[(belated) Februaryuri 2025] Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night

01 Feb, 2026

(base post on Februaryuri 2025 here!)

Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night (2024)

by studio Doga Kobo, directed by Ryouhei Takeshita, written by Yuuki Yaku, with music by Masaru Yokoyama and JELEE

12 episodes

Summary

Mahiru used to draw, before. She doesn't anymore. With hurtful comments from her classmates and the pressure to focus on her studies instead, she kind of gave up.
She conforms more, now; but she doesn't know who she wants to become. But this is the more realistic option, right? She's just an average high school girl. Plus, putting yourself out there is too vulnerable - and if your art gets criticized, it just hurts all the more.
So she stopped.

But now, she has to reconsider this. She has to reconsider it because an old mural painting of hers seems to have had a very strong impact on Kano, a girl her age - a former idol who quit because of the toxic environment and the drama, and who tries to reconnect with making songs in her own way instead. Kano is determined to be herself, now; and a part of her finding her identity has been directly inspired by Mahiru's drawings.

So when they meet by chance, and Kano suggests they make music videos together... Mahiru can't really believe it. She is too ordinary for this. What is there to admire in what she does, compared to how creative and inspiring someone like Kano can be?

And if she takes the plunge - what then?

Step by step, the two find two more members to work together: Kano's die-hard fan from her idol days Mei, and Mahiru's reclusive childhood friend Kiui. As these four isolated teens wonder whether they can make it big, or even make it at all, they slowly connect through their shared feeling of isolation from most people, and the art they create together becomes their attempt at being true to themselves.

Comment

Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night means a lot to me somehow.
This doesn't make its handful of problems (that I will address below) any less hurtful; and not everything in its ending delivers; but it still feels like one of the most sincere examinations of the anxiety about making art I've seen. The fact that it also wholeheartedly takes a stand for the marginalized through a very heartfelt main cast makes it an anime that could've been absolutely fantastic, and is instead ranging from good to great with a bunch of really glaring issues mixed in.

The first obvious thing is that Jellyfish talks about making art, and to me, really gets it. It captures so many feelings tied to that process.
Some of those are the paralyzing ones, like inadequacy, jealousy or envy, be that through the direct comparison with someone you admire, or through the general pressure of social media and seeing so many people more talented than you. Some of this can really hurt.
But some of those feelings are more joyful, too: the euphoria of making what you can and being happy about the end result; the elation from connecting and feeling seen through your art; or how unabashed self-expression can help you figuring yourself out.

Seriously, at some points Jellyfish can make me cry in mere seconds on that front. It also brilliantly interrogates what (or who) drives you for making art in the first place, the vulnerability of sharing what you create, and how inevitably messy seeking outside validation can get. It illustrates how you can want your art to be seen and known and acknowledged, and at the same time how you'd like no one to ever look at what you make ever again, thank you very much. I find it immensely relatable on that front.

The second broad thing Jellyfish talks about in excellent ways is identities, marginalization and making community. I've been meaning to write a specific blog post on that for more than a year now, but haven't managed so far; but, wow.

It's simple: all of Jellyfish's characters are queer and/or neurodivergent; and while this is not always directly said out loud, it's 100% there. Several of them have difficulties in social interactions and have some pretty clear special interests. All of them are into girls. One of them is explicitly nonbinary (and probably bigender, to my best approximation), and this is extremely well-handled - it isn't something I thought I would see addressed in anime in such a grounded way¹. Also, most of them have been bullied during their school years for what they liked or who they were, and one of the episodes has a direct conversation about wanting to become a teacher, to help kids like the one they were not go through what they went through.

More simply, all of our four main characters have complicated relationships to their name and/or pseudonym. This ranges from the difficulty of shedding an old online identity, to finding truths about yourself through your online persona, by way of simply embracing your name despite xenophobic comments about how it sounds. How each of them lands at the end of the series feels like a real arc of figuring out something of their own sense of self, and being proud of who they are now.

Of course, all this change happens through mutual support and small moments of understanding, just as much as butting heads when figuring out their budding music video band thing. Because making anything is a ride; and making it as a group is a ride all the more.

When Jellyfish ends, the four leads are vocal about standing for themselves and rejecting what's "normal"; about making art, together, for the ones who can connect with them: the weird, the queer, the marginalized. The show is upfront and euphoric about this, and it means so much.
It's just a bit sad that Jellyfish's execution leading up to this doesn't entirely land. It's doubly sad with the ugly problems that occasionally plague the series.

I think it's time we talked about those problems.

Jellyfish opens, literally two minutes in, with a loooong skeevy shot of our underage protagonist Mahiru in undies. It's blatantly sexualizing, unavoidable and deeply disturbing... and it doesn't happen again, aside from two brief, eye-rolling shots in ep 5 and in the final episode to a lesser extent. But it's still really gross.
The show also doubles down with one extremely uncomfortable episode (ep 7), which could be talking about chest dysphoria and finding breasts attractive as a lesbian, and instead turns into a botload of tropes on bust size comparison and two teenagers fondling an adult. Because there's also an adult woman involved in this, who starts flirting and is eventually implied to begin a romantic relationship with one of our main characters, despite an unstated but apparent age difference. It's... it's appalling. It feels like the worst monkey paw tradeoff of showing lesbian flirt onscreen.

Once again, I was initially delighted of seeing one of the other main characters (aside from Mahiru and Kano; we'll get back to them) possibly get into a sapphic relationship! All this could've been interesting! And instead, for the most of it, it just comes across as... really sleazy.

If all this is a dealbreaker for you, I'd definitely understand. In some ways, these moments seriously undercut the story's fascinating and progressive messages about agency and marginalization, since seemingly the creative team thought this was a good way to get viewers hooked too.
But if it helps in any way, these issues are also limited to specific episode parts. For me, it makes it slightly easier to sigh and bear them despite my anger - or to re-cut the episodes without them, which really should have been done in the first place.

Now, infrequent sexualization aside, I'm not convinced by all of Jellyfish's arcs, either. Among the main cast, Mei lacks a big character moment like the other three do: I believe her love of Kano's past idol era, and the repercussions on the latter, could've been confronted more. There is also a small arc on an adult idol embracing a messier image than the one expected from the draconian standards of the trade (thin, young, single and without children) that feels... much less compelling than it could be.
The climax of the series also goes less "all out" than it could, be it through the music², or through the leads failing to communicate in ways that are hard to believe.

And yet.
And yet I love this series for what it does good, despite its big and small problems.

To explain why some more, I need to talk briefly about the yuri.
It is - this could be the slogan of the whole series at this point - just as fascinating as it is frustrating.

Jellyfish has clear yuri vibes right from Mahiru and Kano's meeting. For a while, this feels like it's never going to get addressed; it's just some background radiation of meaningful framings, blushing, "I love your voice" and other "you're extraordinary".
And then, midway through, something fascinating happens: one of our two protagonists tells the other this kind of praise as always... and the other, blushing, interprets this romantically, and makes a brief but unmistakeably romantic move on her. The resulting atmosphere is heavy with the awkwardness of a confession, of a misread situation, in a way that feels incredibly real.

I never entirely recovered from that moment³.

The good thing is that Mahiru and Kano do talk again about that moment afterward (I was honestly afraid that they wouldn't), and communicate that they're both into each other, and their relationship definitely turns romantic after that. The bad thing is that none of this happens as openly as that initial scene set it up to. Additionally, by the end some big divergences of opinions should have them talk seriously about their romantic relationship too; but they don't really, and the rift between them never feels entirely properly mended.
And the way I'm reading it, this big talk - and all these smaller talks - doesn't happen because the series couldn't show it. Their relationship has to work through half-said signifiers, because (non-villainous, non-predatory, non-butt-of-the-joke) undeniably lesbian characters are still really hard to show in anime. It keeps being blatant that sapphic romance, most of the time⁴, has to have this veneer of """plausible""" deniability to be acceptable onscreen.

While this makes me sad and angry, Jellyfish's (heavily) implied moments of romance still display such a sincerity, such an intensity in their framing and their vocal delivery, that I just can't forget about them. I spent the series deeply emotionally invested in all of it - awkward confession, heartfelt reciprocity, heated dispute and soft reunion. It is regrettable that all these feelings don't get the room to be expressed as openly as they deserve; but Mahiru and Kano's relationship still put me through more feelings in a few episodes than some yuri series in many volumes.
And this half-confession scene in particular has been seared into my brain. It is the kind of moment of grace that I desperately want to see more.

Jellyfish soars high, if you're able to overlook the moments where it stoops really low. I can't recommend it easily; but I've been thinking about it often. Seeing its marginalized main cast find happiness together outside of the norm fills me with pride and joy in a way few media do.
Together, they may not change the currents that carry them; but defiantly, they'll still shine their own colors - for themselves, and for other people who would need to be seen.

Extra

The in-universe artist group of the four protagonists, JELEE, is also credited in the creation of the series, along with its manga and light novel adaptations. As is often the case in girl band anime projects, the band also exists in real life, notably through a youtube channel - featuring both the music videos from the anime and more recent releases, but also VTuber livestreams of its mascot. This also includes a website (in Japanese), and apparently a first live performance in March of this year.
While I haven't been hooked on JELEE enough when I watched the series to dig into their music, I'm just finding now that they've released two albums, JELEE BOX and JELEE BAG, which I'll probably try listening to at some point.

#februaryuri 2025 #jellyfish can't swim in the night #yuri