Princess Jellyfish

I would like to preface this review by warning ya'll that this anime suffers from Ending in the Middle of the Manga Syndrome. If you've enjoyed an anime like Fruits Basket, Ouran Highschool Host Club, Soul Eater, Kimi Ni Todoke, etc. and felt a little uneasy by the inconclusive ending and then googled your uneasy feeling and discovered the manga is like 80 chapters ahead of where the anime left off - you're going to run into the same situation here. Clear your to-read list, because Princess Jellyfish is going to be a top-priority read for you once you're done this bite-sized series. Then again,if you're made of metal or something and you don't care about having a plot with any resolution, proceed without caution. Slice-of-Life and RomCom anime are my guilty pleasure genres. I don't always find that they have a lot of substance beyond endorsing really cute teeny-bopper supportive relationships. I've found that a lot of slice-of-life anime fall into the trap of over-emphasizing the romantic sub-plots to the extent that any other story elements are underdeveloped or just plain boring. In contrast, Princess Jellyfish, like all my favourites in the genre, brings something new and insanely interesting in all aspects of its plot. Even the shoujo elements - where one character stares bleary-eyed at the stars and contemplates feelings - aren't in your face. This might not make sense, but the plot mutes itself in such a way that all of its features shine(???) The only word I can really use to describe how well this anime shines out would be 'character'. The show literally oozes character from its every inappropriate crevice. The actual characters are unique and varied, ranging from flamboyant and confident to wacko or sweet or mature, but every single one of them is fucking hilarious. Granted, a lot of the main characters can be difficult to relate to, but they'd make for some poor outcasts if the audience were able to instantly project themselves onto their favourites. They're all likable, regardless. Even the character designs are super innovative (I hate to use that word, but it's the best I've got. Sad face), I can't gush about the designs nearly as much as I'd like: they're all so different!! And they suit each character's personality so well!! GUSH. What really caught me off guard was how mature Princess Jellyfish was, too. Like, one of the main love interests is a heterosexual drag-queen who helps build confidence in young women. *SPOILERS* There's a male character who is kind of almost date-raped by one of the female antagonists. The overarching plot focuses on the implications of changing infrastructure on the lives of a city's residents. PARENTAL LOSS. SOCIAL ANXIETIES AND SELF-CONFIDENCE IN YOUNG WOMEN. GENDER AND SEXUALITY. I have absolutely no idea how this anime can be so unassumingly smart but lighthearted. It's impressive and it makes me happy. If I were to make a complaint, it would be that the score wasn't particularly stand-out. That's it. Everything else was enjoyable and cool. If you're itching for a slice-of-life gem, this one's for you!

When looking into this anime, it’s like looking into an anime version of a fairy tale, which sort of involves a princess or a princess-like character and also a fairy godmother-like character, but unlike a fairy tale (or at least, any fairy tale that’s been infected by Disney sooner or later), this one is going to be sugarcoated, especially when dealing with the stages of being awkward around different people and the way you act around them. Amamizu-kan, an old boarding house in Tokyo, is the home of The Sisterhood – a group of otaku women of various stripes who shun The Stylish and men ingeneral. Tsukimi, a jellyfish fanatic, is the latest addition to their ranks. One evening a strange Stylish woman helps her out and she brings the Stylish home with her...only to discover that “she” is a “he.” Despite her pleas, Kuranosuke, the disenchanted cross-dressing son of a prominent political family, sticks around, finding himself more and more fascinated by The Sisterhood in general and Tsukimi in specific. When unscrupulous developers begin to eye Amamizu-kan's location, Kuranosuke realizes that there is more at stake than just a building, and sets out to galvanize its residents to save their way of life. The story is the whole “coming out of your shell” type of story when a person who has a different outlook on life wants to help them not only with experiencing life outside their comfort zone, considering that they are going to need it since their home is on the verge of being wrecked. As for the romance aspect, I did sort of sense that the main characters Tsukimi & Kuranosuke would have their relationship to grow but to me, it was never towards the “lovey-dovey” type of relationship but more like a “close friends” relationship and I thought it was great that they stuck it to that. As for the side story with Kuranosuke’s brother, it didn’t went anywhere at all with him having a crush on Tsukimi, only to ended early with the one character Inari, who’s the one that’s after Amamizu-kun and the very textbook definition of the word “cold bitch”, gets involved plus, his brother Shu isn’t that interesting of a character or even that memorable unlike Kuranosuke himself, who was one of my favorites in the show for being the motivator of Tsukimi and the other women in the sisterhood. As for Tsukimi, she is portrayed as a sweet but very awkward and often an easily weirded-out character with his unique interests in jellyfish and drawing them ever since she saw them with her late mother. The other tenants in the building also have their unique personality about them with the acting landlady Chieko collecting traditional Japanese clothes and dolls, Banba is into trains, Jiji into older men and Mayaya is a fan of Three Kingdoms and unfortunately out of all of them, Mayaya is the most annoying character on this show, mainly because while she’s very animated, all she does is act like a neurotic fangirl and not the kind that would be fun to hang out, but the kind that rages about everything and everybody so much, you want to pop an synapse after just to calm down. The animation for this gets a little rough around some of the character movements and designs. Brains Base, the guys that brought you Baccano! & Durarara!! , has made some good animation in their past works and for this, it’s more like when Durarara began to show its budget problems during the second half but then again, this is an 11-episode anime, so I shouldn’t expect much of a grandiose amount of animation, but it is typical of Brains Base’s style of animation and it was good to say the least. The music is very appealing to most of the show with its comical style to some of the scenes to the light dramatic moments in there. Plus, the opening and ending themes are quite addictive to listen to, especially the opening sequence where it parodies or pay homage to most movie franchises like Star Wars, James Bond, The Seven Kingdoms, Singin’ in the Rain, Mary Poppins, etc. For the FUNimation dub, this was one of those dubs that didn’t sound so usual. Usually, I yawn at FUNimation dubs, not that they’re bad (they make good dubs) but they’re not that special to begin with. I did liked Maxey Whitehead’s performance as very sweet and genuine although it is strange hearing her as a lead female character since most of her roles have been androgynous sounding boys. Josh Grelle did convince me that Kuranosuke was an actual girl at first and even though I find Mayaya to be annoying, Monica Rial plays the role and her voice much differently than she used to, it sounded more lower than her standard of voicing characters. FINAL VERDICT: The show is actually worth watching around the first chance you get. Some of the humor can be charming and unique up to an extent although I hate that it ended on a lousy cliffhanger, which mean it’s one of those “read the manga” endings. It’s something you would either want to rent or own the DVD to.

For how highly rated this anime was it's surprising how unlikable the characters are. Tsukimi and Kuranosuke are fine enough but a bit bland but the NEETs? Oh my god what a desperately, deeply unpleasant collection of characters. They ranged from annoying to actively crappy people. It was hard to engage with the main storyline because yeah, I don't really care if a bunch of mooching jerks lose their house. The designs for Tsumiki and Kuranosuke are pretty cute, I do like the art style when it's not drawing vaguely human shaped blobs. I don't know why the NEETs were so cartoony in comparison, it wasdistracting and kind of dehumanizing? Like Tsumiki is a great design for an unconventional looking anime girl, I don't think the others needed to look so inhuman. I also hated the secondary storyline for Kuranosuke's brother Shu. The gist of it is a woman drugs him and makes him think that they slept together so she can blackmail him. Shu is a virgin and this information is distressing to him. All this is played for laughs and almost seemed like it was hinting at feelings between them at times. This is a major "if the genders were reversed more people would realize it was fucked up" thing. I kept hoping they would drop this plotline but it just. kept. going. All in all, don't get the hype. The main two characters are fine but nothing flashy or unique enough to salvage the anime from all the things about it that are unlikable.

I wanted to give a disclaimer for queer people with this review, I even logged into my account after like 4 years. I've been recommended this anime in regard to its queer themes, which do not exist. Especially for my trans folks, beware of the first 2-3 episodes as it may be triggering for some with clear anti-trans messages. Look, I know the manga is old. That does not mean that the mangaka can clearly use the characters as a mouthpiece to voice anti-queer opinions. The anime adaptation does not help as the voicing articulates this message. With the disclaimer out of the way, I wantto rant about the representation of Kuranosuke and the Japanese people. I am sick and tired of this media when it tries to represent queer characters. The mangaka states directly that Kuranosuke is not a "travestive", or a "drag queen", rather a normal person. A normal person with a hobby to crossdress. Yeah and I'm supposed to believe in this walking contradiction. I will be coming back to the "normal" part. For those do not know, being queer does not mean being gay or trans or being anywhere on the LGBT spectrum (a straight drag queen entered RuPaul this year for gods sake). It means that you do not conform to societal norms. And publicly crossdressing is not a societal norm believe it or not. Thus, combining these arguments, Kuranosuke is QUEER. He might use he/him pronouns and be straight, and not be a drag queen, but he is queer. He is not a "normal" person by any means. But the mangaka clearly has a distate for the queer folk as Kuranosuke is disgusted when he's called "travestive" or "drag queen" by the cast. My main point is: Why would this mangaka write a full-fledged queer character while having conservative thoughts about TQ+ spectrum? Because just like most of the mangakas, they are fucking suppressing themselves like a fucking gay pdf pope in the Vatican. Queer topics were considered taboo until like 2020's which makes sense of the weird stuff we see on 10's manga and anime. But art is to push boundaries and break norms into bits. While this manga/anime media is just filled with slop where the author cannot be bothered push psychological or societal boundaries, write about actual struggles and display the intricacies of being outside of the norm.