Most of the time when I write up an analysis, review or reflection, I’m writing it right after I saw the anime in question. I don’t normally like waiting before hashing out my thoughts; the longer I wait before writing about it, the fuzzier the image in my head becomes. Talking about a movie or stretch of episodes when they’re still fresh in my mind allows me to keep my initial experience in mind as I dig into what I like or dislike. But with Dawn of the Deep Soul, the long-awaited film continuation of Made in Abyss, I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t summon up the will to get my thoughts out in the immediate aftermath of watching it. It was such an overwhelming, dizzying experience that to ruin that experience with words seemed almost criminal. How could language possibly capture the impact Dawn of the Deep Soul had on me? How could I even think of degrading what this film achieved by transcribing it to imperfect words? There was no way an in-depth analysis would honestly capture what I was feeling in the moment, especially when I was so emotionally drained from the whole affair. So I forced myself to wait. I let myself sit with the movie for a while. It’s been a few days since then, and now that I’ve had some distance, I finally feel ready to actually talk about this damn thing. And I can only think of one possible way to start:

Dawn of the Deep Soul is one of the best anime films I’ve ever seen in my life.

Let’s be clear, Made in Abyss was already really, really good. Taking a classic Ghibli-esque kid’s fantasy adventure setup and asking, “what if the fantasy world these kids are journeying through is actually a place of infinite horror from the monsters to the culture to the landscape itself?” was a winning recipe right from the get-go. And the series only built off that strong foundation with richer and richer elements. It tapped into the kind of visceral, dirty horror that shoves your face in the gritty, gristly details of human suffering and refuses to let you look away. It built a truly original setting in the titular Abyss, rich with terror, wonder and mystery alike. It seized on the fear of loss and grief as a gripping emotional hook to keep you invested, as our heroes’ journey forces them to bid irreversible farewells to so many of the friends they meet along the way. And it still managed to maintain the joy and wonder of the kid’s fantasy adventures it draws from, never losing sight of the heart at its core. Add to that the fantastic job Kinema Citrus did bringing the manga’s beauty to life, and you have a recipe for an instant classic of the fantasy anime staple (barring the uncomfortable overuse of child nudity). If Dawn of the Deep Soul only continued to live up to the show’s standard, I don’t think anyone would complain too much.

But Dawn of the Deep Soul isn’t just the next chapter of Made in Abyss. Hell, it’s not even just the best part of Made in Abyss yet. It is, quite frankly, the absolute zenith of everything this series stands for. If you thought the story was dark and twisted before, you have no idea what depths of madness are waiting for you here. If you thought the emotional torment was unbearable before, prepare to claw your heart out of your fucking chest. If you thought the show was already one of the most gorgeously realized fantasy worlds anime’s ever given us, just wait until you see what Kinema Citrus can achieve with a feature-film budget to flex. It’s a near-perfect alchemical fusion of everything that makes this series great pushed to extremes I never thought possible, all working in harmony to support each other and raise the bar higher and higher with every passing second. And the sum of all those incredible parts is a movie that utterly fucking destroyed me. It destroyed me with despair, it destroyed me with beauty, it destroyed me with sheer, unadulterated hype, and it left me so utterly shell-shocked I could barely even begin to process it all. I still haven’t processed it all. But I am sure of one thing above all else; I have just witnessed the kind of masterpiece that transforms a classic into a landmark.

Following the events of the show’s first season, Dawn of the Deep Soul follows our heroes as they descend into the Abyss’ fifth layer, the ominous Sea of Corpses, and finally encounter the dangerous White Whistle who was built up in the final episode: Bondrewd. This is the mad researcher who robbed Nanachi of her humanity, who sacrificed countless orphans in his pursuit of knowledge, who saddled Mitty with unwanted immortality that made her life an endless suffering. We know right from the outset that this will be the single most dangerous foe our heroes have ever faced. But he guards the only way down to the sixth layer: if Riko, Reg and Nanachi wish to continue their dive to the netherworld’s bottom, their only choice is to go through the Sovereign of the Dawn. And when they first arrive at his massive live-in research facility, the Idofront, he seems amiable enough. He offers them hospitality, doesn’t impose upon them, even lets his adorable, doting daughter Prushka hang out with them, forming a quick friendship with Riko in the process. But even as peaceful as things start out, there’s always this unspoken acknowledgement between all of them that sooner or later, they’ll have no choice but to face each other down. If the kids are to prove themselves worthy of continuing their journey, Bondrewd is an obstacle they will have to get past. They will have to overcome him. And he will make it as painful, horrifying, and gut-wrenching a process as he possibly can. All any of them can do is wait for someone to fire the first shot.

That tension is what defines the film’s structure, as the rising inevitability of confrontation strains higher and higher until it finally bursts. The first chunk of the film gives our heroes a chance to explore the facility, learn its ins and outs, bond with Prushka and learn how she sees her beloved Papa’s work, encounter the effects of the fifth layer’s curse, and slowly inch closer and closer to the horrific truth of what Bondrewd and his elite team of researchers/bodyguards- the Umbra Hands- are truly doing here. The uncertainty of what’s going on and when things are going to go wrong builds until you’re practically biting your nails every time Riko so much as wanders off on her own. And once the bubble is finally popped and the shit hits the fan, that gut-twisting tension explodes into a series of standoffs, close shaves, narrow escapes, and increasingly horrifying reveals that escalate and escalate and escalate until it feels like the entire damn Abyss might just collapse on our heads from the sheer scale of what’s unfolding before our eyes. And trust me, however horrific you think Bondrewd’s experiments might be? However monstrous you think the secrets he’s hiding are? You are wrong. You are so, so wrong. Every single time you think the truth can’t possibly get any more upsetting, yet another piece of the pule is revealed that makes your screams even louder and even more agonized. It is fucked up on a level I don’t think I have the words to properly express. Don’t even bother trying to prepare yourself for the horrors to come: there’s no possible way you could be ready for this.

And that phrase is pretty much the mantra of this entire film: you are not fucking ready. You are not ready for how devastating, how upsetting, how staggering, how jaw-dropping, how gorgeous, how awe-inspiring this film gets. Watching Dawn of the Deep Soul is like being swept up in a burning tornado and staring into its fiery rage as lightning strikes mere inches above your head. It builds and builds and builds and builds and doesn’t let up until you’re a gibbering mess on the floor no more coherent than post-curse Mitty. There are moments in this film that made me sick. There are moments that made me bite my fist to keep from screaming. There are moments where I just fucking gave up and screamed regardless. The unspeakable depths of horror the story reaches made me sob violently all throughout the final twenty minutes, maybe even more. I can’t remember a last time an anime left me this incoherent through sheer force of emotional trauma. It is one of the single most overwhelming emotional experiences I’ve had since goddamn Evangelion. And believe me, I don’t make that comparison lightly. Plenty of anime have made me feel sad or hurt or full of despair, but only a choice few have left me this fucking agonized.

But the interesting thing is, I don’t even think the story itself is the most important factor in making this movie such a raw, visceral experience. No, that honor goes to the incredible folks at Kinema Citrus who brought this film to life. Were you wondering where all their good animators and storyboarders were when Shield Hero’s first season turned into a production trainwreck of barely-there animation and ugly CG? Well, turns out, they were all working their ass off to make Dawn of the Deep Soul one of the most lavishly produced animated films ever made. Forget how beautiful the show already was, the level of craft on display here is fucking insane. Background art so richly detailed you feel like you could reach out and touch the shifting sands. Direction so staggering it makes every gorgeous vista and sweeping wide shot feel as massive as Lord of the Rings. Some of the most haunting lightning effects I think I’ve ever seen, casting the entire world and the people within it in deep, textured shadows and weighty, ethereal illumination. Character animation that places the entire cast right there among the towering iron walls of the Idofront and endless expanses of black water. It’s clear this wasn’t made into a movie just to cut down on effort; the animators took advantage of every last opportunity allowed by their feature-film budget. They pushed the show’s beauty so far beyond even its highest previous peaks, it almost feels like an entirely different thing.

And frankly, I think this is the only possible way Dawn of the Deep Soul could’ve worked. The increased budget and scope are so essential to selling this film’s majesty that I genuinely don’t think it would’ve been even half as effective as a TV production. When the body horror kicks up, muscles and blood and bones burst and ooze with an almost mesmerizing believability. The gut-wrenching despair of the story’s darkest moments is reinforced by how flawlessly the animation sells the upsetting gruesomeness at the core of its reveals. The staggeringly beautiful landscapes and the horrifying explosions of viscera and flesh spiral together in perfect synthesis that push the series’ wonder/terror dichotomy into hyperdrive. And the action scenes. MY GOD, THE ACTION SCENES. The dizzying camera that spins and soars through the expansive battle arenas, the gobsmacking detail given to every last explosion and burst of rubble, the overwhelming chaos and brutality of every single exchange, an a final, furious brawl that explodes with the force of a thousand supernovas and left me utterly fucking speechless. On a pure spectacle level, I don’t think I’ve seen any other animated action scenes that top this. Not, not even Mob Psycho Goddamn 100. The force of this film’s sakuga is so fucking powerful, it actually manages to outshine Bones’ crowning achievement of the 2010s. That’s how fucking good the action scenes are.

And then, of course, there’s Bondrewd himself. To say too much about him would be getting into spoilers, so I’ll have to limit myself. But suffice to say, Bondrewd has become one of my favorite anime antagonists of all time. Utterly terrifying in every conceivable way, able to make you nearly puke with horror at the things he reveals himself capable of, yet also a man true to his principles with a genuine love for the people unlucky enough to be swept up in his wake. He’s a personification of Riko’s own drive to explore and discover taken to its worst possible extreme, a man so driven to uncover the secrets of the Abyss that there’s no ethical line he won’t grind to dust and no sacrifice so immense he won’t make it. In the inhuman purple glare of his helmet, we see our protagonists’ greatest weaknesses reflected back at them, a symbol of all the darkness inherent to their journey they’ve been desperately trying to overlook for the sake of their sanity. Bondrewd forces Riko to truly grapple with the mission she’s embarked upon, to face the awful, unspeakable reality of what it means to devote your life to the Abyss’ siren call at the expense of everything and everyone. And the way his darkness challenges her fundamental nature, how she still strives to be good and just in the face of everything he represents, how she tries to find a better path forward than the one he’s been traveling down, absolutely gutted me. When the dust finally settles, Riko isn’t the same person she was upon first descending into the Sea of Corpses. Neither are Reg and Nanachi. The trials they’ve all undergone has shaped them and reshaped them in ways both obvious and subtle, even as they still hold fast to the love that’s kept them alive all this time. Made in Abyss will never be the same after what their experience on the fifth layer gave them... and what it took from them.

But it’s in that titanic endeavor that Dawn of the Deep Soul is so damn important. What I witnessed here wasn’t just a Made in Abyss film; it was the platonic ideal of Made in Abyss itself. It was this series’ true form, the purest possible embodiment of why this story matters, perfectly realized with all the passion and skill you could ever hope for. Dawn of the Deep Soul isn’t just the next stage of Made in Abyss: it is Made in Abyss. It stunned me and wrecked me and left me in a puddle of a million different overflowing emotions, and the most criticism I can level against it is that some plot mechanics are given somewhat rushed explanations, likely a result of compressing the manga chapters into a movie’s length. And if that’s all the price I have to pay for this series to reach its defining moment so spectacularly, then who am I to complain? Before, Made in Abyss was merely one fantastic series among many; now, it’s officially established itself as the greatest fantasy anime of the modern era. We’ll see if Re:Zero can reclaim that crown when I finally get around to watching its second season. But until then, Dawn of the Deep Soul is an unqualified landmark in the tapestry of anime as an art form, a new gold standard for all future fantasy anime to look up to. And I cannot fucking wait to see where this series goes next.