Rather, the Abyss simply casts aside any pretense of context or shallow justification when it comes to what has happened to Irumyuui and her children. Anything beyond the raw force of nature has been brought here. It is more unnatural than any flora or fauna you might find creeping about.

For proof of this, just take a glance at the blessed prophet. Whatever his people might see in his “divine gifts” of revelation, though, Wazukyan clearly understands that he still has to take action. He will do whatever he must in order to save his people and venerate the Ganja's new “Queen”, whether that means slicing up her children while they still have breath enough to scream, or finding another Cradle of Desire to force into Irumyuui's completely unrecognizable flesh in order to keep the miracles coming at a steady pace. When faced with the threat of total subsumption, you can either accept their slow and painful withering away, or one can grab a knife, and start preparing your meal. We can call it The Parable of the Hungry Travelers.

Of course, this isn't how it has to be, and before Belaf and the other villagers begin offering their bodies' souls to Irumyuui's transubstantive womb, Vueko has enough clarity of purpose to try and find another way out of the darkness. Her suicide would have been a terrible thing, to be sure, but Made in Abyss isn't glorifying self-harm or anything of that sort. Vueko is just now able to recognize that all of them were already dead, and their fate was sealed the day that they took those first steps down into the pit. What Wazukyan has now forced Irumyuui into becoming isn't just an abject denial of the simple laws of nature that even a child like Riko has been able to understand from the very beginning, it's a profanement of the natural order.

Like Bondrewd would do so many ages into the future, Wazukyan has mistakenly assumed that the blessings of the Abyss exist to preserve you from the cruel weathering of time and nature, when the reality is precisely the opposite. The gift of the Abyss, as Riko I think must understand on some innate level, is that it is a living gravestone upon which you are able to transcribe a wholly unique legacy as your epitaph. To go into the Abyss is to recognize and embrace your impending demise, and to embrace whatever newfound perspective or wisdom that knowledge carried with it.

When Wazukyan imprisons Vueko in Irumyui's skull as the not-child's body becomes the very foundation of the Village of the Hollows, he tells her that he felt that pull of nostalgia the second he laid eyes on her compass, that echo of hiraeth that told him to go searching for a place that might not even really be, because only there could he find his true home. Everything he has done has been in the name of carving out this place, this soil of the Sixth Layer, as a testament to the now unending lives of the Hollowed Ganja. He is wrong, of course, but it is such a human wrongness, and I don't know how easily I could say that I wouldn't be similarly blinded if I were in his shoes. I'm an adult, too, after all. Motley and complex.

Faputa is not, though. She is just a child. She is, in fact, Irumyuui's final child, and I will admit that I cried when she burst forth into being, a living artifact of Irumyuui's own brief life in this world, proof that once, a thousand years ago or more, one little girl was so much stronger than the man who took everything from her. So much of Made in Abyss is about the different forms of ourselves that can be left behind even after we are gone, from the stories we tell, to the lessons we teach, to the other lives that we are able to enrich and lead forward in their own journeys down into the abyss. Then there are the more literal vestiges of our selves that can be brought into this world, such as our children. These little fragments of us who carry not just our blood and our dreams, but all the potential and time that we leave behind us as the seconds and hours and days and years pass on. All Irumyuui ever wished for, it seems, was to have a chance to be the kind of mother she always dreamed of having for herself, and Wazukyan robbed her of that wish so many times.

Except Faputa lives, and so long as she lives, and so long as the ones who truly loved her, like Vueko, remain, Irumyuui's legacy cannot be forgotten. What will Faputa feel, I wonder, when she and Reg arrive to gaze upon the remains of her mother and fulfill this ancient promise? Will it be her own kind of hiraeth? I don't know. All we can be certain is that she is coming for the Village. The Interference Unit told Reg that she cannot not be stopped, and to that I can only say, “Good”. At this point, I'm sure none of us would stand in her way, even if we could.

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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.