Jellyfish (Still) Can’t Swim in the Night

If you had caught me near the start of the season, or even halfway through, you would have heard me waxing poetic about Jellyfish and citing it as possibly an Anime of the Season. Unfortunately, the end of spring brought with it a slew of other stronger contenders whose endings were not so rushed and whose characters left more lasting impressions.

Don’t get me wrong; I still adore what this show set out to do. Visually, Jellyfish is pure pleasure and a physical representation of the main character’s own artistic style. There’s so much color and life in every scene, and I hold genuine affection for the idea of the anime. JELEE feels distinctly a creation of the present era, with its cast hailing from very different backgrounds and specialties and the culture behind their struggle for publicity and eventual rise to fame.

My biggest issues with this show crop up mostly in the latter half where the ending is in sight but my expectations are nowhere near to being met. Is this a failing on my own part, or theirs? I’m still not sure.

First off: the characters.

Mahiru (a.k.a. Yoru) as a main character is FINE, and I even sympathize with her conflict near the end when she’s scouted by Kano’s mother, but I hated how her drive overran her previous commitments. She was able to make up for this only partially with the deal she made to feature JELEE in Sunflower Dolls’ end-of-year show, but that doesn’t fix the prior stress leading up to that point. Maybe I’m being overly optimistic, but I thought it extremely unprofessional of her to pull out of a job she’d already agreed to do in favor of a job from a bigger client, effectively halting JELEE’s scheduling. Sure, they could have moved on without her, hired someone else as a guest artist, but it’s the timing and spirit of the decision that gutted the group and me as a viewer.

Kano, in turn, has a metric shit ton of issues she still needs to work through regarding her relationship with her mother, her interactions with Sunflower Dolls’ member Meiro, and her fixation on Yoru. I hated the way she exploded at Yoru’s decision as much as I understood where she was coming from. It would have been so much lovelier if we could have gone through her entire emotional journey with more care and time than what we got in the final couple of episodes, however.

Even though Kiui was more of a side character at the start, she actually became my favorite at the end because of the amount of time we spent with her and how we were actually able to watch her grow in a more gradual way. Her double life as VTuber Nox wasn’t so much a “double life” in my view as it was just another aspect to her fantastic character. We all have multiple facets to each of us; she just happens to have a particularly loud and public one. Her “coming out” as you will to Mahiru, then slowly leaving the perceived safety of her home more often, to her increasing assistance and dedication to JELEE while still maintaining her own VTuber presence culminates in an extremely satisfying tell off to her childhood bullies when they discover her identity as Nox due to JELEE’s increased fame.

As for the fourth member of JELEE, well, I’m sorry to say that there isn’t much to say. Mei’s background as a devoted fan to Sunflower Dolls and specifically Kano’s stage persona as Nonoka Tachibana was amusing at the start, but the charm faded quickly. I never got a real sense of her as a unique personality aside from that obsession and the knowledge we later gained of her studies as a skilled pianist. She composes JELEE’s music–cool. Aaaand, that’s it. That’s all I’ve got on her.

With all the drama leading up to the end, encapsulating Kano’s history and current loss of agency and Yoru’s similar lost sense of self, the way the show tried to tie everything up neatly ended up feeling far too convenient and, as a direct result of that, rushed. How handy that Yoru was able to convince Kano’s mother to agree to the additional performance that would give her a chance to reunite with her friend. How perfect that Kano’s mom finally recognized her daughter for herself rather than who she’d wanted her to be. That was a nice mural they created at the end, though. 10/10.

Rating: 1 dango

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*Rating system:

• 0 dango – average and forgettable.
• 1 dango – very good in its category.
• 2 dango – excellent show that is worth a try.
• 3 dango – exceptional show one must watch.