Might 26, 2023
·
0 feedback
By Andrew Osmond.
Princess Jellyfish is an uncommon title, which inserts a most uncommon anime. This eleven-part collection is a sitcom that may flip right into a romcom, during which the 2 most important characters are a painfully shy lady with a ardour for jellyfish, and a shocking princess who occurs to be a boy (and the world’s most trendy cross-dresser). Stir in a neighborhood of otaku women, some political farce involving a man-eating seductress, the heroine’s yearnings for her misplaced mum, and quite a lot of stitching. The result’s a character-led comedy to rank beside Tokyo Godfathers, The Case of Hana and Alice and Maison Ikkoku.
The heroine is Tsukimi, who’s just lately moved to central Tokyo and is completely intimidated by the crowds of horribly modern, assured individuals. (The present’s set round Shibuya and Harajuku, which comprise the “worst” of Tokyo from that viewpoint.) Fortunately, Tsukimi has a refuge, a communal constructing shared with different otaku ladies. It’s a imaginative and prescient of otaku-dom at its broadest, the place the females are into trains, or conventional dolls, or the fantastic thing about older males. The noisiest member of the family is a fanatic about Historic Chinese language historical past, particularly the interval of the Three Kingdoms. Tsukimi’s love of jellyfish is certain up along with her childhood and her mom, and her reminiscences of each are the collection’ sweetest strand.
It’s a jellyfish that brings Tsukimi along with the cross-dressing princess. Tsukimi is aghast to see a store has carelessly and fatally put two totally different sorts of jellyfish collectively in a single tank. That’s sufficient to override the lady’s shyness; consider it as a optimistic triggering. Whereas Tsukimi is scuffling desperately with the shopkeeper, a stranger seems; a shocking, statuesque mannequin, straight off {a magazine} cowl. It’s the type of person who Tsukimi would normally run to keep away from, however the newcomer helps her save the stricken jellyfish earlier than escorting her dwelling. It’s solely then that Tsukimi realises this princess is a he…
So begins an escalating comedy of errors and deceptions, of accidents and shocks. By no means has an orgasmic nosebleed been funnier, or a stroll within the rain extra desolate (accompanied by one of many present’s key traces, “I need to be a jellyfish.”) That is very a lot its personal present; nonetheless, in case you’ve seen final yr’s My Costume-Up Darling, Princess Jellyfish has a few of that present’s sweetness (the dolls and stitching overlap, too). So as to add to the enjoyable, the present has its personal operating cartoon gags. Tsukimi and her fellow housemates incessantly flip into statues after they’re compelled exterior their consolation zones, whereas Tsukimi’s jellyfish typically turns into a fourth-wall-breaking cartoon host, a la Maromi in Paranoia Agent.
Broadcast in 2010, Princess Jellyfish has a stellar pedigree. It was based mostly on a manga by Akiko Higashimura, printed within the ladies’s journal Kiss. The anime model was helmed by Takahiro Omori, no stranger to formula-breaking comedies – he’d beforehand directed Baccano! and Durarara!! on the Mind’s Base studio, which additionally made Princess Jellyfish. The anime’s lead author was Jukki Hanada, whose different credit vary from Steins;Gate to Sound! Euphonium. Tsukimi is voiced in Japanese by Kana Hanazawa, who you’ll know as Mayuri from Steins;Gate, Shiemin in Blue Exorcist and Akane in Psycho-Move. Within the dub, Tsukimi is performed by Maxey Whitehead, finest often known as Al in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
It’s an completely pleasant collection, although some on-line descriptions may lead you to count on a distinct anime from what it truly is. Firstly, whereas Tsukimi’s housemates are nice enjoyable, it’s not primarily a ladies’s friendship present, because it focuses extra on Tsukimi’s relationship along with her princess (named Kurako or Kuranosuke). If you’d like an amazing ladies’s friendship anime the place males are a distant second, I’d direct you to the movie On the lookout for Magical Doremi.
Second, the collection presents Kurako (or Kuranosuke) as a cishet boy, who loves cross-dressing for aesthetic quite than dysphoric causes. The script just about guidelines out studying Kurako as trans, although he’s nonetheless a ringing endorsement of gender non-conformity, out and proud.
Andrew Osmond is the creator of 100 Animated Function Movies. Princess Jellyfish is obtainable to preorder from Anime Restricted.
