Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night

Episode 4

When Jellyfish was announced, the first thing that caught my attention was its distinctly modern take on music making. While there's no shortage of anime featuring musicians trying to make it to the top of their respective worlds, they rarely bear any resemblance to your average indie artist's journey. Shows like The IDOLM@STER are wrapped up in the professional idol scene by design, and series like Love Live! and BanG Dream! exist in fantasy worlds where school idols and student bands are seemingly the only forms of entertainment on the planet. That's not to say those shows can't be fun or meaningful, but Jellyfish taking a more grounded perspective means it can more easily tackle topics that its peers can't. Now that we've got the band (well, "band") together, that aspect is getting a chance to shine.

There's just something charming about seeing our cast come together, navigating the blurry area between working with their artistic collaborators and just hanging out with friends like regular teenagers. Details like Mei, the classically trained musician struggling to wrap her head around a DAW, add to the sense that the girls of JELEE are trying to figure this out as they go along. Even the MVs we've gotten in lieu of the ending themes have a distinctly amateur energy to them, with purposefully limited and repeated animations that feel at least approximate to something real teenagers could make on their laptops. There are still some leaps of fantasy for the sake of having a narrative since real-life projects like JELEE are usually destined for obscurity and pay-what-you-want downloads on Bandcamp. Still, the vibes are right, which captures something that more fantastical music anime tend to lack.

It's also a good way to start building the group's dynamic. While it was a little surprising for Kiui to come clean to the rest of JELEE right away, I like how it immediately establishes a bond between her and Kano, as both are some outcasts trying to forge their path outside the norm. Through the process of elimination, Yoru ends up the team mom, who not only cleans up Kano and Mion's ratty apartment but holds everyone together when emotions overflow. I especially love the scene where Mei and Kiui are out searching for Kano, and Mei's first instinct is to look at her old idol group's public appearance, but Kiui rebuffs the idea. It's a small moment, but it tells us a lot about how both girls see their friend – Mei still conceives of Kano as part of the Sunflower Dolls and figures Kano'd be compelled to see them, while Kiui knows from personal experience that's the last place Kano would want to be. Stuff like that goes a long way in making these personalities gel.

The glimpses of the Sunflower Dolls provide a solid foil for JELEE's Cubase-powered setup. One of the cruel ironies of being a professional musician is that you have to do a whole lot of crap that has nothing to do with music, and that's exemplified through the corporate politics and sales-focused attitude that seems to define Kano's old idol group. We see the girls doing promos for business partners, shooting ads, and throwing their producer's name around to squeeze record shop owners for more shelf space – all the cynical business strategy that goes into making the sausage, as it were. It is brutally professional in a way that's vehemently antithetical to Kano's new collaborators, and you can tell immediately why she would eventually buck against that atmosphere, especially when that big-name producer is her mom. I cannot imagine anything more stifling than being a teenager where your parent is also your boss. I'd punch somebody, too.

That whole conflict holds a lot of promise, but it makes me a little concerned about where the show is going with its outlook on art in general. It makes sense for Kano's character to be hung up on trying to beat her former group, but I worry the story could get too caught up in chasing numbers and metrics rather than, y'know, the camaraderie and fulfillment that comes from expressing yourself – even collectively – through a piece of art. Starting with our cast obsessed with chasing metrics and numbers on social media is fine, but I hope it doesn't become the defining goal or judge of artistic expression for the narrative at large. JELEE doesn't need to be an overnight viral sensation to be a worthwhile project, and I'd much rather the show focus on the process and inspiration side of things rather than the pursuit of clicks.

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Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night is currently streaming on HIDIVE.