As a bit of a warning, this article contains spoilers for Made In Abyss, up to chapter 67. This would be especially true if this theory gets it right.

And, to be clear, I really hope it doesn’t. Because if it does, then Srajo is a despicable character, about as much so as Bondrewd the Novel.

To frame this theory, I’d first like to speculate as to the allusions made with the major characters in Made In Abyss. I’ll admit that these allusions may be an assumption on my part, but when held up against what we’ve been seeing out of the major characters, the White Whistles in particular, I think that this assumption holds up.

Personally, I think the major adversarial characters, particularly the White Whistles, are allusions to various types of bad parents. Here’s a few comparisons with adversarial characters that we’ve already seen:

• Ozen the Immovable is an alcoholic mother who takes things too far. And, worse yet, she makes the boy in her care dress as a girl for her own amusement.
• Bondrewd the Novel is the father who prioritizes his own career pursuits over his children, and treats them to insincere smiles. While this may sound mundane considering what he’s done, those who have been through it know why that could inspire a villain.
• Lyza the Annihilator left home and never came back, leaving her own child behind. Nuff said.
• Wazukyan may not have been a White Whistle, but he easily could have been. His actions were an allusion to the cultural practice of “hibiki” in feudal Japan. Consider yourself warned if you look it up, as it might ruin your day.

Okay then, where does Srajo the Obscure fit in all this? To explain that, I’ll first lay out what a “germ party” is. A germ party is the act of deliberately exposing one’s own children to another child who has a highly infectious pathogen, with the plan being that the parents time a vacation for the end of the incubation period, so their children become more manageable as the parents enjoy their vacation.

Having learned of that, you’re probably entertaining the thought of gathering every parent who has ever done this into a huge biomass, to be thrown into an enormous fire. But before you get carried away, you might remember the time that you and your siblings got chicken pox while on vacation. The parents that you may have condemned might have included your own.

As a possible hint, consider the fact that each member of Srajo’s faction, Hail Hex, is kitted with a respirator, except for Frapam, whose physiology is vastly different from the rest of the team.

There’s also Srajo’s signature outfit, which is styled after the traditional European plague doctor outfit, with the conical nose.

Now, consider what happened when Srajo met Riko’s group: she had Riko’s friends play-fight with Nishagora. She had Riko’s friends bathe together with members of Hail Hex. They then enjoyed a meal together. Afterwards, the groups joined together for a joint expedition, with Srajo stating her intention of having her own group split up at some point.

Ample opportunity to spread a pathogen that Hail Hex had already developed an immunity to.

But with what motive? Quite simply, Srajo doesn’t want Hail Hex to share the glory that would come with a historic expedition into the seventh layer. Whatever prize awaits the cave raiders who make it to the bottom would split better among fewer cave raiders.

And for Riko’s party, it might already be too late.

If you’re wondering what this hypothetical pathogen might do, we may have gotten a glance with the twins, Menae and Sherumi. While Reg was bathing them, they warned him that he and his friends could end up like them! And that’s deeply unsettling, considering that the twins are quadruple amputees, using prosthetics for basic mobility. It might be that an attempt to induce immunity in the twins went wrong, and the result was so traumatic that they don’t even want to recall the experience. Being children, they’re bad at keeping secrets, and could’ve easily blown the lid on Srajo’s plan!

To make matters worse, chapter 67 ends on a cliffhanger, suggesting the possible loss of the physician of Riko’s group, Nanachi. If Nanachi is out of the picture, Nanachi might have been spared the horror of what the rest of the group might endure. But it would also mean that there’d be less potential to treat whatever illness might come upon Riko.

And, without Nanachi, Riko would be the main concern. Faputa is immortal, which might make her immune to any pathogen. And Reg is a living collection of relics, with no biological component that we know of for certain.

Ozen warned Riko to avoid any White Whistle she might come across, and if this theory turns out to be true, then Srajo would definitely have been a White Whistle to avoid!

While most people have a certain attachment to their fan theories, I’d prefer that this one not be true. But even so, I recognize that it does fit in with some of the other themes that author Akihito Tsukushi has already touched upon, and I’d still be excited to see what he does with it in the narrative.

To end this on a bit of a lighter note, let’s consider the fact that Riko is also a White Whistle, which carries the implication that she might not turn out to be a great person, either. Let’s look at some of her less heroic behaviors. She swiped relics that the orphanage sells to pay its bills. Because Reg is a collection of relics, she treated him like property, and ruthlessly violated him while he was unconscious. She filled a notebook up with observations that she made during said violations. She ran away at night, leaving her orphanage to assume that she went on a suicidal journey. She procured amaranthine deceptor larvae in the fourth layer, which she then deployed in a dart against Bondrewd, risking an environmental calamity in the fifth layer, and deploying a bioweapon at the tender age of 12.

I think it’s obvious that we should not be fooled by Riko’s cute appearance, as she could end up becoming a horrible person, a problem that wouldn’t be helped by the influences that she’s been surrounded with.

Hold on, that wasn’t much of a lighter note, at all.