Anime Review: PRINCESS JELLYFISH
Dec. 27th, 2023 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennariaPRINCESS JELLYFISH, 2010 (Japan and possibly US? Wikipedia was no help), available streaming on Crunchyroll
Amount watched: 3 episodes of 11
Official description: (from Crunchyroll) Tsukimi and her wallflower friends are hopeless nerds with bizarre hobbies. Their crippling social anxieties keep them from setting foot outside the all-girl apartment complex they inhabit, but a late night jellyfish rescue mission and the arrival of a “Stylish Girl” are about to turn their lives upside down!
Weeb rating: 5/10. The basic plotline doesn't require any specialized knowledge, but a lot of the surrounding details (e.g. what is a 'NEET' and why is being called one an insult) do.
Ass rating: 3/10, subject to rising. The big plot twist of the first episode is that the 'Stylish Girl' is actually a cross-dressing boy, who is fascinated with fashion and who regards Tsukimi only sorta as a real human being - to the point where he decides to kidnap her in the third episode and forcibly subject her to a make-over, including stripping off her clothes and putting her in a different outfit, which she does not take well. And the Wikipedia spoilers do not bode well for this rating, let's just say.
Shit rating: 3/10 so far. The first two episodes are amazingly fluffy! And then it starts to drift. I do not trust that it will be the series I want it to be.
Violence rating: 2/10 – this is more slice of life than shonen.
Crack rating: 3/10. You know those episodes of CSI, where the crime of the week had to with Insert Obscure Sub-Culture Here? This teeters precariously on the edge of that.
Actual opinion: So I watched this series because of a recommendation at a holiday party. The first two episodes are wonderful! But we paused after those two episodes, and came back for a third, and did not immediately watch a fourth, and, well...
Hang on, digression: what I want from this series is an exploration, probably using the cross-dressing 'princess', of the nerds, in which the nerds all get dignity and depth while still having their special interests, and their friendship is front and center.
What I'm already starting to actually get is the 'princess' being an asshole who likes Tsukimi only because she's Different from his fashionable friends; his brother having a crush on Tsukimi when he sees her made up and dressed in fashionable clothes, but recoiling when he sees her and her friends as their normal selves, and thinking to himself that he can't wait for the area to be re-zoned so their building will be torn down; and generally the sense that the narrative voice is not actually on the side of Tsukimi and her friends (who are in their 30s! and single! and weird!), by which I mean I feel like the mangaka was a lot more interested in the cross-dresser and his complicated family situation than in Tsukimi, who's theoretically the heroine. My vibes could be wrong! But I do not trust the series after three episodes the way I did after two.
Amount watched: 3 episodes of 11
Official description: (from Crunchyroll) Tsukimi and her wallflower friends are hopeless nerds with bizarre hobbies. Their crippling social anxieties keep them from setting foot outside the all-girl apartment complex they inhabit, but a late night jellyfish rescue mission and the arrival of a “Stylish Girl” are about to turn their lives upside down!
Weeb rating: 5/10. The basic plotline doesn't require any specialized knowledge, but a lot of the surrounding details (e.g. what is a 'NEET' and why is being called one an insult) do.
Ass rating: 3/10, subject to rising. The big plot twist of the first episode is that the 'Stylish Girl' is actually a cross-dressing boy, who is fascinated with fashion and who regards Tsukimi only sorta as a real human being - to the point where he decides to kidnap her in the third episode and forcibly subject her to a make-over, including stripping off her clothes and putting her in a different outfit, which she does not take well. And the Wikipedia spoilers do not bode well for this rating, let's just say.
Shit rating: 3/10 so far. The first two episodes are amazingly fluffy! And then it starts to drift. I do not trust that it will be the series I want it to be.
Violence rating: 2/10 – this is more slice of life than shonen.
Crack rating: 3/10. You know those episodes of CSI, where the crime of the week had to with Insert Obscure Sub-Culture Here? This teeters precariously on the edge of that.
Actual opinion: So I watched this series because of a recommendation at a holiday party. The first two episodes are wonderful! But we paused after those two episodes, and came back for a third, and did not immediately watch a fourth, and, well...
Hang on, digression: what I want from this series is an exploration, probably using the cross-dressing 'princess', of the nerds, in which the nerds all get dignity and depth while still having their special interests, and their friendship is front and center.
What I'm already starting to actually get is the 'princess' being an asshole who likes Tsukimi only because she's Different from his fashionable friends; his brother having a crush on Tsukimi when he sees her made up and dressed in fashionable clothes, but recoiling when he sees her and her friends as their normal selves, and thinking to himself that he can't wait for the area to be re-zoned so their building will be torn down; and generally the sense that the narrative voice is not actually on the side of Tsukimi and her friends (who are in their 30s! and single! and weird!), by which I mean I feel like the mangaka was a lot more interested in the cross-dresser and his complicated family situation than in Tsukimi, who's theoretically the heroine. My vibes could be wrong! But I do not trust the series after three episodes the way I did after two.