- I N T R O -
Made in Abyss grabbed my attention way back when it was first announced with it’s unique art on the teaser poster. However I didn’t get around to watch it for quite a while, I finished it about 30 minutes before writing this review actually.
So what are my thoughts on it? Let’s start the review.

- S T O R Y -
Despite the extremely thrilling premise that just yells ''GRANDIOSE ADVENTURE'', you really don't get any of that.
The characters barely go through anything yet progress so much due to the extremely fast pacing. The series is extremely telegraphed in that aspect, as you always know when Reg and Riko face a big danger and manage to overcome it, they're practically at the end of the layer and will dive even further only for the same ''Explore a bit, get into a hopeless situation, prevail'' cycle to repeat.
Practically the whole series' plot can be summed up to the same length of the previous paragraph.

The series does introduce a villain by the end of the season as a set up towards the announced sequel but he is nothing but a textbook bad guy, since nothing screams evil more than ''Booo gruesome experiments on children''.

Despite this, the series have a lot of emotion in them alongside an extremely well constructed world with a lot of potential for further development.

- C H A R A C T E R S -
Made in Abyss is full of visually distinct and memorable characters but a lot of them are extremely simple as personalities.
They have no depth or any inner conflicts, what you see is what you get. What the characters say, that's what they think, what they say, they feel, there's never a moment of subtlety or expressiveness without mentioning what they're expressing with words outside of a major moment in the final episode.
All of them have valid motives for what they're doing, be it sense of exploration accompanied with wanting to meet your mother who's waiting at the bottom of the Abyss or wanting to find out who you are. The motives don't feel weak but sometimes the conviction of the characters' does and unintentionally so.

- A R T & A N I M A T I O N -
The art is absolutely gorgeous, no other way around it. It's extremely detailed and atmospheric. The world couldn't have been portrayed better. The animation is good enough, although the quality jumps a lot.
It's usually above average with plenty of double framing and that works, but out of nowhere it can get real smooth and dynamic when an action scene comes. Which wouldn't have been so haphazard... if... the smooth animation didn't occasionally show up out of nowhere on some completely arbitrary moments. It's kind of evident whenever a better key animator's turn comes around to animate a portion of the episode.

That's a minor nitpick though. The smooth animation is welcome.
It compliments the show's world as a whole and could be really expressive given it's quality if the characters just let it do it's own work instead of yelling out their emotions constantly.

- S O U N D T R A C K -
The OST is fantastic, it's extremely memorable and almost always played at the right moment to play with your feelings. The whole track list has that sense of mystery, beauty, sadness and adventure at the same time so almost every piece of the score can be used at any given moment and it'd fit perfectly.
The compositions are mostly made of orchestral arrangements and medleys with touching vocals.
I do feel like the track ''Hanazeve Caradhina'' was played a bit too much (4 times in total) for what it was.
It's the most special track in the whole OST so it should've been handled with a bit more care as it's amazing.

- O V E R A L L -
I think Made in Abyss is a really good show overall with plenty of positives but is stopped from being the grandiose adventure it's supposed to be due to it's extremely quick pacing and lack of exploration. The characters sometimes feel like they literally fly past the Abyss' layers.
It's definitely worth a watch though. When Season 2 comes around I'll definitely watch it.