This Week in Anime: Made in Abyss Sparks Controversy in K-Pop Community

Chris and Steve revisit the dark fantasy series’ controversy after several K-Pop idols come under criticism for watching or reading the series. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
ChrisSteve, I can’t tell you how grateful I am that Nick and Nicky tackled the denser, heavier subject matter this week. I’m still decompressing from the long holiday weekend, so what do you say we kick back with something nice, easy, and not controversial? How about seminal fan-favorite anime Made in Abyss? That ought to go over swimmingly.
SteveLook, it’s Courting Controversy Week here at TWIA, and if our comrades are out there slinging the strongest pebbles they have at the goliath that is MAPPA, then it’s only fair we tickle the tail of the dragon that is K-pop stans. I can’t pretend to know this or that about the K-pop scene, apart from the odd manga that pokes fun at the fandom. But I am familiar with anime and manga controversies, which means my primary reaction to seeing stans of Korean pop idols reheating Made in Abyss discourse over the past week was “What? We’re doing this again?” For those not in the know, several K-pop idols (TXT’s Soobin, SEVENTEEN’s Woozi, ATEEZ’s Mingi, and NCT’s Taeyong) recently came under fire for recommending or owning the manga or watching the anime. Some of the admissions are years old, but K-pop fans are bringing it all forward now. I also won’t pretend to have any knowledge of or context for any of the idols implicated in this “incident,” and all I know about the scene is the, ahem, passion of its cohort of fans. So, I’d like to begin by setting the record straight that everything I say in this column is satire, and please don’t send an assassin to my apartment. That said, I kind of love this whole mess if only because it introduced me to one of the greatest Instagram posts of all time: a pair of Astro Boy boots next to a casually strewn eleventh volume of Made in Abyss. It belongs in a museum. (Pictured: TAEYONG’s boots and Made in Abyss volume 11) Truly, this is the cultural cross-collusion that only comes when art is shared across borders. And it’s funny because ordinarily, I’d think it was downright heartening to see megastars from another country giving Made in Abyss the nod. As a member of the esteemed sphere of people who make stupid posts about anime online, at this point, I primarily think of the series as a popular, award-winning show and one of my favorite anime in recent memory. Agreed! I put the second season on my list of favorites from last year. I’ve found both the anime and manga to be a compelling melange of adventure, abject horror, and ruminations on what drives humanity to be humanity. I also don’t want this to look like us fanning the flames of a kerfuffle that seems to have all but succumbed to the unforgiving yet goldfish-short memory of online warriors. The K-pop tabloids already had their fun, but I think we can treat this as a jumping-off point for more persistent patterns of internet discourse. Most importantly, this gives me another excuse to post the shot of Nanachi, where they look like a suction-cup Garfield in a car window. Nanachi-posting is a noble pursuit, no matter the cause. This incident mostly served as a reminder of how the predilections of some anime can be regarded by those not entrenched in following the medium. A pop music fan who mostly knows anime from My Hero Academia and Jujutsu Kaisen might reasonably be caught a little off-guard by some of the content of this cute-seeming series their favorite performer just recommended. Which is part and parcel of the Made in Abyss experience, fairly. We all remember the first time we watched episode 10. I’m still not a fan of this spiky lad, that’s for sure. Made in Abyss, while popular, is certainly not for everybody. It’s quite intentionally provocative. The core premise takes a cast full of characters who look like Precious Moments figurines and throws them into a hole full of things trying to kill and/or torture them in highly graphic fashions. That’s gonna rankle some audiences. Still, it’s something that we might have thought was a settled issue with the series by this point. This is Made in Abyss! It parlayed its provocative tendencies into becoming a critical darling that’s topped best-of lists and won awards. Its movie got distributed to theaters over here, and the series aired on Toonami! A game has been released that you can play on your Nintendo! And then the reactions of newcomers make you step back and go, “Hm, maybe it is a bit odd that a series with this many unsavory kinks on full display went on to become a mainstream megahit.” Like the titular Abyss, there are many layers on which one might find the series’ content objectionable. One of the deeper layers is the series’ propensity towards the bodily functions of its cast, which is played for humor and horror. It’s weird. It stands out. Even for a Made in Abyss megafan and longtime anime enjoyer like me, it’s uncomfortable. That and the youthfulness of the cast, alongside the fetishization of their bodies and the functions thereof, are definitely where things head into questionable territory. It’s similar to zoom-ins on bare feet in a Tarantino movie. It’s included less as a compliment to the atmosphere and tone like the straightforward horrors, and more as a case of “Oh, Akihito Tsukishi just has a thing for drawing this sort of stuff.” And this is where I break away from sentiments like the ones expressed in the article at the top of the column. Do I agree that Tsukishi is probably into some weird stuff that he sublimates through his art? Absolutely. Do I think that alone makes him a degenerate criminal, which further means that anyone who enjoys his work must also be irredeemably twisted? No. That’s an early takeaway from this sort of discussion that I’ll agree with you on. Because for all the weird indulgences that Tsukishi peppers his work with, he (as far as I know) hasn’t been implicated in partaking or disseminating real-life CSAM, unlike some other authors for whom that makes their work much harder for me to partake of. That’s such an important point! If Tsukishi is ever arrested, that’ll be an entirely different conversation. But as it stands, I don’t care if he drew a machine that collected Reg’s urine; you can’t just go and call him a pedophile. The increasing wantonness with which that label is thrown around, both in and outside the anime sphere, only dilutes the potency of legitimate accusations like the one above. That’s actually harmful. Several comments I saw from the K-pop saga last week honed in on Tsukishi’s sniffing of his Nanachi plushies as “proof” of his criminal degeneracy. If you’re going to go after someone for being weird about a cute rodent creature they drew, then we’d be up to canceling the likes of Osamu Tezuka. Speaking of those Astro Boy boots you posted earlier. It’s canonical that Nanachi smells good. Maybe he was joking about that, and people can’t decode subtext. Or maybe he has a designated Nanachi plushie for smelling, so why do you care, weirdo? Maybe you’d think differently if you got a whiff of Nanachi’s fur. They don’t always define the text; a creator’s weirder indulgences often inform their expression. Maybe Tsukushi’s odd eye towards younger bodies and the things that come out of them is mostly discomforting window dressing on everything else Made in Abyss does so well. But along other lines, Land of the Lustrous author Haruko Ichikawa is fascinated with androgynous, pubescent bodies that inform the artistic efforts of her work. You could probably write a whole book on what’s going on in Paru Itagaki’s chicken-masked head. And I wouldn’t have them any other way. I’d even argue that there’s merit to Made in Abyss’ grosser content. Both the potty humor and abject horror remind us that we’re just tubes full of meat, bone, and bile. We are the…