If the embed won’t play, the trailer is also here on YouTube.
Anyone who has been staring hopefully down the Abyss since 2023 can finally see a rope coming down. HIDIVE announced on Tuesday that it will distribute Made in Abyss: Awakening Mystery in 2027, and that the film’s North American premiere will take place on 5 December at Anime Frontier in Fort Worth, Texas. Exact streaming dates and territories are promised later, so British viewers should keep their whistles to hand.
Awakening Mystery (Mezameru Shinpi in Japan) opened in Japanese cinemas on 23 October and made the top ten on its first weekend. It’s the first new Made in Abyss film in six years, picking up after the second TV season, The Golden City of the Scorching Sun, and following Riko, Reg, Nanachi and Faputa as they press on through the sixth layer. It’s also the first of a planned trilogy of films that effectively make up the anime’s third season, and the second is already in production. Masayuki Kojima directs again at Kinema Citrus, Kevin Penkin is back on the score, and the theme, “Chain of the Abyss”, is performed by Penkin with Mori Calliope. Miyu Tomita (Riko), Mariya Ise (Reg), Shiori Izawa (Nanachi) and Misaki Kuno (Faputa) all return, with Sumire Morohoshi and Takanori Hoshino voicing Tepaste and Cravagli.
HIDIVE has a fair claim to being the series’ home in the West. Made in Abyss was one of its first simulcasts when the service launched in July 2017, and the company’s president, John Ledford, frames the new film as marking a decade of that relationship. A word of warning for newcomers, though. Akihito Tsukushi’s story looks like a storybook adventure, all round faces and enormous eyes, and then the Abyss sets about doing unspeakable things to the people who climb down into it. Imagine Swallows and Amazons rewritten by Clive Barker and you’re in roughly the right postcode. Here at SFcrowsnest, we mean that as a compliment, but do check the rating before sitting a ten-year-old down in front of it on the strength of the artwork.
Given that the curse of the Abyss punishes anyone who tries to climb back up, the film’s journey out to the rest of the world has been remarkably painless.
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