Four years after its second season, the dark fantasy adventure series authored by Akihito Tsukushi will return with the first part of a new movie trilogy titled Made in Abyss: Mezameru Shinpi or Awakening Mystery Part 1, set to premiere in Japan on October 23, 2026. Though a long wait for anime-only fans, this announcement comes as a big surprise for manga readers.
The Story so Far
A young orphan named Riko and a combat robot named Reg live atop a mysterious exploration site known as The Abyss. A massive, magically cursed 20,000+ meter hole that is separated into eight layers, each more hostile, reality-bending, and gory than the last. Seeking to find her mother, a legendary delver, Riko, Reg, Nanachi and the recent addition, Faputa, embark on a seemingly suicidal mission to reach the very bottom of the Abyss.
Having survived various creatures, White Whistles and the Golden City in the Sixth Layer, the trailer shows the group has now reached a point of no return where only alien creatures and insane delvers remain.
Three Movies' Worth of Material?
This is very surprising news if you’ve been following the manga. The Made in Abyss manga updates very infrequently. So infrequently, in fact, that there is hardly any material to fill up an entire arc, with the current chapters still barely in the introductory phase of that story.
So the news of not only one complete movie, but a trilogy of movies is pretty shocking. We are very likely in a similar situation to Full Metal Alchemist or Elfen Lied, where the Made In Abyss anime will end before the manga with an anime-only ending. Even if the Made in Abyss production staff is taking notes from Tsukushi, it’s still unlikely that the manga’s story and presentation will remain exactly the same as the finished trilogy.
Still in Luck
However, Kinema Citrus has done such an astounding job with the adaptation so far that it’s hard to be too worried. The new film series features the series veterans, Masayuki Kojima as director, writer Hideyuki Kurata, character designers Kazuchika Kise and Yuka Kuroda and the voice talents from the TV anime.
The anime and the Dawn of Deep Soul movie are such visual and audio spectacles (especially the hauntingly beautiful music from Kevin Penkin) that it’s hard to be too suspicious of their output. We are still in great hands.
Made in Abyss: Awakening Mystery Part 1 will release in Japanese theaters on October 23, 2026. The localization date is still unknown.
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