Spoiler warning: This article discusses manga Chapters 73–74, Volume 15 extras, the Bondrewd arc, and the Village of the Hollows. It separates confirmed material and author comments / community theories / this article’s synthesis. A theory should not be allowed to walk around wearing a fact-shaped hat.
1. The simplest model: not just a cave, but a wish-realization engine plus a cost router
What does the Abyss want? Does it kill people on purpose, collect souls, or manufacture Relics? Those questions assume that the Abyss has an intention.
A more useful possibility is that it has a function without a goal.
Feed it wishes, souls, life, or information; it transforms them into bodies, powers, Relics, or altered states. The price required for that transformation does not necessarily return to the person who receives the benefit.
Call the model:
wish-realization engine + cost router.
A classic cursed wish says, “Your wish comes true, but you pay the price.” The Abyss may be worse:
Your wish comes true. The invoice may go to somebody else.
No wonder Bondrewd looks like the kind of man who read the terms of service and immediately searched for an exploit.
2. Nanachi in Chapter 73: perhaps not instant healing, but compressed healing time
In Chapter 73, Srajo announces departure in thirty hours while Nanachi still requires treatment. Thirty hours later the party leaves, with Nanachi able to speak from the pack carried by Reg.[1]
A prominent reader theory is that Frapam’s space-time-related ability may have allowed Nanachi to experience far more healing time than the outside world’s thirty hours. Some readers proposed roughly ten days or more occurring on Nanachi’s side.[2]
That is more disturbing than a potion. It would mean the injury was not magically erased; instead, the future required for natural healing was pulled forward and spent early.
This is not confirmed. We do not know whether the cost was lifespan, body mass, time, or something else. What matters is that the scene is not framed as “Nanachi is fully cured, problem solved.” Reader analyses also note that the surrounding characters remain worried about the state of Nanachi’s body despite the surprising vitality.[3]
3. What was the constant “wriggling”? The missing-lower-body theory weakened after Chapter 74
After Chapter 73, the description of Nanachi continually moving inside the pack triggered theories that the legs no longer functioned, the body had shrunk, or major surgery had been performed.[2][3]
Chapter 74 later depicts Nanachi’s lower body from a distance, which weakens the strongest version of the theory that the entire lower half had disappeared.[4]
The safest conclusion for now is narrower:
Nanachi may be in worse condition than the cheerful surface suggests, and the recovery process remains unexplained.
In Made in Abyss, “looks surprisingly fine” is not a clean bill of health. It is often a file format for foreshadowing.
4. The twins’ “five days”: even lifespan-burning can be a net gain if the extra life was borrowed in the first place
Chapter 73 gives Sherumi and Menae a remaining time of roughly five days.[5]
Community analysis points out that an earlier estimate was around a month, yet only a short amount of story time seems to have passed. That has produced a theory that White Whistle release or combat use rapidly consumes their remaining lifespan.[5]
But “spending lifespan” is not automatically a net loss.
If Relic replacement and life-support procedures gave the twins time they otherwise would never have had, then the accounting could look like this:
gain 30 days through extension → burn 25 days using abilities → still possess 5 days more than the original zero.
That arithmetic is not canon. The useful point is conceptual: benefit and price must be measured against the same baseline.
5. The Seventh Layer is not merely a harder dungeon; it is a directed graph with a broken Back button
In an ordinary dungeon, a wrong turn can be corrected by backtracking. In graph terms, many paths are effectively two-way.
The Abyss removes that assumption. Going upward itself triggers the Curse, and deeper layers make that return increasingly catastrophic.
A vertical separation of only a few dozen meters can therefore become a hard partition: your friends may be visually close but topologically unreachable without paying a fatal price.
Chapter 74 has Riko separated from the group by a wave-like phenomenon descending from above.[6] The danger is no longer only “an enemy lowers your HP.” It is separation first, geography kills you second.
The Seventh Layer has terrible UX.
Press Back to die.
6. Chapter 74’s 禍文: information can become soul damage, then bodily change
Chapter 74 introduces 禍文, described in publisher coverage as something that can invade the soul merely by being known and transform a human being.[6]
That is a major world-building clue.
In ordinary life, text transfers information to a brain. In the Abyss, information may enter the soul and alter the person physically.
In other words:
information → soul → body
may be one continuous transformation pipeline rather than a metaphor.
Reader theories have connected 禍文 to the origin of beast-like transformations and to the possibility that some Relics may have human origins.[4]
Since White Whistles already provide a clear precedent for human life becoming a Relic-like object, human-to-Relic conversion is not forbidden by the setting.
7. The twins’ sensory synchronization may matter far beyond a Volume-extra joke
A bookstore review describing a Volume 15 extra notes that Sherumi and Menae have unusually strong sensory sharing: they can synchronize and amplify sensations, and the effect may sometimes propagate to nearby people.[7]
Ignore the gag framing and look at the mechanism:
two bodies can synchronize sensory information.
That makes their separation in Chapter 74 more suspicious. Metaphorically, they resemble two terminals maintaining one distributed state. When distance, terrain, and the Curse split them, could the connection matter for communication, locating each other, sharing costs, or linking souls?
None of those functions is confirmed. But establishing “they share” and then immediately testing “they are separated” is exactly the kind of sequence that invites suspicion.
8. The central logic: wishes and costs are asymmetric
This is the core synthesis.
The Abyss repeatedly shows benefits and suffering landing on different recipients.
The Cradle of Desire
It materializes wishes, but not according to a humane interpretation. Irumyuui’s body, children, and the later village show desire being treated less like a sentence with intended meaning and more like input to be physically compiled.
Bondrewd’s cartridges
The cost of ascension can be routed onto other human beings. This is the setting’s most explicit cost-routing exploit.
“Can I change the billing address?”
Apparently yes.
Nanachi and Mitty
Two people placed in the same experimental system receive radically different outcomes. Curse, Blessing, and irreversible transformation do not close neatly inside one individual.
White Whistles
A powerful bond and desire to move someone forward can turn another person’s life into an object that provides power. Life itself can become the resource used to realize a wish.
Together, these examples suggest a stronger rule than “a wish always charges its wisher”:
The system realizes a wish, then allocates the necessary cost wherever the mechanism permits.
9. The Abyss may have no “purpose” at all: separate function from intention
This model does not require a mastermind.
Fire burns wood without wanting to burn wood. Gravity makes things fall without having strong opinions about falling.
Likewise, the Abyss could be a phenomenon or machine that converts wishes, souls, life, and information according to fixed rules.
Whether it is artificial, natural, ancient, or created by someone remains a different question.
Instead of asking, “What does the Abyss want?” it may be more productive to ask:
“What do you put into the Abyss, and what does it output?”
10. Tsukushi’s confirmed “gimmick picture book” origin—and why the tunnel-book analogy is still only an analogy
In a 2017 interview, Akihito Tsukushi said an early seed of Made in Abyss was the idea of producing a slightly unusual gimmick/paper-engineered picture book as a doujin work. He declined to reveal the specific mechanism because doing so would effectively reveal later developments.[8]
That is unusually strong evidence that some physical or structural “book trick” matters to the story.
But Tsukushi did not say, “It is a tunnel book.”
A tunnel book consists of layered pages with openings, often held apart by accordion-folded sides, so the viewer looks through multiple planes into depth.[9][10]
Layer / hole / depth / viewing through toward the farthest plane: structurally, the comparison with the Abyss is tempting. The responsible claim is therefore:
not “the Abyss is confirmed to be a tunnel book,” but “a tunnel-book structure is a strong real-world analogue for the author’s confirmed picture-book origin.”
11. The Star Compass, 枢機の環, and the blue pendant: perhaps authentication rather than a literal key
In a 2019 interview, Tsukushi stated that the Star Compass has a very important function in the story, and that he asked the anime staff not to reveal too much about it.[11]
If it were only an ordinary north-pointing compass, that level of secrecy would be surprising.
One possibility is that when ordinary up/down orientation and geometry cease to be reliable in the deepest layers, the Compass indicates a true destination or world-axis rather than a cardinal direction.
The name 枢機の環 also evokes, at least linguistically, a pivot, hinge, or central turning point.
The blue pendant may similarly be less like a metal key inserted into a keyhole and more like authentication data: permission for a particular soul or entity to pass.
This remains speculative—but Chapter 74 makes “information, soul, and physical transformation belong to the same system” much easier to imagine.
12. Add the roughly 2,000-year mystery and the model becomes “batch processing”—but this is the weakest part
The series has long placed clues suggesting a roughly two-thousand-year rhythm around the Abyss.
If the Abyss is a converter, one can imagine:
accumulate inputs → process periodically → output or reset.
That would make Relics not merely ancient trash left by a civilization, but potentially outputs of previous processing cycles.
Fun? Yes. Proven? Absolutely not.
Keep this as an optional extension, not the foundation of the theory.
13. Predictions: what should happen if this model is right?
- Nanachi’s rapid recovery will later reveal accounting in time, lifespan, body, or another resource.
- The twins’ “five days” will vary with ability use or their Relic bodies rather than acting as a simple clock.
- Their sensory or soul connection will become useful during the Chapter 74 separation.
- 禍文 will connect to a broader law of soul/body/Relic conversion, not remain an isolated cursed-text gimmick.
- The Star Compass will return when ordinary direction is insufficient and indicate a higher-order destination.
- Passing 枢機の環 or the deepest boundary will depend on soul state, information, or credentials—not strength alone.
- The final picture-book “trick” will not merely reveal a villain; it will invert the reader’s understanding of up, down, depth, Curse, and wish.
14. Falsifiers: what would make the theory weaker?
- Nanachi’s recovery is explained as ordinary, cost-free medical treatment.
- The twins’ lifespan decline is proven to be a fixed countdown unrelated to ability use.
- 禍文 remains a strictly local artifact with no connection to general soul/Relic mechanics.
- The Star Compass turns out to be only a normal locator.
- The original picture-book trick has nothing to do with layered space, inversion, folding, or a change of viewpoint.
- The Curse system and wish-realization phenomena are ultimately explained as unrelated mechanisms.
If most of those happen, the “Wish API” theory deserves to be dropped straight into the Abyss.
Conclusion: perhaps the Abyss is extremely serious about granting wishes and extremely careless about billing addresses
The most useful unified model after Chapters 73–74 is:
Input: wishes, souls, life, information
Processing: depth, force field, Relics, time, 禍文
Transformation: bodies, powers, beast forms, Hollows, White Whistles, Relics
Output: realization of a desire
Billing: lifespan, body, time, soul, another person’s life—and the payer does not have to be the beneficiary
The Abyss may not be a malicious genie deliberately twisting wishes. It may be worse in a colder way:
a wish engine with no human ethics module installed.
Take “wish upon a shooting star,” implement it physically, supply the raw materials yourself, and this is what you get.
Your wish will be granted.
Please verify the billing address.
References (11)
- MANGA Watch, “母を救うための希望『メイドインアビス』最新第73話が公開！双子の寿命は……” (2026-06-12) manga.watch.impress.co.jp
- あにまんch, “【感想】メイドインアビス 73話 一体何をしたんだ……！？【ネタバレ注意】” (2026-06). Used only as evidence of community theories about Nanachi experiencing more healing time than the external 30 hours and the post-treatment “wriggling” concern animanch.com
- 奈落読取図, “73話、何か変！？元気そうなナナチと元気じゃないみんな” (2026-06-12, updated). Community analysis of Nanachi’s apparently improved condition versus the worried reactions around them majikano.livedoor.blog
- にせオパーリン屋, “『メイドインアビス』～最新15巻～感想” (2026-09-02). Community analysis of 禍文, human-to-Relic possibilities, the twins, and the fact that Chapter 74 visually weakens the theory that Nanachi lost the entire lower body oparin-onigashira.hatenablog.com
- 奈落読取図, “73話、それがシェルメナを短命にさせている” (2026-07-10, updated). Community theory comparing the twins’ earlier remaining time with the “five days” in Chapter 73 and proposing ability-related lifespan consumption majikano.livedoor.blog
- MANGA Watch, “2人一緒にいたいだけ『メイドインアビス』最新第74話が公開！魂を侵食する『禍文』” (2026-09-10) manga.watch.impress.co.jp
- honto, 『メイドインアビス (15)』reader reviews (2026-08). Used only as secondary evidence describing the Volume 15 extra’s sensory-synchronization mechanic for Sherumi and Menae honto.jp
- ねとらぼ, “なぜ大穴は理不尽がいっぱいなのか 『メイドインアビス』の作者つくしあきひと、初インタビュー” (2017-08-04). Author says the work grew from a plan for an unusual gimmick/paper-engineered picture book and declines to reveal the mechanism because it would spoil later developments nlab.itmedia.co.jp
- Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, “New Addition to AAPG’s Artist Book Collection” (2011). Definition of a tunnel book as layered pages attached to accordion structures and viewed through an opening to create depth blog.library.si.edu
- Library of Congress, “Pop-Up Books at the Library” (2023). Describes tunnel books as illustrated pages arranged in a row and joined by paper panels, viewed through a peephole so the scene unfolds inside blogs.loc.gov
- AnimeClick, “Napoli Comicon 2019: AnimeClick Intervista Akihito Tsukushi” (2019). The author states that Hoshi no Rashinban / the Star Compass has a very important function in the story and that he asked the anime staff not to reveal too much about it; the interview also discusses structural inspirations including Buddhism, a tree cross-section, and Wizardry animeclick.it
