Anime Column] 100 Anime to Watch by Keyword! 100 Anime to Watch vol.21 "Made in Abyss" etc.

Drinking parties among anime fans tend to be a game of association. Whenever someone says, "XXX has XXX scene," someone else replies, "Speaking of XXX scene, don't forget XXX. Anime and animation are connected by invisible threads like this. Let's follow the "anime to watch" using keywords as clues.

Made in Abyss" is an anime adaptation of the manga of the same title by Akihito Tsukushi.
The Abyss" is the only remaining unexplored and unexploited large hole in the world. The deep and huge cavern is divided into several levels and inhabited by strange creatures. Adventurers known as "speleologists" have repeatedly ventured into the Abyss and brought back many precious relics that cannot be made by humans today.

Riko, an orphan living in a town on the edge of the Abyss, is a young girl who yearns to become a speleologist like her mother. One day, Rico picks up Reg, a robot that takes the form of a boy.
Eventually, Rico decides to go to the bottom of the Abyss with Reg, inspired by her caveman mother's flute, which has been discovered after 10 years, and the message left on it.

One of the interesting aspects of this work is the presence of strange creatures living in the Abyss.
In the ninth episode of the anime, Riko and Reg are depicted descending to the "Great Fault," the third layer of the Abyss. They enter the nest of a large carnivorous creature, Madokajaku, and are pursued by Benikuchinawa. Finally, they are preyed upon by the stomach of an amaka turtle, which preys on smaller animals with its sweet smell. In episode 10, Riko is further deeply wounded and nearly killed by Tamaugachi's poisonous needle attack in the fourth layer of the deep sea, "Giant's Cup. Rico's suffering (and Reg's anguish) at this time was so vivid because of the round character design that it was extremely painful.

And so we come to the "creatures of the other world" in this issue. I thought about the works in which impressive "otherworldly creatures" appear.

The creatures in "Made in Abyss" are interesting not only because of their shapes, but also because their names are well "conveyed" to the viewer. The Tamaugachi probably derives its name from "to pierce a jade," due to its needle, while the Benikuchinawa is a "red serpent" as it is. The naming of Madoka-jaku is unimaginable, but the sense of the word is so Japanese that it does not seem out of place.

Speaking of the worldview that emerges from such naming, one cannot forget "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind".

After the final war, known as the "Seven Days of Fire," the earth is covered with a forest of fungus that sends out poisonous spores, known as the "Sea of Decay. Within the Sea of Rot, a terrifying threat to the few remaining humans, there were also creatures called "bugs," which had grown to enormous size with exoskeletons.

The giant, beetle-like creature is the "oomu" (king bug). He is literally the king of the bugs, hence his name. The giant four-winged bugs that entered the Valley of the Wind, where Nausicaa and his friends live, are "oxflies. The gigantic size of its body matches the name "bovine" very well. Needless to say, its entire body is naturally abu-like.
The hebeikera hooks the möve (a small glider with an engine) that Nausicaa rode in the Sea of Decay with its tail. It looks like a long flying centipede, but its long length explains the name "snake. Was "kera" taken from "okera"?

The same is true of the plants of the rotting sea, which are called "mushigoyashi" and "hyosokari," each of which has a name that makes it easy to imagine how it came to be so named.
The worldview of "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" also emerges from this naming technique.

From the New World" is another science fiction film that depicts the distant future after the collapse of civilization, but it too features an unforgettable deformed creature. It is a rat.

It is a future in which humans have come to possess a supernatural power called "juryoku. Tens of thousands of people live in small colonies on the Japanese archipelago after civilization has long since collapsed.
The animals used by these humans are the Bake-rat. These creatures, which are said to have evolved from the naked mole, revere humans with their magical powers as gods and swear obedience to them. Like the naked mole, the bamboo rat is eusocial, forming huge colonies with a queen at the center. Colonies range in size from a few hundred to as many as 10,000. They are as intelligent as humans, and some even speak Japanese.
Their appearance is not at all cute like a mascot. That is why, including their role in the climax of the film, they leave a strong impression as beings with a strong impact.

Lastly, I would like to introduce the "scab coral," which appears in the "Psalms of Planets Eureka seveN" series. As the name suggests, it has a scab-like or coral-like form and covers the surface of the earth.
However, this is actually a life form - an information life form. That is why they are called "corallians" when we treat them as life forms.
Why did they come to the earth and cover the earth? For human beings, who have no way to communicate with them, their intentions are completely unknown. This is one of the points of the story.

The Corallians created the heroine Eureka, a humanoid Corallian, for a specific purpose.
Eureka was named after the European Space Agency's "EURECA" rocket launched in 1992. When Scub Coral made contact with it, it apparently read this name and took it as its name. However, the rocket was scratched and the C looked like a K, so the heroine Eureka's name is spelled "EUREKA.

The name of an alien life form is not only important in its design and description, but also in its name.

(Text by Ryota Fujitsu)

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