Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night – 05 – Floating in the Shibuya Aquarium

JELEE’s first music video goes viral due to someone saying the song is cursed. This is due to the wrong file being uploaded; an earlier version in which the mic picked up Kano’s big sister lamenting in her sleep. Cursedness aside, the online feedback is still mostly positive, and JELEE gets unprecedented views and a spike in followers.

Yoru is jazzed by the positive buzz, and is excited to produce more ambitious art for the next video. She even imagines herself as a celebrity artist drawing on a tablet at the store and getting noticed.

Alas, it only takes one negative comment calling her drawings “subpar” to kill all that optimism. Add to that a famous-online illustrator named Kuroppu making some exquisite JELEE fan art, and Yoru ends up in a full-on crisis of confidence she hides behind a positive front.

Kano, attuned as she is to fronts from her idol past, notices something is off with Yoru, and surprises her (and Yoru’s little sister!) with a home visit. The first thing Kano does is change into Yoru’s school uniform, which clearly gives both of them a little thrill, but then Kano gets her to open up about what’s bothering her.

Yoru admits that she feels she might be “too ordinary” for the rest of them: a former idol, a popular VTuber and an elite musician. She worries she’s not contributing to JELEE and doesn’t belong. That’s when Kano squeezes Yoru’s cheeks with her palms, draws close, and tells her she loves her art.

That love is what started all this. If not for Yoru’s jellyfish art, Kano wouldn’t have started singing, and she wouldn’t have met Mei or Kiui. She has faith in Yoru’s art, and so tells her to have more faith in herself. But all the likes generated by Kuroppu’s fan art continues to bother her, like a tiny splinter of inadequacy in her brain.

During a live online Q & A that Kano aces thanks to her publicity experience, someone asks if they could use Kuroppu’s work instead of Yoru’s. Kano shuts down that notion, but on the train Yoru asks her whose art is better: the fan art, or hers, before the train stops and she pretends she didn’t ask anything.

Kano seemingly gets off, and Yoru retreats into her coat, but when she opens her eyes, Kano is back, having again sensed something wasn’t right. They then have a little date at the aquarium, where Kano describes Yoru to a T: acting worldly while actually being sensitive, looking mature when she’s really competitive.

In other words, Yoru is a “hassle”, but a hassle Kano doesn’t mind knowing. She also promises Yoru that one day she’ll open an aquarium in Shibuya (which doesn’t have one) for her. That night, Yoru sees another piece of beautiful fan art from Kuroppu, and keeps going back to that “subpar” comment about her art that started her downward spiral.

She lies awake in bed staring at the ceiling, until she remembers Yoru expressing her faith in her, and she gets up, switches on the light and her tablet, and gets to drawing. She doesn’t want to resent Kuroppu, and she wants to like her own art without feeling like it’s lacking in some way.

To that end, she returns to her mural and adds her pen name Umitsuki Yoru below her real name she crossed out, then really gets deep into studying jellyfish and practicing drawing, taking her craft seriously for the first time in a while. The next drawing she sends to Kano inspires her all over again.

When Yoru hears Kano’s praise, the tears wells up due not to frustration, but joy and relief. She’s starting to understand she can’t please everyone, and can’t let that be the prerequisite to her happiness. If she can make Kano happy with her art, she’ll be happy.

After completing and uploading their next (and first “non-cursed” music video, the four girls celebrate New Years together, making a nighttime shrine visit. Kiui heads to the restaurant early while Mei runs back to get a more favorable fortune, leaving Yoru and Kano alone together yet again.

While Yoru initially felt too embarrassed to text everyone that she hopes she was able to shine a bit brighter after the first video, after this one she has no such qualms about being a little sappy and vulnerable with Kano. Hearing Yoru say she wants to get even better at drawing to build her confidence makes Kano blush.

After the two play around in the snow, Yoru turns to Kano and tells her she likes her singing and likes her too, then thanks her for giving her the chance to draw again. Kano is moved enough by Yoru’s sentiments to lean in close and kiss her on the cheek. Yoru jumps up in shock, and the two share a pregnant silence before Kano runs off to join Kiui.

There’s no mistaking what has been happening with these two ever since they met: there’s a clear romantic undercurrent driving both their friendship and artistic collaboration. Yoru inspired Kano to keep singing, and now Yoru acknowledges Kano who inspired her to keep drawing.

Will that stolen kiss result in future awkwardness? Is it Kano who is interpreting what they have as romantic while Yoru doesn’t, or did the kiss awaken Yoru to the possibility they feel the same thing about one another? We saw what one negative comment did to Yoru; what will one little kiss do? We shall see.

Until then, it’s good to see such well-established subtext finally be made explicit, with all the possibilities and messiness that entails. It culminates in my favorite Jellyfish episode yet, which closes with another lovely music video.

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!

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.

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!

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!