Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night – 12 (Fin) – Choosing Their Own Colors

Yukine is impressed with Mahiru’s ability to provide hard numbers for why JELEE deserves a spot at the New Year’s show alongside SunDolls, but stats aside, Yukine wants to know what Mahiru is doing this for. Mahiru’s answer is that when someone does something for her, she wants to reciprocate. Kano made her want to get back into art, so she’ll make Kano want to get back into singing.

And Kano does want to sing; she just feels lost without Yukine or Mahiru as people to sing for, believing she’s lost both. While that’s not really the case, the bottom line is she gets pre-show jitters, and is especially intimidated by the live audience in the park. This is where Kiui and Mei step up, steady her hands with theirs, and tell her she’s got this, because they’ve got this.

Even so, once the SunDolls leave the stage and Kano steps onto it, she’s so overwhelmed by the negative voices in her head that she can barely get a whisper out. That’s when Mero of all people, who spotted Kano earlier, tells her to look around her, where she sees that the park has well and truly become something of an aquarium. Mahiru also offers words of encouragement from her perch above the stage; their first interaction since Mahiru went to work for Yukine.

With both former enemy and friend united in their support and surrounded by the “Shibuya Aquarium” she and Mahiru dreamed of building, Kano can sing with her full voice, shining like, well, a jellyfish in the light. It’s an unqualified success, with Kiui spending most of JELEE’s revenue on a 3D JELEE girl model like the ones made for the SunDolls.

When her performance is over, Mahiru rushes to Kano, but the two end up on opposing escalators. Eventually they do embrace and apologize for hurting each other. As the credits for the show run, they’re joined by Kiui and Mei, and while Kano doesn’t see her mom right after the show, Yukine does end up acknowledging her in the credits, as Hayakawa Kano, her daughter. It’s a powerful cathartic moment that causes Kano to bawl her eyes out.

Kano and Kiui end up getting their shit together and graduating after all along with Mahiru and Mei. Kiui continues her fling with Koharu, both off and online; Mei the superfan gains a fan of her own who is far more like she was than she knew; and Yukine shows up to congratulate her daughter and note how much she’s grown. Kano and Mero even bury the hatchet and become friends, while before they were only co-workers.

The members of JELEE commemorate their graduation and the start of the next step in their lives by painting over Mahiru’s old jellyfish mural and painting a new one over it in a collaborative effort, cleverly and intimately documented with the girls’ cameraphone footage.

While before they were four jellyfish drifting in the night, unable to swim, now they’ve each chosen their own colors and thanks to one another’s support are able to shine on their own. It’s a happy, heartening, if tidy way to bring this colorful and beauitifully produced show to a close.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night – 11 – Carpe Nox

With over two Million with an M likes, Mei’s heartfelt bout of terrible singing went unexpectedly viral, but despite Mei hating her singing, the vast majority of comments are positive, supportive, and excited for the new song that’s now back on. Mei’s courageous stunt got Kano wanting to sing again; but the question that still eludes her and holds her back is knowing why she’s singing … or for whom.

I thought it had already been established she was singing for Mahiru, just as she was drawing for Kano, but whatevs! Maybe after their little kerfuffle they’ll need to rediscover that. In the meantime, Mahiru is not having a great one at Hayakawa, delivering some concept art that Yukine immediately rejects as not Umitsuki Yoru’s art, and nails her assessment of Mahiru as someone who doesn’t love their art.

After watching a demonstration of how the mocap system will graft her art onto virtual SunDolls, perhaps to give her more motivation and inspiration, Mahiru ends up in a car with Mero, who asks her what she thinks of LookIdiot’s videos and methods. Mahiru is quick to denounce them, but also admits sees a bit of herself in Look, only someone who took their “griping” to the extreme and ended up hurting people.

Mahiru/Yoru only emerged to the point where she’s even drawing again thanks to Kano, so she can’t judge someone who doesn’t have a similar lodestar. Whatever else Yukine is to Mero, she’s not that!

After Mei tells Kano she’s not singing like herself and suggests she rewrite the lyrics so she’s singing about something she wants to in the here and now, Mahiru hits another snag in her relationship with Yukine: She’s now out of time. Yukine claims to want to give her more, but there are deadlines to meet, so she marks up Mahiru’s art and tells her to adhere to a prescribed style—an art style entirely not Yoru’s any longer.

Mahiru has a little monologue on the street pretending she’s okay with all this, but the truth is, she’s not, and she’s not going to give up on her art, even if Yukine ordered her to do so and may well fire her if she defies her. To this end, she travels to the storage unit with Kiui that contains both of their art from when they were little.

Kiui was a great artist, and admits she picks everything up quickly and gets good at it, only to be overtaken by those with genuine passion and drive. It was the case with Mahiru’s jellyfish mural idea. She jokes about always quitting before getting overtaken so she never actually loses, but eventually Mahiru can sense that Kiui was lying about not having people message her about being outed as Nox.

Kiui has gotten a lot of nasty comments from her former classmates, ruining all the work she did to reinvent herself. She’s also weary of going to the old arcade with Mahiru for more inspiration. She uses Kiui’s own superhero posing and meter to list all the great things about her that make her, to this day, an “ever-shining superhero” in Mahiru’s eyes.

Kiui gains the courage to accompany Mahiru, but soon retreats to the bathroom when she sees other classmates. Then the two that were sending nasty messages encounter Mahiru, congratulating her while shitting on Kiui for being a liar. Mahiru comes loudly and proudly to Kiui’s defense, assuring her she’s cool as ever. When they mock her for what they deem as not “growing out” of that admiration, Mahiru holds her ground.

Kiui can tell Mahiru needs some backup, so she confronts her naysayers, who start laying into her incessantly and nastily. They even make fun of the fact Nox is a guy and wonder if she wants to be one. This is shitty teenagers at their shittiest, but Kiui weathers that shit and declares she hasn’t changed one bit from the person she was.

Kiui was ostracized for unapologetically being who she was, to the point she “let the world get the better” of her. But she created the Nox persona as a way of continuing to love her genuine self, and won’t let anyone deny her that identity. We don’t see how the normies react, but it doesn’t matter. Kiui isn’t going to let their normie bullshit stop her from loving who she is and always was.

Witnessing Kiui put herself out there among the wolves and not only survive but thrive re-energize’s Mahiru’s desire to find the Umitsuki Yoru art she loves. Kiui took a huge, courageous swing without worrying about the ramifications, and Mahiru follows her lead by defying Yukine.

Mahiru starts off by telling Yukine about her friend that she loves, and the ideal persona they created to keep loving who they are. Then she unveils new art for the Virtual SunDolls that dazzles with the same playful energy as that jellyfish mural. Yukine dresses her down for not doing what she was told (and not speaking to her with respect), but then smiles and tells her that this is precisely what she wanted: the art she loves.

It was a risky-as-hell gamble, but because it works out, Mahiru has a teensy little bit of leveage with Yukine, and she decides to use it immediately for JELEE’s sake. She asks that Hayakawa find a way to squeeze a performance from JELEE into the same end-of-year event as the SunDolls.

If Yukine agrees, Mahiru will have given JELEE a huge boost just when it felt like she couldn’t be any farther from the group’s current activity. That activity includes all-new lyrics by Kano. Lyrics she won’t sing by just following the notes (something Mei was once accused of by her parents), but in a way that takes the listener of a vivid journey. If Yoru succeeds, JELEE will be able to go head-to-head with SunDolls—and with Kano’s mom.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night – 10 – What Kind of Somebody

Happy Pride! It has not been a great past few weeks for anime baby lesbians, folks. Whisper Me a Love Song? Yori and Himari are great, but their show is delayed due to production issues. Reina and Kumiko are on the rocks over at Hibike! Euphonium.

As for Kano and Mahiru, they neither see nor talk to each other this week, and Kano just isn’t emotionally in a place to sing. That’s the bad news. The good news is, Kiui and Mei fill in for them as temps at the bar, and while they proceed to suck at their jobs, but they’re not ready to give up on JELEE.

JELEE essentially stays together all because of one Kim Anouk Mei Takanashi. Mei encounters Mero from the current iteration of the SunDolls. Mero assumes she’s a fan, but she’s not. While she’s initially pacified by a kiss to the cheek, Mei manages to track Mero down, leading to some very intense facial expressions from both of them.

When Mei finally identifies herself as a member of JELEE and after Mero sings some karaoke (Mei passes on this), Mero answers Mei’s question about what she think drives Kano. It’s the same thing that drives Mero: knowing that her performances are “sustenance” for Yukine.

Mero personally loathes singing, but will do it as long she’s Yukine’s sustenance. It’s not a healthy dynamic! When Mei brings up Kano’s new goal of getting 100k followers, Mero laughs and chalks that up to simply another way Kano wants to get her mom to notice her all over again.

Kano herself tries going to school, but quickly tired of the chatter about her, says her head, stomach and muscles “are all hurting at once” and bails. She encounters two JELEE fans performing her song in front of Yoru’s mural and loudly proclaiming their excitement for the the song they’re coming up with at the end of the year.

When she returns home, Mei is waiting outside her door, not as a fan, but as her friend. Kano explains that the reason she just doesn’t feel like going on with JELEE is that just as her mother took advantage of her, using her life for her own gain, she felt like she did the same with Mahiru.

With Mahiru busy with her new project and Kano saying they should simply disband, Mei and Kiui are in the unfortunate and uncomfortable position of having to address their fans with news that JELEE is no more. They do so at a live session while visiting Miiko, who is now making mukbang videos of all things.

Kiui makes the announcement as the shocked and disappointed comments roll in, and then she plays what they have of their new song, which is now their final song. Or it would be, were it not for Mei. She doesn’t want it to end like this, so she doesn’t let it. So she does something she’d normally never, ever do: she sings.

Shimabukuro Miyuri puts on a clinic of bad singing, buying time for Kiui to rush to Kano’s house so she can listen to the appeal that follows the song: she loves Kano so much, and her singing makes the songs she compose shine so brightly, that they simply have to continue with JELEE.

Begging Kano to take responsibility for making her fall in love with her, Mei’s passionate appeal works. Kano is still scared, but she still wants to sing. All of this happens on the livestream, leading to comments of relief. Mahiru is listening too as she works away on her drawings.

JELEE was down, but is not yet out. Kano and Mahiru still have some making up to do, and Nox’s IRL identity may have been exposed, something Kiui feared and almost expected might happen, so they’re not out of the woods by a long shot. But at least they’re no longer lost in those woods. All thanks to Mei’s love, stubbornness, and terrible, beautiful voice.