Two Spring 2024 animes about sapphic teenagers making music
Girls Band Cry)
Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night)
I've been meaning to write this post for three solid weeks. But a lot of things happened since then, like the end of cohost, and most of this blog (including finishing an extremely specific 12k word essay! whew!), and, life.
But. I need to yell about two somewhat similar animes released this Spring that made me feel a lot of good and intense things: Girls Band Cry (that I watched in June) and Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night (that I watched in September).
Ok, well. I also want to write proper recommendations about them considered independently from each other at some point. This may or may not happen in February 2025, following a tradition I set up on cohost this year dubbed Februaryuri (of which a 2024 rerun will probably happen on this blog soon).
Anyway. I'll stop teasing.
My bottom line is probably this: gosh, these two shows were really, really good.
Both feature a group of girls bonding and making music together and facing their traumas and difficulties by supporting each other and being together, with well-written characters and strikingly cathartic moments, and yuri tones or undertones.
This is part, of course, of a wider genre, featuring titles like BanG Dream It's MyGO, Bocchi the Rock or K-On. However, all of these are on my watchlist still, so I am not yet able to draw any comparison here for now. Maybe later. Until then, let me just say a few things on the two I mentioned.
Both Girls Band Cry and Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night talk about making art, though in rather different ways.
Girls Band Cry (below GBC), first, is about a debuting rock band. Above everything else, through its protagonist Nina, it's about pouring your anger and your frustration and your fear into your art, and being your true self on stage, as vulnerable and slightly awkward as that can be. It is about loudly refusing to be commodified into a sellable brand, without ever offering easy answers about whether this can pay off.
Nina has been through a lot (not that the rest of the core cast hasn't...) and music quite literally saved her; and as she acknowledges it, music slowly becomes an healthy outlet for her pent-up pain, too.
It is raw. It is intense. It is true.
It is also extremely well-executed. The show uses some extremely expressive 3D most of the time, with a purposeful use of occasional 2D for specific scenes. Its music, performed by the voice actresses themselves, is an absolute blast - starting with its opening, Wrong World, which carried me through a good part of this summer.
Please, just watch this.
On a slightly broader scope, GBC is also about how sometimes being a facade of ourselves to appease someone (an audience, a grandma, customers, bandmates) is the only diplomatic move. And it is sometimes about flipping one's middle finger to all of this and being your raw selves because this has been boiling long enough and it has to be let out.
And, yeah, as a consequence it is also a show about screaming at each other in the middle of restaurants about what you are going to do with your band's future and whether that one is going to try and quit for the umpteenth time. But that's part of the fun, in retrospect, right?
There is more that I could and may say some other time - there's even a bit of yuri in there, though most of it is surprisingly unaddressed after an explicit confession. But for now, let me just say that GBC is a wonderful watch with basically no caveat, and that I would recommend with my eyes closed to absolutely anyone interested in this kind of show.
Please note that the series more or less ends with episode 11 in my opinion (later edit: I don't think that anymore, see the footnote below!), and episodes 12-13 are more of an extra mini-arc building up more if there is ever a season 21. Also, GBC has its share of CWs in the past of the characters - most notably bullying and a mention of depression and suicidal ideation. This is however heartbreakingly well addressed; it made me feel seen, and cry. It has a narrative acme I will keep with me for a long, long time.
It is a show about hope through music. Hope through art.
As Nina's shirt reads, "Hope for the best and prepare for the worst".
And then, there is Jellyfish (or YoruKura, from the Japanese abbreviation of its title, Yoru no Kurage wa Oyogenai).
Jellyfish had the misfortune of being released at the same time as Girls Band Cry: I've seen the two being compared a lot, always in favor of the latter, and so for the whole summer I thought I wouldn't watch the former.
I'm so, so glad I did. Jellyfish is not without missteps, but it is really, really good.
Of course, some things are understandably comparable between these two shows: both are in the same genre, and both talk about making music and art creation and to some extent about being kinder to one's past self, and both feature a cool-looking sapphic deuteragonist that used to be part of a famous rival band and has been burned by that experience and that the MC really admires for her singing and that she admires back in a sometimes complicated way (I'd have two nickels, etc, etc).
Still, after seeing so many reviews comparing the two shows, I was surprised to see how different they actually are, and how both are worth a shot.
Credit where credit is due, it is glancing at the beginning of this excellent article by Alex Henderson that made me realize I had to watch Jellyfish. In maybe one title and two sentences, it convinced me that the series talked about making art in a way I knew would resonate with me deeply; that it was about the desperate want of making what you create seen, contrasted with the ever-present fear of being criticized and judged for it. About the will of making things you can be proud of, and the fear of them not being good enough somehow. And about the daunting question of for who and why you make art.
And gosh. GOSH does it talk about that.
So, yeah. Jellyfish had moments that absolutely ruined me - the kind where I had to pause every two minutes, lie down, take it in, cry in a pillow with empathy, rinse, repeat. It may not do the same to you, of course, but it really hit something in me, and I felt like I needed to share that.
Surprisingly, I must also mention that contrary to what I first thought, it is not about a rock band, but about a group releasing animated music videos on the Internet, which really doesn't have the same vibe or approach to the creation process. It is in good part about drawing, actually, as that is protagonist Mahiru's role in the group. It notably has a very intense moment about seeing other people share fanart of your art that are somehow better, and more popular, than whatever you have and could have done. And, ouch. Owh. Coping with that, and finding a reason to like your own art-- There is something that hits really hard about that, and Jellyfish doesn't pull any punches about it.
Now, I must also say that Jellyfish has two Problems with a capital P:
- some extremely skeevy out-of-place shots of underwear or bare skin of the teenage characters, with the most egregious and long example right off the bat in episode 1, as warned about in this review on AnimeFeminist. This happens again maybe two times (eps 5 and 12) in much briefer and less intense manner.
- one of the teenagers is hit on by an adult woman, and they end up somewhat in a long-distance relationship. There is also a long talk about breasts at some point of that mini-arc (ep 7); and some of it may have been meant to broach lesbianism and dysphoria, but it ends up a deplorable and dragged out boob size comparison and breast groping of an adult by two teenagers.
These are... These are some weird fumbles in an otherwise excellent show, which were not enough to sour my enjoyment but may sour yours, so exercise caution. But they are contained instances.
What makes me scream with joy and enthusiasm about Jellyfish is something I will talk in more details in a future post, I think, which is this: Jellyfish takes a clear stand for the queer and the marginalized, with a level of understanding I haven't seen much in anime. It's striking, wonderful and empowering.
It has characters that are explicitly queer and/or neurodivergent, with some very good showcase of actual lesbian attraction under its yuri coding (with a scene that was seared into my head and will get its own analysis in due time), and an impressive handling of a nonbinary character. It has a clear understanding of what names can mean to people - how they can trap them in an identity or discriminate them when forced upon them, or on the other end help them self-actualize when chosen. It has talks on wanting to protect and inspire younger people that are at risk of undergoing bullying or discrimination. It does so many things well.
Its characters say to each other again and again that it's ok to be different and weird, and the show underlines how the support of close ones can really help standing for oneself. Above all, it has a completely explicit ending about the pride of being weird, particularly as part of a group, and rejecting any sense of social normalcy. It takes a stand for its main cast in extremely earnest and unambiguous ways.
And frankly, by the end, it is such a joy to see them shine together.
What else? Maybe two things.
First, a third show could qualify with this post's title: the anime adaptation of Whisper Me a Love Song, a great high school yuri manga with a greyromantic-coded protagonist and good bits of interpersonal drama. However, that one is much more interested in said romance and romance-adjacent elements than in talking about art; and I would recommend the manga over the anime any day anyway. Indeed, the anime's quality is rather subpar, and it has been left tragically unfinished so far due to production issues, stopping at ep 10 out of 12.
The second thing is, I would not necessarily recommend watching the two shows above at the same time: I think that puts Jellyfish at a disadvantage. I would, however, recommend both heartily, if you are ready for a few teeth-grinding moments for the latter.
On my end, I couldn't be more happy to have watched both: Girls Band Cry's music and performance and climax and raw main character will haunt me for a long time; and Jellyfish has several moments of brilliance that I was absolutely not expecting, and it will definitely see one or two extra essays about them bloom on this blog.
More than anything, on my end, this is a lesson learned. Sometimes, seeing two pieces of art in the same genre compared repeatedly everywhere can severely undermine one of them; and yet, taken as complements, not opposites, they can bring you wildly different things.
And, you know. Maybe, just maybe, the less-renowned, less-polished one, for its glow under the missteps, will also find a special place in your heart.
Later edit: After a rewatch of the entire show at once, I must say that I don't think that anymore! Ep 12-13 does feel a bit like a sliiiightly quick final arc, that somewhat calls for a season 2 where we would see the consequences of it... But it is striking and definitely climatic in its own way - and it belongs to this season no questions asked. Notably, it now appears to me as crucial to get the message of the show, and an integral part of it, as it amplifies more than ever the thematic resonance between Nina's past and what her band is going through at that point. By the end of ep 13, her unmovable determination and sense of integrity all along leaves me speechless, and in awe... and obsessed with this series more than ever.↩