Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night – 03 – Emerging from the Dark

When she’s online, VTuber Watase Kiwi is a charismatic superhero adored by all. She even receives cash tributes for her awesomeness. But in the real world, she appears to be a lonely girl in a dark room. When she signs off, she has no need to put on airs, and her flesh-fangy smirk turns into a resigned frown and sigh.

Kiwi’s childhood friend Mahiru presents her with a drawing of JELEE-chan, the avatar for her, Kano, and Mei’s new collaborative multimedia project. Kiwi is glad to help produce a music video for a new piece Mei has composed with Kano’s lyrics. At the same time, Mahiru has decided to embrace her creative side by volunteering to play the role of Ama-no-Uzume for her school fair play.

On the first day of the fair, Mahiru encounters some girls from Kiwi’s school. All this time, Mahiru has been convinced that in addition to being a famous VTuber, Kiwi is also the StuCo president of her school. But that was a lie. She stopped going to school after her charismatic, superhero-like personality, so popular when she was younger, turned her into a social pariah. When Mahiru tells Kiwi she met the girls from her school, Kiwi lashes out at her for letting her carry on her lie so long.

But Mahiru doesn’t care what Kiwi’s classmates think of her. She’s always looked up to Kiwi as someone who never backed down and always presented herself as an invincible superhero, even if it was all bluster. To her, Kiwi is her Amaterasu, and because she retreated into a cave the light has gone from her world.

Rather than call back to apologize, Mahiru has Kano and Mei in the audience record her performing her goofy dance as Ama-no-Uzume, the goddess who restored the light of the sun to the world by coaxing Amaterasu out of her dark cave. She’s dancing, horribly, for Kiwi’s sake.

This is not lost on Kiwi, and when Mahiru calls her later to ask if she saw her dance, Kiwi apologizes for lying about being StuCo president, and for yelling at her before. It’s all water under the bridge for Mahiru, who assures Kiwi that she is her invincible hero, and always will be: The Main Event.

Kano and Mei join the call and praise Kiwi for her skill in combining Kano’s lyrics, Mei’s music, and Mahiru’s drawings to whip up one hell of a music video. Kiwi then promotes JELEE’s video during her stream, and the video itself plays over the end credits.

The next day, Mahiru and Kiwi finally meet in person for the first time in over two years, and Mahiru is shocked to learn Kiwi’s hair is now pink. She’s not the same Kiwi she knew, and yet she is. And now she looks to be the newest member of JELEE.

TenSura – 51 – Cruise Control

Like last week, this episode is a bunch of people sitting around discussing things. Rimuru and his original Majin crew plus characters like Gabiru and Geld feature heavily, but the familiarity with these charming characters were all this episode had going for it. This descent into nitty-gritty administrative drudgery just isn’t fun to watch.

Rimuru is utterly passive and static this week, and even has an unsettling thought that all the people around him might not even need him anymore. They’re making all the right decisions on their own. He does, however, eventually make the decision to hold a big party to officially introduce the city of Tempest to the world in order to grow its population.

It could be this is another one of TenSura’s patented lulls, in which it is content to sit back and deliver exposition and set up more eventful future episodes. Or it could be that at this stage in Rimuru’s ascension in this new world, all that’s left for him is to receive reports, give okays to courses of action, and observe. It’s just not particularly stimulating observing someone observing things.