Start at volume 1 and read the numbers in order. Made in Abyss is a single continuous story by one author, Akihito Tsukushi, with no side series to slot in, no anthology volumes to skip and no alternate timeline. There is no publication-versus-chronological question here at all.
The decision that does matter is format, and this list forces it. Our first entry is Made in Abyss - Season 1 Box Set (Vol. 1-5), a collected set covering the first five volumes, and after it the list runs as singles: Made in Abyss Vol. 6, Made in Abyss Vol. 7, Made in Abyss Vol. 8, Made in Abyss Vol. 9, Made in Abyss Vol. 10, Made in Abyss Vol. 11 and Made in Abyss Vol. 12.
The gap in this list, stated plainly
Volumes 2, 3 and 4 have no individual record in our catalogue. The only way to reach them from this list is the box set, which contains all five. So this is not a clean numbered run of twelve books — it is one set plus seven singles, and the box set is doing the work of five of them.
That is a catalogue limitation, not a publishing one. Seven Seas Entertainment publishes the English volumes individually as well, and you can buy volumes 2 to 4 on their own anywhere the singles are sold. If you want a shelf of matching single volumes, buy them that way and ignore the set.
Why the box set is named for the anime
It is called a Season 1 set because it was published to sit alongside the first season of the television adaptation, not because it maps onto it. The set holds more of the story than that season covered. Treat the name as marketing and the contents as volumes 1 to 5.
What you are reading
A town sits on the lip of an enormous pit that nobody has mapped to the bottom. Descending it is a licensed profession; ascending it inflicts an escalating physical curse that gets worse the deeper you were. Riko, a young apprentice, goes down after her mother with a robot boy who does not remember what he is.
The opening volumes read as a bright adventure story with an unusually good sense of place, and the art is genuinely extraordinary — Tsukushi draws ecosystems, not backdrops. The register changes hard somewhere in the middle of the run and does not change back.
Content notes, as plain facts about the books: the child protagonists suffer graphic injury, amputation and prolonged physical torment on the page; there is nudity of child characters; and one late arc turns on the systematic use of children's bodies. Readers disagree sharply about how to read those choices and the argument is a real one, not manufactured. If you want to know before you commit rather than after, that is the thing to know.
Anime first, or manga first
The 2017 television season and the 2020 film adapt the early volumes closely, and the second season covers the arc that begins around volume 6. The adaptation is faithful enough that watching first spoils the manga, and the manga is where the art originates. Either entry point works; there is no version that tells a different story the way some adaptations do.
Where to stop
Nowhere clean, and this is the honest warning. The series is still being serialised. Our list ends at volume 12, which is a stopping point only in the sense that it is where the catalogue ends — the story is mid-descent and mid-arc there, and the release schedule is slow. Anyone starting today should expect to wait for the ending rather than to reach it.
If you would rather read something that is finished, the wider catalogue has completed series.
Follow the full ordered path here: Made in Abyss Reading Order: Where to Start and What Order to Read It In.
