Made in Abyss is written and drawn by one person, Akihito Tsukushi. It began serialization on October 20, 2012, on Takeshoboโs web comic site, and it now runs on the same publisherโs platform, Takecomi. The setting is a vast vertical pit called the Abyss, whose floor nobody has reached, and the people who climb down to bring relics back up are called cave raiders. The story follows Riko, a girl heading down to find the mother who raided the Abyss before her, and Reg, a robot boy pulled out of the pit with no memory of how he got there. The art looks like a picture book, but the series does not skip over bodily harm or over what happens to the children in it, so the drawing style is a poor guide to the content.
One rule holds the whole thing together. Going down the Abyss costs nothing; coming back up is what hurts. Near the surface the strain amounts to dizziness and nausea, and the deeper the layer you ascend from, the steeper the price. Past a certain depth, turning around stops being an option, which quietly removes the ending most adventure stories reach for. Almost all the tension in the series comes from that one-way geometry rather than from any villain.
The record so far: a Takeshobo press release timed to volume 14 in August 2025 put the series at 22 million copies in circulation. In 2023 it took the Manga Kingdom Tottori Award at the 52nd Japan Cartoonists Association Awards, announced on April 10 that year. Volume 15 arrived digitally on August 17, 2026, with the print edition following on August 26. Seven Seas Entertainment publishes the English edition, and Ototo handles French.
On screen, Kinema Citrus has animated the series throughout, with Masayuki Kojima directing. Season one ran thirteen episodes from July 7 to September 29, 2017, and season two, The Golden City of the Scorching Sun, ran twelve episodes from July 6 to September 28, 2022. Two compilation films came out in January 2019, and the original film Dawn of the Deep Soul opened on January 17, 2020. In August 2025 a new theatrical series was announced as a continuation of the TV anime, and its first part, Made in Abyss: Mezameru Shinpi (reported in English as Awakening Mystery), opens in Japan on October 23, 2026. Kojima and Kinema Citrus return, as do Miyu Tomita, Mariya Ise, Shiori Izawa, and Misaki Kuno as Riko, Reg, Nanachi, and Faputa.
The latest Japanese chapters are on Takecomi, and the collected volumes are available in English from Seven Seas and in French from Ototo. With two months to go before the film, anyone who stopped after season two can read ahead in the manga instead of waiting. Given the content note above, the question is simply whether you want to know what is on the next layer down. (As of August 21, 2026)
