© JELEE／ 「夜のクラゲは泳げない」製作委員会

The other day I thought it was time to go back to Yoru's original conflict. While she creates a solid comedic foundation for the rest of the cast, her most compelling moments as the main character are in episode one, so I think she's a the character needs a bit of inner turmoil to truly shine. I also think that if a few kids calling her drawings “weird” was enough to stifle her creativity for years, then how the hell did she survive publishing her work? your products on the internet? Have you seen the internet? It's filled with assholes who will start to disregard anything, even completely made up things that happen only in their brains. Yoru attaching her illustrations to a music project that suddenly went viral was like throwing a newborn into a pit of hungry lions, but the lions also had knives tied to their legs.

Or at least that's how it feels. In a refreshing move, the negative comments Yoru received about her work were quite mild, especially for YouTube. Things like “so bad, the artwork is subpar” or “the eyes look weird” aren't nice, but they're still nowhere near the harsh level that random jokes will sometimes leave in the comments section. Arguments are like small fish excrement. While Yoru doesn't get a lot of hate mail, death threats, or personally critical posts when you're insecure about your self-worth, even the mildest criticism feels like a indictment. To Yoru, every negative answer is confirmation of her fears, proof that she really does not belong among the much more accomplished members of JELEE, and proof that she is an imposter. It's a deeply universal feeling, and I appreciate the relatively restrained execution here. Speaking from experience, online hate rarely ends up ruining your day the way an innocuous criticism can.

I also appreciate that Yoru is not discouraged; She also felt frustrated. Objectively speaking, Kuroppu's JELEE-chan fanart is a compliment, showing their love for Yoru's vision and choices for character design. However, when she is trapped in her self-deprecating headspace, all Yoru can see are the figures below the drawing, scrolling up exponentially while she works called the weak link. Suddenly, that compliment from a creative colleague feels like an insult, a flex, or a usurper to replace her in a role where she found solace. Her resentment is misplaced and she knows it, but your least generous thoughts are rarely something you can control. Sometimes, a bad, irrationally mean thought will get stuck in your crawl, and no amount of positive affirmation from your friend or collaborator will help it escape. that situation.

That said, it's become a pattern for Jellyfish to do a great job of expressing the characters' emotions but not quite capturing their resolutions. Like the first episodes of Mei and Kiui, Yoru's conclusion here makes sense on paper. If she feels insecure about her work, the only possible answer is to start doing it: practice, research, experiment, pick up new tools—something any artist In any industry, you have to work to improve. It's a resolution that certainly fits the show's grounded dramatic approach, but it comes off a bit too fast and simple. There's no real turning point or emotional climax to underscore Yoru's decision, nor is there any focus on the specifics of what she's trying to change in her art . All we got was a montage of her working and collecting illustrated books before she came up with the seemingly innovative work that everyone loved. It wasn't a grope; it's just an oddly easy way to summarize her deliberate and well-paced exploration of headspace.

Maybe they skipped the ending to get to the scene you see in the thumbnail, aka the kiss that brought Jellyfish back to my social media feed with a vengeance. While there have been some very explicit teases in previous episodes, I haven't commented much on that because honestly, we've all been here before and it's nothing that the show made previously suggests that the chemistry between Yoru and Kano will mean something beyond a wink. Now, though? There's no way to explain Kano's kiss—and the way both girls react afterward—as anything other than blatant romance. Bringing that back into the realm of Gal Pals would require an Olympic-level step back, much like Sound! Euphonium can only dream.

I don't know where the show will go with this new plot beat, but it's enough to give me confidence that it will approach a potential queer romance with some serious sensitivity. If not, then it would be auspicious that it would start with an episode about online discourse, and that the lions in that pit would have some gun tigers for company.

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Jellyfish Can't Swim at Night is now streaming on HIDIVE.