Princess Jellyfish, Tome 1 by Akiko Higashimura

But because of social anxiety, this mangaka is confined in her room, and the other women communicate with her by writing a message on a piece of paper and slipping it on her door. The sixth housemate in particular is a mangaka who never even shows herself in the story, but is more or less the only one who has an actual professional job. I don't want to give away too much details of their said interests, but they are definitely a wacky bunch, and their quirks are the source of this manga's hilarity and conflict.

She lives with fiveother women who all preoccupy themselves with interests that may be perceived too niche. One of these women is the our protagonist Tsukimi Kurashita who looks exactly as the trope of what the token geek girl is supposed to be average-looking with glasses and who only wears plain sweats as her daily clothing. They even fancied it to be a nunnery of some sort because these women (who call themselves Amars which means 'nuns') don't interact socially with people who don't share their hobbies and interests that lean on odd fixations of varying degrees. The plot revolves around a group of otaku women living in a place called the Amamizukan which is an apartment that prohibits men. I eventually got over PGE since IT WENT ON FOR SO LONG WITHOUT THE SHIPPABLE TWO CHARACTERS OF THE SERIES EVER BECOMING AN ACTUAL FUCKING COUPLE, DAMMIT! At this point in my life, I would trade my collected hard copies of Perfect Girl for copies of Princess Jellyfish instead because the latter is better written and has less slapstick comedy and ship tease. The wait was more than worth it! I thought it was going to be a more mature version of the Perfect Girl Evolution: The Wallflower series by Tomoko Hayakawa which was my favorite shoujo manga as a teen I wasn't wrong. When I first encountered this manga, I was so pumped up to get to it but I had to schedule it for this year instead of the last.

If Tina Fey was a Japanese otaku, this would be something she would have written, and the lead heroine Tsukumi Kurashita has the kind of social awkwardness and geeky passions that are as oddly charming and sweet as Geek and Sundry founder and gamer Felicia Day's. Spanning for fifteen volumes, this josei manga is incredibly entertaining as it is endearingly eccentric filled with balls-out fun as it both pokes fun and celebrates otaku culture through a female perspective. It just occurred to me as I start writing this review that Princess Jellyfish ( Kuragehime) is a josei manga that I feel was sort of what The Big Bang Theory would be like if the genders were reverse, and the group of scientist geeks were instead female otakus, while the hot girl next door is a cross-dressing pretty boy and a son of a politician.īasically: IT'S A ZILLION TIMES NERDIER AND MORE AWESOME.

Princess Jellyfish, Tome 1 by Akiko Higashimura