Made in Abyss: Mezameru Shinpi opened in Japanese theaters on Friday, and the staff marked the day by confirming that a second film is in production. A new key visual and more cast for the first film came with the announcement.
The film is the first entry in a new theatrical series adapting Akihito Tsukushi’s manga, rather than a continuation of the 2022 television season. The sequel news arrived on the series’ official website and through Kadokawa, with the second film described only as greenlit. No release date, format details or staff for part two have been announced.
The new cast
All the newly announced names were revealed on the film’s opening day:
- Nana Mizuki as Srajo
- Akeno Watanabe as Nishagora
- Shunsuke Takeuchi as Yataramar
- Nao Tōyama as Sherumi
- Yume Miyamoto as Menae
They join Sumire Morohoshi as Tepaste and Takanori Hoshino as Cravagli, both announced earlier. The returning leads are Mariya Ise as Reg, Miyu Tomita as Riko, Shiori Izawa as Nanachi and Misaki Kuno as Faputa.
Mizuki voicing Srajo is the one to watch here. Srajo is a White Whistle, one of the delvers whose reputation precedes them in Tsukushi’s story, and the character’s arrival in animated form was always going to be the moment manga readers checked for.
Who is making it
Masayuki Kojima returns to direct at Kinema Citrus, the studio behind the previous anime entries and the My Happy Marriage anime special. Hideyuki Kurata is back on series composition, and Kazuchika Kise and Yuka Kuroda return as character designers. Kevin Penkin is composing, as he has for every Made in Abyss anime project so far.
The theme song is “Chain of the Abyss,” performed by Penkin with Mori Calliope. Penkin’s scores are a large part of why the franchise sounds unlike anything else in the adventure genre, and pairing him with a vocalist for the theatrical version is a deliberate step away from the television presentation.
Other staff credits include design leader Takeshi Takakura, art directors Osamu Masuyama, Teru Sekiguchi and Asaki Nakamura, color key artist Miyao Yamashita, compositing director Tsunetaka Ema, editor Masayuki Kurosawa, sound director Haru Yamada and sound effects by Tōru Noguchi.
Where the story stands
The anime has moved in stages. The first 13-episode television series aired in Japan in July 2017. Dawn of the Deep Soul opened in Japanese theaters in January 2020 and landed at #9 in its opening weekend with 102,284,000 yen (about $929,300) across its first three days. The second season, The Golden City of the Scorching Sun, ran in July 2022 and closed with a one-hour finale that September. Kadokawa announced a sequel in January 2023, and it has taken until now for that sequel to reach theaters.
The source manga began on Takeshobo’s Web Comic Gamma site in October 2012. The 15th collected volume shipped in Japan on August 26, and the series has 22 million copies in circulation. Seven Seas Entertainment licensed it in English in 2017 and released volume 14 on March 31, with volume 15 scheduled for March 30, 2027.
The manga’s release pace explains why the anime has moved in stops and starts. Fifteen volumes since October 2012 is a slow build for a monthly series, and Tsukushi has taken breaks along the way. An anime cannot adapt chapters that do not exist, so a film series spaced years apart is a practical response to the source material rather than a marketing choice.
What the film series changes
A theatrical series is a different proposition from a TV season for this material. Made in Abyss has always been paced like a descent: long stretches of wonder, then something genuinely upsetting, then a quiet aftermath. Films force that rhythm into a tighter container, and the trade-off is that viewers get the visual budget of a movie for arcs that would otherwise be spread across a cour.
Splitting it into parts makes the structure stranger still. The first film is out now with a second greenlit but undated, which means the story will pause wherever the first one stops and stay there for however long the gap runs.
The risk is schedule. The gap between the 2022 season and the first film is the longest the franchise has gone without new animation, and the second film now has no date at all. Fans who waited through the 2023 sequel announcement know how that feels.
For anyone outside Japan, there is no international release information yet for Mezameru Shinpi. Sentai Filmworks handled the previous seasons and the 2020 film in North America, and HIDIVE streamed both TV seasons, but no distributor has been named for this one. The 2020 film took about seven months to reach U.S. theaters after its Japanese opening, which is the rough benchmark to keep in mind.
Featured image: key visual for Made in Abyss: Mezameru Shinpi, via the film’s official website (© Akihito Tsukushi, Takeshobo / Theatrical Series “Made in Abyss” Production Committee).
Source: Anime News Network; official site miabyss.com.
