Your RABUJOI “Wake the F*** Up” Song of the Day: “Sugar Blood Kiss”

I’m not officially reviewing Vampire Dormitory, but I am watching it as a guilty pleasure, and because I adore Ichinose Kana’s performance as a down-on-her-luck girl pretending to be a boy and serving as the thrall of a vampire bishounen determined to making her blood taste better by showing “him” love, while another hot guy is determined to protect “him”. It’s a fun and earnest if slight and somewhat clunky-looking show, but there’s no doubt the old school OP by FANTASTICS is an absolute bop.—Braverade

Whisper Me a Love Song – 04 – The New Senpai

Himari is over the moon when Yori tells her she’s joining the band, because it means she’ll get to see her on stage. But when Himari asks why Yori did it, it reveals her blind spot. Yori tells her she joined because it might make Himari fall for her, and Himari checks herself, saying she “looks up to” her rather than “loves” her for doing something like that for her.

The band practices mean they won’t see each other on the rooftop after school as often, but when Yori suggests they have lunch together on those days instead, Himari eagerly agrees. Yori is a little out of synch with her new bandmates at the studio at first, but when she maintains eye contact with them—particularly Aki, who likes that—she starts to actually have a lot of fun playing.

Himari, suddenly faced with a couple days a week of Yori-less time, decides to check out a club. She settles on the cooking club, for which she only needs to come twice a week. The club also has just one other active member: the beautiful Satomiya Momoka, who immediately picks up on the fact Himari might want to cook something for someone special. That said, Momoka also takes an immediate shine to the adorable Himari.

When Himari informs Yori of her new club situation, and the fact she’s bascially hanging out alone with another senpai, it’s actually a dagger for Yori. Here she is, already feeling a distance between herself and Himari since she asked her out, and now there’s a new pretty senpai in the picture.

When her next practice goes poorly Aki gets her to talk about it, and does her best to comfort Yori, patting her on the head and assuring her she has nothing to worry about as no other girl could hold a candle to her. It helps a little, in the moment, but Aki can’t do anything about the little anxieties sure to pop up in Yori’s head in the middle of the night.

Aki is comforting and reassuring Yori because she doesn’t want the girl she loves to be gloomy or upset. But when Miki invites Himari over and has to take a club phone call, Aki suddenly finds herself one-on-one in her home with the source of Yori’s anxiety. Aki doesn’t mince any words, asking Himari if she’s fallen in love with Yori yet.

When Himari says not yet, Aki continues tobe direct: she’s in love—romantic love—with Yori. If Himari isn’t, maybe she could step aside let her have her? I feel bad for Himari, who genuinely does love Yori but not in the same way as Yori loves her, and is struggling to find the right answer, suddenly being placed on the back foot by someone far more confident in her love.

But honestly it’s also good to get everything out in the open here. Aki had been suffering in silence, and rooting for Yori all the way. But if the object of Yori’s love is, from her point view, stringing her along and “keeping her options open”, Aki’s actions here make sense. She’s looking after Yori, but also herself.

Your RABUJOI “Wake the F*** Up” Song of the Day: “NAVIGATOR”

Are you ready to spend millions of dollars solving crime? I know I am whenever I listen to this banger by SixTONES.

Whisper Me a Love Song – 03 – Different Kind of Love

Kino Himari learned back in middle school that others felt a different kind of love than she did: a romantic love that would cause them to pair off. This caught Himari by surprise, and even in the present doesn’t really get it. All she gets is that Asanagi Yori loves her in a different way that she loves her, and so isn’t sure how to respond.

When Himari opens up to her best bud Miki she gets some clarity: loving one another the exact same way is allowed! Not only that, sometimes things don’t work out with people who do love and date each other, as Miki did with a boy in middle school. She advises Himari not to overthink things, but simply ask herself what she wants out of a relationship with Yori.

While she now understands she has options, Himari still doesn’t want to choose an option that will hurt Yori or sour their relationship. After chatting with her mom about how she and her dad met and started going out, she finally determines a way to verbalize her feelings to Yori. Brass tacks: she doesn’t love her romantically, but she doesn’t not love her either. She wants to spend more time with her, and maybe those feelings will evolve.

Yori is already so in love with Himari that just getting her text explaining the delay in her response makes her happy beyond reason. So to get such an honest, earnest answer that clearly took a lot of thinking, the conversation ends with Yori liking Himari more than ever. Himari worries she’s being selfish, but Yori doesn’t share that concern. She’s simply happy Himari is giving her a chance, and she’s not going to squander it.

Yori now knows what she must do in order to date Himari for real: get her to fall for her. She believes the way to her heart is her eyes and ears, so she goes to Aki, Kaori, and Mari and asks if she can join their band. Since they’re vocalist quit and won’t be coming back, they’re in a bind and this solves that. But it doesn’t solve the fact that Aki is clearly still harboring feelings Yori—the same feelings Yori feels for Himari. I shall embrace the chaos.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night – 04 – Odd Girls Out

It’s a Band (or more precisely “Art Collective”) Coming Together episode, interspersed with scenes of the SunDolls, about to start their comeback push with Kano replaced by a new pint-sized center. Kiui meets Kano and Mei, and quickly learns that they’re nice, cool girls she doesn’t have to worry about. Yoru wants to celebrate with trending tiramisu cups, but th JELEE girls have work to do.

That said, Yoru still understands the need for team-building, so she gets pizza and gives everyone a chocolate egg with a different sea creature prize. While she ends up with the jellyfish, she gives it to Kano, declaring her the leader of JELEE. But when Kano presents an ambitious plan that culminates in their releasing a second music video by next Wednesday, everyone, even her superfan Mei, balks. School and lessons are starting back up, while Kiui has her VTuber work.

Kano skulks out, and already, the group has hit a snag. Mei discovers the reason for the specific deadline: the SunDolls are also doing something that Wednesday and Kano wants to compete with them for buzz. Kano’s tipsy older sister Mion adds more context, as their mother is actually SunDolls’ manager. Despite not wanting to be an idol, Kano was a good soldier, but after the punching scandal, Kano’s mom had her “retire”. That’s rough!

While Mei thinks Kano may be headed to a SunDolls pop-up, Kiui doubts she’d go there, knowing her emotional state. Sure enough, she suspected Kano felt bad and went to the tiramisu spot Yoru suggested, and there she is. Everyone makes up and heads back to her apartment, where Yoru has cleaned and cooked what might be Kano’s first homemade meal in years.

After stew, the girls have tiramisu and share their secrets. Having previously owned up to lying about attending school, Kiui further opens up about her fall from grace. Mei owns up to being a terrible singer. Kano … admits she likes someone, but doesn’t say whom.

Once everyone has shared and knows a little more about one another, JELEE gets going and pulls an all-nighter together to get their second music video out ahead of schedule. While they all collapse from exhaustion not ten seconds after hitting “Publish”, and we once again watch the video run over the end credits, upon waking up they learn they’ve gone viral!

Your RABUJOI “Wake the F*** Up” Song of the Day: Bahasa Palsu Jazz’n Mix

From the ultimate anime boss rush of one of my favorite series of 2010.

Whisper Me a Love Song – 02 – Russian Blue

Yori and Himari have made a habit of sharing their time on the rooftop, and Himari is not shy about telling Yori how she loves her singing. Yori finds her thoughts of late are dominated by the painfully adorable Himari. When she pats her head, Himari blushes, but when she takes off, Yori blushes even more. She’s not sure what she’s doing, but she knows she likes Himari.

She encounters Himari waiting outside her class at lunch, and on Aki’s urging they exchange contact info. This is how Aki learns that Himari is the girl Yori is into (and we later learn that Aki is still into Yori herself). Since it’s raining, Himari meets Yori in her classroom after school, and asks her if she wants to go on a date to a cat-themed merch pop-up at the station on Sunday. Yori enthusiastically accepts, and it’s First Date Time.

Yori shows up effortlessly mature and stylish, while Himari is a tiny goddess of cuteness in her maroon dress and white blouse. Yori compliments her and Himari is glad she dressed up for the occasion. At lunch Himari feeds Yori, and the two end up holding hands to not get lost at the packed pop-up. Himari picks out matching phone straps for them to share, and Yori buys them as a gift for her.

At a music store, Himari tells Yori she wants to see “both sides” of her: the gentle solo artist on the rooftop and the snazzy frontwoman in the band. Yori decides she’ll give the band thing a try after all. Throughout the date, she’s is on cloud nine. Just being beside Himari makes her happy, and all Himari has to do is smile or praise her for that happiness to soar even higher.

When she expresses as much to Himari before they part ways, Himari laughs it off, saying being her girlfriend would be great. But as she walks away, Yori takes hold of her arm and tells her, in no uncertain terms, that she wants to go out with her, for real for real, and asks if she’ll think about it.

When Himari does so in the bath that night, she worries that her love and Yori’s are different. But then again, she also asks herself what love even is. In any case, the cat’s out of the bag and there’s no putting it back: Himari knows that Yori-senpai has feelings for her. I wonder how she’ll choose to respond to them.

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.

Your RABUJOI “Wake the F*** Up” Song of the Day: “Miyuki”

There’s a third … fourth? … season of The Irregular of Magic High School airing this spring, but I stopped watching after its first cour ten years ago, and like other big IPs like My Hero Academia and most recently Demon Slayer, my interest fizzled out. But I still love Miyuki (thanks in large part to Hayami Saori), and from time to time still listen to Iwasaki Taku’s chilly futuristic track named for her. 

Whisper Me a Love Song – 01 (First Impressions) – A Happy Misreading

First-year high schooler Kino Himari joins her longtime friend and classmate Miki to watch her older sister play in a band composed of third-years to welcome the new students. The moment Himari sees the cool beauty of the band’s frontwoman was love at first sight. When Himari catches the older, taller girl by the shoe lockers, she uses those precise words: “I fell in love at first sight.”

Those words, combined with the enthusiasm and intensity with which Himari says them, make it possible to interpret it as a confession of love. The fact the singer, one Asanagi Yori, finds Himari incredibly cute and her smile surpassingly pretty, means the “love at first sight” was mutual.

Yori reports this enchanting encounter to her friends, who partly tease her for having finally found someone, and also encourage her to respond to the girl in however way she sees fit; the better to inspire her to write the love song they want her to compose. She doesn’t know Himari’s name, but thanks to Miki, Himari knows Yori’s, along with her birthday, blood type, and tendency to sing songs on the roof.

So when Himari appears on the roof, Yori works up the courage to tell her she fell in love at first sight too, and learns that Yori wasn’t talking about falling into romantic love with Yori personally. Instead, she used the words “love at first sight” to describe how she became a fan of Yori and her music on the spot.

At first, Yori is crestfallen, and embarrassed for misinterpreting Himari’s words so totally. But she wasn’t really that far off. Words are imprecise in these matters, but she cannot deny she likes Himari and wants to keep seeing her and especially her smile. So when Himari agrees to watch her perform on the roof every day, Yori takes that as an opportunity to her Himari to fall for her even harder.

Himari may not be aware of Yori’s feelings for her, but only because she’s in a different mindset. Perhaps in time, Yori’s feelings will come through loud and clear. In the meantime, the two have such good chemistry together that they spend their first rooftop session simply chatting, and Yori ain’t mad about that at all.

Misunderstanding or not, Yori’s feelings aren’t going away, so she might as well keep playing and singing for Himari in this effortlessly sweet, gentle, and charming story about different kinds of love coming together and resulting in a new, unique, and beautiful sound.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night – 02 – Friends with My Idol

This week we get a sumptuously well-produced OP that spoils the fact that Mahiru and Kano are only half of the eventual JELEE artistic group. The third member is introduced first as a rabid fangirl of Kano’s Sunflower Dolls persona, Tachibana Nonoka, AKA Nono-tan. Just when Mahiru and Kano are wondering how the heck they’ll fund this project, this girl throws down over $1,600 to help their cause.

But this girl isn’t a fan of Kano, but Nono-tan, and wants her to go back to being the SunDolls idol she loved. Kano, establishing her resolve to move beyond her idol past, curtly refuses the money and sends the girl on her way. She almost immediately regrets this, not just because JELEE could use the seed money, but because both she and the girl have identical bags—an incredibly rare bag she designed when she was in SunDolls.

Swapping bags with your favorite idol has to be some kind of dream come true, and indeed one of the first things the girls does is give Kano’s jacket a good sniff. Meanwhile, her bag has her student ID—her name is Takanashi Mei Kim Anouk—and also an audio recorder that contains not only a piano arrangement of “Colorful Moonlight”, but other pieces that Kano and Mahiru really dig.

When they meet Mei at her school to exchange the bags, Mei is clearly chuffed by how much her idol seems to like the songs she composed. But when Kano asks if she’ll compose a song for Kano to sing—as the Yamanouchi Kano she is and always was, not Nono-tan, whom Kano insists is gone and never returning, Mei respectfully declines the offer and takes her leave.

It isn’t until Kano looks at Mei’s student ID stained with sauce from Mahiru’s lunch that she realizes she’s met her before, back when she had bright orange hair. We dive into Mei’s past as she is pushed to be great by adults and made fun of her classmates. Her music seems less “fun” and more simply fulfilling the potential assigned to her from outside.

In any case, Mei is not in a great place emotionally when she suddenly spots Tachibana Nonoka at a live meet-up. Struck by her “Cleopatra” like looks, she gets in line to meet her, but having been made fun of for her name Kim, says her name is Kimura instead. While the Nono-tan who initially interacts with her is the idol, when Mei tells her what’s troubling her, the real Kano comes out, bearing her heart in turn.

As Nano-tan, Kano did what all idols should strive to do: make their fans lives a little brighter, and give them the courage to keep moving forward. There was no artifice to her words; she comes right out and tells Mei she’s not really friends with her group-mates, and suffered similar social isolation during her training.

Kano becomes Mei’s lodestar, which makes Nano-tan’s abrupt fall from grace devastating.  With all of this context, it’s understandable that Mei would feel like she was being abandoned by Kano for abandoning Nano-tan, and that she’d have to be alone again. It’s a horrible state to be in on the verge of what looks like a recital with big stakes.

But whether she has black or blonde hair, Kano is still Nano-tan and Nano-tan is Kano. Back when they first met, Nano-tan promised she’d watch Mei perform, and she fulfills that promise by entering the recital room with Mahiru. When she sees that her beloved idol is there to see her perform, she’s filled with joy and confidence and knocks her piano performance out of the park.

When it’s done and Kano gives her a standing O, Mei can’t help but run crying into her arms. Realizing she’s not alone, she agrees to join JELEE after all and write songs for Kano. She’s decided to support both Nono-tan and Kano—the “whole package.” Even so, while they’re shopping for equipment, Mei is surprised when Mahiru says it’s awesome she got to be friends with her idol.

But that’s exactly what happened! Sure, Mei had a borderline obsessive parasocial relationship with Nano-tan for a while, now that she realizes the real Kano—who again, was the person she met from the start—is just as awesome, if not more so, and now she gets to write music for her. Doubtless her love of Nano-tan and Kano will rekindle her love for music. It no longer needs to be simply her grim duty. It can be a delight … just as this episode was!

Your RABUJOI “Wake the F*** Up” Song of the Day: “Saturday Night Question”

Nakajima Megumi’s stirring, bittersweet ballad has me wishing we got a second season of 2017’s Net-juu no Susume.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night – 01 (First Impressions) – Waiting to Be Chosen

You could say Kouzuki Mahiru peaked early, and as such is in a state of arrested development. Her grade school-age little sister even notices it. Mahiru was a gifted artist when she was younger, but when her friends shat all over a jellyfish mural she was so proud of, she disowned the work and gave up on art.

Now in high school, Mahiru is trying to be as normal and ordinary a “nobody” as possible, or rather that’s kind of where she ended up. She wanders the gloriously-depicted streets of Shibuya aimlessly, like a jellyfish. Shibuya itself feels like a giant aquarium teeming with life and color.

Mahiru is searching for something she knows not what, but she does know she doesn’t want some hack PikPok idol using her mural as a backdrop for a street performance. When she can only shout out her protest in her head, another girl shouts for her, declaring her love for the mural.

Mahiru follows this girl like a stalker, but ends up getting caught. Mahuru comes out and confesses that she painted the mural, and the girl, Yamanouchi Kano, lights up with enthusiasm. She’s Mahiru’s biggest fan she never knew she had, and asks if she can call Yoru, like her social media handle.

Mahiru learns that Kano was once a pop idol, but “things happened” and she “went down in flames.” Now she posts musical performances online under the alias JELEE, with dreams of making all the fans who trashed her love her work all over again.

Mahiru, for her part, loves Kano’s music. Kano wants to collaborate, but Mahiru hesitates, and starts spewing rhetoric about entrance exams and fitting in, almost like she’s been brainwashed by her non-creative school friends.

Kano doesn’t contradict Mahiru’s self-deprecating rant, instead calling Mahiru “more ordinary than she thought.” This hurts Mahiru a lot more than she thought. She snaps back that Kano can’t understand because she’s special and never hated herself. As she rides the train home, Mahiru feels awful, and worse after digging in to the circumstances of Kano’s fall from fame and learning what she went through.

Thanks to the magic of Shibuya, Mahiru is able to reunite with Kano and apologize, and Kano is able to do the same. They’re dressed as an angel and a devil for Halloween, and it’s telling that Mahiru ditches her high school friends at the drop of a hat once she spots Kano. The truth is, she admires how Kano never gave up or gave in, and is ashamed that she did. She doesn’t want to be run-of-the-mill, and Kano’s love of her art showed her that she doesn’t have to be.

When the two see the same PikPok idol putting on another show, this time singing a cover one of Kano’s old songs while using Mahiru’s art as a backdrop. It’s double whammy the two have common cause to protest. Kano grabs a guitar from a nearby band, steps in front of the camera, and plays the acoustic version of her song, knocking it out of the park like the pro she was. Before pulling this stunt, she whispered to Mahiru that she “wants to sing in front of [her] jellyfish.” Mahiru uses her lipstick to draw winking eyes on the jellyfish with a dramatic fluorish.

They’re her muse, and now thanks to Kano providing the light she needs to shine, she’s inspired Mahiru to get back into art. Specifically, she agrees to collaborate with Kano, who re-introduces herself to the world as JELEE not as an individual, but a duo. After her post-performance high, Kano takes Mahiru by the hand and they run through the gleaming aquarium of Shibuya together, now moving with an aim and a purpose. Even when Mahiru trips and reveals a childish jellyfish sock under her grown-up shoe, Kano thinks it’s cute as hell.

So is Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night. While the writing can a bit dense and overwrought in its symbolism, I’m on board with both these characters and so happy they found each other and made up (there’s such a romantic vibe to Mahiru spotting Kano, and their chemistry is infectious). It’s also to my mind the best-looking show of the Spring so far, form the the character design and animation to the creative camerawork and lighting. Strong recommend!