Yoru no Kurage wa Oyogenai

Title:Yoru no Kurage wa Oyogenai
Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night
夜のクラゲは泳げない
Overall:Rent
Keywords: , , , , ,
Notables: Animation - Dogakobo
ITOU Miku
SHIMABUKURO Miyuri
TAKAHASHI Rie
TOMITA Miyu
17 year old Mahiru Kozuki was once a promising child artist who painted a mural of a jellyfish on a downtown wall. But today Mahiru has become jaded and disillusioned, and her mural is riddled with graffiti. One night she meets a fan that she never knew she had. This is Kano Yamanouchi, once a fairly famous idol singer but as a result of a minor scandal now an anonymous street performer known as JELEE (as in jellyfish). Kano has taken a completely difference tack on setbacks, refuses to give up, and still aspires to have 100,000 folowers someday. Kano makes a radical proposal: why not couple Mahiru's artwork with her own singing and work together?

12 episodes
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Rent Stretch [series:4797#628]
(All episodes watched):

I was quickly encouraged by the complex and interesting dialogue in episode one, a sure sign of a story which has had some serious effort put into it. Nevertheless, I couldn't say that I had been truly inspired or thrilled by the premise of this show once it was laid out. Perhaps it's because I don't see how Mahiru's talents as an artist will make much of a difference to Kano's singing career (will she illustrate her CDs?)? Maybe Mahiru will become a singer herself--that would make a good deal more sense. It looks like two other girls will be recruited to join their group or whatever it turns out to be. Maybe the problem is that the characters haven't been fleshed out enough; Mahiru is burnt out but I didn't feel any deep desire or need on her part to turn her life around. Kano refuses to be 'run-of-the-mill' but what makes her so irrepressible is unclear. How much blame does she deserve for that scandal that ruined her original career? I think she would be much more interesting if she really is at least partly at fault than if she isn't. I didn't exactly get how the facts and sayings about jellyfish applied to Mahiru. Is she a figurative jellyfish herself? I guess I will probably watch episode two to learn just what these two girls have in mind, but it will need to clarify things and be more interesting than episode one was.

As I went into episode two I had gotten the impression that this show was being givern one last chance to please me but it would probably fail. But I enjoyed it more than I had expected. Episode two is mainly about how the third member of the group, the black-haired Mei, joins Kano and Mahiru. She's a fairly fanatical fan of Kano in her days before she fell from grace, and really, really wants her to revive the persona she used back then, but Kano refuses. What's more, Mei has a talent for composing music, which is just what is needed right now. I was a bit confused because of my difficulty keeping track of names and the fact that flashbacks have Kano with her hair black, which made her hard to distinguish from Mei--I thought at one point that the fourth member had arrived already, but apparently not. But this show has more depth than I had expected and I think I'll keep watching for now.

In episode three we learn the story behind the fourth member of this group, pink haired Kiui Watase. Kiui is a childhood friend of Mahiru and last she heard Kiui was a popular and well-known influencer with a large following on the internet. But it turns out that actually things haven't gone nearly as well for Kiui since she started high school as she had claimed. She basically needs some sincere and genuine friends rather than the countless internet people who she has never actually met in person. In episode four the girls get together to brainstorm a plan for Kano's next release. She seems to feel that she must complete a new CD before her former group, the Sunrise-or-somethings, release theirs. We also learn of a surprising link that continues between the two: Kano's mother is the expert producer of her former group! This show continues to intrigue me and I'm glad I didn't abandon it early on. I had thought that surely all four girls would become idols, but it looks like Kano will remain the only singer while the others serve as her support crew, at least for now. Kano's new CD is surprisingly successful, in part due to an accident, but Mahiru is hurt by online criticism of her work. What she ought to do is ask herself 'Why do I need other people to approve of me in order to be happy?'. Instead, she vows to improve her artwork so that she'll get more compliments and fewer negative criticisms.

In episode six the girls are commissioned to write a song for another minor Idol, and it turns out that this is a person Mahiru and Kano have met before and did not get a good impression of. They learn that this person has some surprises to her and isn't as bad as they had initially thought. A fifth (and maybe sixth) member for JELEE? Apparently not. In episode seven the girls worry about what they'll do after graduating from high school. Kiui mentions that she is going to take a class to earn a motorbike license, and Kano decides that she needs one, too (it seemed to me that the bikes they trained on were more like full-fledged motorcycles than motorbikes). Kiui also meets a strange woman (at first I thought it was Kano's mother) who takes an interest in her. Nothing much about new songs for JELEE or anything like that in this episode, just character development, which I enjoyed. In episode eight a special performance is a resounding success, thanks largely to Mahiru's visuals, and has an unexpected consequence: Mahiru is offered a chance-of-a-lifetime commission by Kano's mother to design something similar for the Sunshine Girls, Kano's old group. In episode nine we learn just what happened when Kano belted a fellow singer and was thrown out of the group. Mahiru decides to accept the offer but this leads to a painful argument with Kano. I wish a little more effort had been made to emphasize how Mahiru had built up precious self-respect during her time working with JELEE since that is now at risk.

In the end, it is Mahiru who saves Kano by persuading Kano's mother to allow JELEE to be the opening act for the Sunshine Girls. Kano nearly blows it when she must appear before a big audience that might still harbor resentment from the incident that got Kano tossed from that group. The moment when she freezes up was painful to watch. But things work out OK and we get a cathartic conclusion. Everybody makes up and life goes on as the girls graduate from high school and vow to always remain friends. In the end, the plot of YnKwO remains only vaguely imprinted in my memory, because it wasn't absolutely brilliant, but it was a fun show that was well worth watching.

Last updated Wednesday, July 31 2024. Created Thursday, April 11 2024.

Community Anime Reviews

anime mikomi org