7.9 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Amamizukan is an apartment complex where no boys are allowed. Kurashita Tsukimi, a girl who adores jellyfish, lives there happily with her friends who all have nerdy obsessions of their own. Their peaceful lives gradually start to change when a beautiful woman helps Tsukimi out of a pinch. She stays overnight at the apartments -- but it turns out "she" is really a "he."
Starring: Mitsuki Saiga, Kana Hanazawa, Akemi Okamura, Takehito Koyasu, Kimiko SaitôAnime | 100% |
Foreign | 94% |
Comedy | 21% |
Romance | 19% |
Comic book | 16% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
Japanese: Dolby TrueHD 2.0
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Four-disc set (2 BDs, 2 DVDs)
DVD copy
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Have you ever felt like an outcast, like you just don’t belong? Well, join the group. Not the group in Princess
Jellyfish, mind you: they’re really weird. It’s somewhat ironic that real lovers of anime are often
branded with the epithet otaku, which more generally indicates anyone with any particular obsessive
fixation. In the case of Princess Jellyfish we deal with a gaggle of otaku women who all live in the same
apartment house. The heroine of Princess Jellyfish is one Tsukimi Kurashita, an 18 year old resident of Tokyo
who dreams of becoming a manga illustrator. Her real fascination, though, is with jellyfish, something passed
down to her by her mother, an obsession which is depicted in frequent flashbacks showing Tsukimi and her Mom looking
at the gelatinous creatures at an aquarium. Tsukimi ends up at Amamizukan, an apartment house catering to
otakus where she slowly ingratiates herself with an outré group of women (the apartment house only allows
females, which actually leads to one of the weirder subplots of the show, more about which later).
These five women dub themselves the Sisterhood and forge an unlikely alliance that helps them to confront their
individual “issues,” as well as helping them make forays out into the wider, supposedly real world. As voice director
Christopher Bevins points out in one of the two commentaries included on this two Blu-ray set, the outsider
ethos of Princess Jellyfish, as well as its gynocentric focus, is fairly reminiscent of another, older anime,
Fruits Basket (which I reviewed for another site many years ago). Princess Jellyfish may not be
quite as surreal as Fruits Basket, though it comes close some of the time, and it repeats that earlier
series’ penchant for sweetness mixed with off the wall humor.
Princess Jellyfish is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is one of the brightest and most appealing looking animes in some time, one that trades in on Tsukimi's ambitions to be an illustrator with an often cool and innovative animation style that actually resembles some of those classic magazine illustrations from the sixties (see the fifth screencap for a good example). The series also exploits purely graphical elements a lot of the time, and at other times the characters almost resemble paper cutouts, without surrounding lines, a la South Park. Colors are incredibly vivid and well saturated, and line detail is very strong and consistent. The series has some unusual character designs for an anime (not Tsukimi's rather "forcefully" drawn eyebrows for a good example), and those all pop very well in this splendid looking high definition presentation.
Princess Jellyfish offers two lossless audio options, the original Japanese language track delivered courtesy of a Dolby TrueHD 2.0 stereo mix, and a very good English dub (with a glut of FUNimation voice actor regulars) delivered via Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround mix. The original language track is perhaps a bit sweeter and less weirdly boisterous than the English language track, but fidelity here is strong and the stereo presentation, while certainly not at the immersive level of the 5.1 track, is rather well handled. The 5.1 track is just off the wall a lot of the time from a voice actor standpoint, and it also offers sterling fidelity and very good dynamic range. The show's appealing score is significantly opened up in the surround track as well.
Though Princess Jellyfish's original source was ostensibly a Shōjo manga marketed to females, something that the series also tends to emulate, even guys may find a lot to like about this series. Weirdly funny and always visually very interesting, this series is sweet and bizarre in equal measures. Watching these five outsiders band together is a lesson in "strength in numbers," and the series finds a very appealing tone that manages to be both out there and oddly real feeling at its emotional core. With great looking visuals, excellent audio and nice supply of supplements, this release comes Recommended.
Classics
2006
Season 3
2012
Anime Classics
2008-2009
けいおん!!
2010
ソウルイーター
2008-2009
2002-2003
2022
2014
D-Fragments! | ディーふらぐ! / Diifuragu!
2014
Essentials
2015
2010-2011
2008
Essentials / はじめてのギャル / Hajimete No Gal
2017
2014-2015
2013
Essentials
2017
映画 中二病でも恋がしたい! -Take On Me- / Eiga Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Take On Me
2018
2010
Undressed Edition
2010
たまこラブストーリー
2014