Movie adaptations of shoujo and josei manga (targeted towards young girls and older women, respectively) are quite common, with notable examples being Kimi no Todoke, Nodame Cantabile, Paradise Kiss and Honey and Clover. One of the latest in this line of adaptations is Princess Jellyfish (Kuragehime), based on the manga by Akiko Higashimura. It was also adapted into an 11-episode animation series on the famed Noitamina animation block back in 2010.
Princess Jellyfish is the story of Tsukimi, who is a jellyfish otaku. She wishes to be an illustrator, but she ends up just drawing jellyfish all the time. She lives in an apartment complex in Tokyo called Amamizukan along with five other women, all obsessed with some other field such as trains, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and so on. A chance encounter leads her to meet Kuranosuke, a beautiful cross-dressing man who changes her life and the lives of the tenants of Akamizukan.
The movie takes us through this journey of self discovery and love with a bit of comedy and a tinge of the over-the-top antics we expect from manga adaptations like this. Thankfully it doesn't feel overdone and the result is quite entertaining. The story follows the anime plot quite closely except for a few scenes cut for time and a few story related events.
Rena Nounen, best known for her lead role in the award-winning NHK Asadora Amachan, turns in an adorkable (again, spelling intentional) performance as Tsukimi, while Masaki Suda, known to the tokusatsu community as Philip from Kamen Rider W, makes for a really pretty lady as Kuranosuke. The supporting cast is decent as well (including a near-unrecognizable Tomoe Shinohara as Jiji).
As the manga hasn't ended yet, the movie does leave a couple of plot threads hanging, such as the main romantic triangle between Tsukimi, Kuranosuke and his brother Shuu, as well as Kuranosuke's search for his mother. However the ending is satisfying enough that nothing feels truncated.
And
at the end, I guess that's the thing with this movie. It's definitely a
fun watch and an enjoyable experience, but it doesn't offer anything particularly new to the table.
Fans of the manga/anime or of the genre will surely have something to
appreciate, and casual movie goers will lap this up, but for the moviegoer who's seen it all, it tends to get mixed up in the
sea of other, equally capable manga adaptations.
Eiga Sai runs from July 9 to 19 in primarily at Edsa Shangri-la and at later dates in other theaters in Davao, Cebu and the UP Campus.
p.s this took way too long to write again...
p,p.s. "adorkable" is now my new favorite made up word of the week.
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