Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
I think most people know that jellyfish aren’t fish. They’re cnidarians, part of an ancient order of primitive animals that date back to the earliest days of multicellular life on earth. Perhaps because of their ancient origins, or simply because they’ve never been pressured otherwise, jellyfish do not actually swim per se. They have no muscles with which to do so. Instead, jellyfish are carried along by the ocean’s currents. Clearly, this has worked out just fine for them, but what any one person might make of that situation is going to vary. When you see the jellyfish, do you see something hapless, or something that just needs a little help to get going?
This question, of course as a metaphor, is central to Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night, which, over the course of one of the year’s strongest premieres, establishes itself as a fairly unique take on an old, old story in the TV anime format. Jellyfish is not technically an idol show—indeed, the industry seems to be moving away from those over the past year or so, and Jellyfish here premiered on the same day as another non-idol music anime, Girls Band Cry—but it shares much of the DNA of one. Specifically, a kind of starry-eyed, emotionally-driven resonance, which it spins into an underdog story about the difficulty of pursuing your passions against the backdrop of a world that may be apathetic or actively hostile to your attempts to do so, not to mention the specter of self-doubt, a force that should not be underestimated.
Jellyfish‘s visual techniques are varied and are all applied very well. Chiefly, the show seems focused on cementing a solid sense of place early on, nighttime Shibuya rendered as a concrete but also almost supernatural nexus of nocturnal vibe, where anything seems possible if you reach out to touch it, and you can truly be yourself. The directing on this thing, courtesy of Takeshita Ryouhei (recently also known for the Paldean Winds ONAs), is nothing short of incredible. Our protagonist, Kouzuki Mahiru [Itou Miku], is an uncomplicated but fully-realized character, she is near-literally haunted by flashbacks throughout the opening episode, as they manifest in front of her as glowing apparitions of her former self and her friends. She has involved daydreams that interrupt the flow of the episode, only to be waved off or rewound back like a video tape; daydreams where she worries about a future as a “nobody”, or emotional outbursts she’s too self-conscious to actually have. (As a fellow serial imaginer, and hell, a fellow nobody, I sympathize.)
Mahiru used to be an artist. She isn’t anymore, but as we learn throughout the course of the first episode, after arguments with her sister about makeup, funny socks and TikTok influencers, and in-between hashing out tentative Halloween plans with her friends, she used to be an artist. Once, when she was a child, a drawing of hers was even selected to be made into a mural, a mural that still stands in the show’s version of Shibuya up to the present day; a sprawling tangle of bold lines and colors that, of course, form a jellyfish. Her friends, as kids often do, saw the mural and made fun of it, not knowing it was hers. This single act was enough to completely uproot her self-esteem, and eventually she takes a marker and scribbles over her own “Original Concept by:” credit on the mural. Thus rendered anonymous, it clings to a city wall, disowned but not disappearing.
As part of the landscape, it becomes a backdrop for—we must assume—many things, but the most relevant is a street performance by a random indie idol named Miiko [Uesaka Sumire]. Mahiru doesn’t much appreciate said performance using her mural as a backdrop, but can’t muster up the nerve to say anything. After all, it would, in her own words, take a real “hot-blooded weirdo” to speak up in the middle of a concert.
So of course, one does.
Yamanouchi Kano [Takahashi Rie] is, in terms of attitude, everything Mahiru is not. But she used to be something, too; an idol herself, part of a group called the Sunflower Dolls, in her case. We later learn that her departure from her chosen field was, unlike Mahiru’s, involuntary. (These things tend to happen when you deck another girl in your group, a murky incident we’re not given many details on here and which I’m willing to bet will form a strong running B-plot throughout the whole show.)
It’s a little funny to see a show frame street heckling as a powerful, heroic act, but in-context and in the moment, it really is. Mahiru comes off as a little mystified by Kano, but she’s clearly taken by her, and it’s very easy to read the relationship that almost immediately takes hold here as something more intense than simple admiration if you’re so inclined, but what’s truly important is that this provides a seed for Mahiru to realize that she wants to pursue art again.
She’s not the only one; Kano has a thing going on as an utaite1 despite being blackballed by the idol industry proper. She does this under the name JELEE, providing another, marginally more literal meaning to the show’s title. Naturally the end of the episode sees the two combining their powers, but this takes some doing.
It’s clear that Mahiru’s insecurity, while it might stem from a single obvious cause, has since grown beyond it, and when Kano initially tries to get Mahiru to join her, she literally runs away, spouting a fountain of excuses and retreating to the relative anonymity of the evening train. Encountering Kano again, during Halloween night, while once again in Shibuya, gives Mahiru the final push. Once again, the pair encounter Miiko. Once again, she’s performing in front of the mural, this time covering “Colorful Moonlight”, a song Kano wrote during her days in the Sunflower Dolls. Once again, Kano tells her off. This time, though, things go a step further. Borrowing an acoustic guitar and stepping into the performer’s spotlight herself, Kano begins singing her version of the song, here stripped down to just guitar and vocals.
This marks the first time we hear the song unobscured, and this is where Mahiru finally frees herself of her own anxieties, even if only temporarily. She draws behind Kano, making huge, swooping lines with a stick of lipstick, she marks up her own mural with googly eyes; making it look like the jellyfish from the logo of Kano’s youtube channel. This whole thing is being livestreamed, and thus, JELEE ceases to be one person, and becomes a collective; what Mahiru cannot accomplish on her own, she finds is possible in the company of Kano, someone who stokes her creative fires and inspires her. On that beautifully-executed note, the episode ends.
Not long after this incredibly important shot.
I’ve glossed over and simplified much in the recapping of this episode’s actual plot, because in some ways the literal events take a distant backseat to the emotional beats. I haven’t had space to mention the brilliant little scene near the beginning where Mahiru hesitantly chooses between an angel or devil costume, only for Kano—who we haven’t met yet—to snatch up the devil without a second thought. I haven’t talked about the series’ use of symbols; jellyfish obviously, but also lipstick as a signifier for all things simultaneously “adult” and ruthlessly constraining, a sort of deliberate inversion of how a lot of anime for young girls use that same symbol, the use of video effects to emphasize the artificiality (and thus lack of consequence) of Mahiru’s daydreams. Ultimately, the thing is that these are details, and while there is a lot going on in Jellyfish and such details greatly enhance it, it is very clearly a big-picture show. That’s why it feels like there really is something special about the idea of not an idol anime or a girls’ band anime but an artist collective anime. Something too to the idea that the lead is not even the singer, but the visual artist. (Our eventual other two members of this troupe are a VTuber and a pianist, who knows how that’s going to work? I’m excited to find out!)
This is not a perfect premiere—what is?—some of the dialogue is a little strained, and I would really like to see the camera be a bit less leery going forward, but these feel like such minor complaints compared to the pure pulse of breathtaking energy that is the rest of the premiere.
Jellyfish, in a word, is hyperactive. Eager to make you look at its murals and songs, its nighttime Shibuya, the strong, instantly-formed shock-of-destiny relationship between its two leads, its flashy camera tricks and video effects, its characters, its idea that everyone has a song inside of them. This is a show that wants to impress you. “Isn’t all this beautiful?” It asks, and the wonderful thing is that it’s completely right; it is.
1: A kind of internet-based singer, originally associated with NicoNicoDouga, now common on Youtube as well. Perhaps the most famous utaite-turned-professional in contemporary J-pop is Ado, apparently a deliberate influence, in the case of this anime.
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