Saccharine in its message and vicious in its in its cultural critiques, Princess Jellyfish is a unique addition to the Shoujo genre. While not functionally perfect as a story, Princess Jellyfish more than makes up for its structural shortcomings with the sincerity, humor, and enthusiasm that can only come from the lived experiences its author, Akiko Higashimura. If, like Higashimura-san (or me), you are also a woman and an otaku, then you are already primed to enjoy Princess Jellyfish. If you might not be those things, but you have othering experiences with gender, neurodivergence, self-expression, poverty, grief, or relationships, Princess Jellyfish absolutely has something for
...
you.
While I would call Princess Jellyfish a beginner-friendly manga, there are cultural scenarios that could be considered off-putting by the uninitiated Western reader. To fully appreciate Princess Jellyfish, Translator’s Notes are a must. If you don’t have the manga, try to find a scan that includes them. This is a story with a significant cultural hurdle to understand all of the jokes and dialogue. While you can skip over them, you will be missing some laugh-out-loud moments without the context. In addition, Higashimura-san’s personal life anecdotes at the end of each chapter add an endearing peek into behind the scenes, as well as context for a lot of experiences the characters go through in the story.
Thanks to Higashimura-san’s earnestness, Princess Jellyfish’s messages and characters are discernible, nuanced, and thought-provoking. If you resonate at all with any of the characters, it will make you laugh as much as it makes you cry. In terms of Shoujo protagonists, our main character, Tsukimi, is refreshingly plain in comparison to the thin, elegant, effortlessly beautiful Magical Girls and Highschool Sweethearts who occupy the genre. However, Tsukimi and her friends navigate story events that, possibly due to the restrictive deadlines of the manga industry, are left unpolished. Inevitably, I wouldn’t blame the average reader for feeling a little dissatisfied. Princess Jellyfish would have greatly benefited from a few more years to breathe. Even so, it’s not the personal belief of myself as a reader or an author that a story needs to be functionally flawless to be accessible or enjoyable. For others, this may greatly deter their enjoyment. I encourage you to draw your own conclusion in this regard.
The main thesis of Princess Jellyfish, iterated by the main character Tsukimi’s late mother, is that “All girls can be Beautiful Princesses.” The trouble is, Tsukimi doesn’t believe it applies to her. In fact, her friends and roommates also don’t believe it. Together, they call their house “Amars” (loosely translatable to “Nunnery”) and each housemate has their own unique interest (I believe the term “Special Interest” is very applicable here) from jellyfish to trains. These interests dominate their personalities and have ultimately isolated them from “normal” society. Together, their home is a fortress of isolation and a cavernous echo chamber. The Amars lifestyle is “a life with no use for men”. This lifestyle is challenged when Tsukimi meets a beautiful, confident woman who turns out to be a beautiful man named Kuranosuke. Puzzlingly, Kuranosuke is not put off by Tsukimi’s obsession with jellyfish at all. We follow shy, meek Tsukimi as her world views are inevitably challenged by Kuranosuke’s indomitable spirit. As they begin their foray into the world of fashion, these unlikely friends must overlap their lived experiences with beauty to understand one another’s shortcomings and succeed in their business endeavors. What does it actually mean to be Beautiful Princess? Can everyone truly become one?
Tsukimi is imprisoned by her answer to this question, a resounding no. Meanwhile, Kuranosuke is limitless in his. Why couldn’t anyone be a princess? Doesn’t everyone want to be a princess? Despite his endearing views of inner and outer beauty, it is too frustratingly innocent for people like Tsukimi, people like me, and anyone who has ever felt outcast, undesirable, or invisible. It falls short in its failure to acknowledge the vast majority of us who have insecurities with appearances, fashion, and personality. Put bluntly, it’s easy to believe you’re beautiful when you are conventionally attractive, and it’s easy to believe you are a good person when you look and act the way polite society expects you to — these self-diminishing aspects of beauty and fashion are things which Princess Jellyfish painstakingly acknowledges with its characters and story.
To be sure, life is easier when you’re attractive— but beauty carries its own burdens as well. In contrast to the girls of Amars, we meet gorgeous business moguls and international fashion models, also navigating the torrid waters of self-expression and slaving for acceptance through overwork, starvation, and manipulation. Clothing and fashion change the way that we see ourselves and that others see us, but fashion designers as well as consumers so often fail to acknowledge the uniqueness of individual beauty. What results is a culture and industry built for the privileged few, leaving humans and clothing that don’t fit in the cogs of its machine to languish in obscurity, unacknowledged and unappreciated.
In Princess Jellyfish, and in our own world, to be seen is to have power. To have enthusiasm is to have influence. To control how others see us, we must first be noticed, and fashion is an excellent strategy in this regard. However, some characters handle their visibility irresponsibly, while others with the capacity to be responsible are terrified of the burden. What results is a story of societal nuance in tandem with Tsukimi’s journey of self-discovery. As her relationship with her own visibility evolves, she begins to understand that the natural interests of everyone at Amars is not an accident. By the end of their journey, we come to understand what it really means to be a Princess. It is to be seen, acknowledged, and empowered by your true self.
If any of these ideas resonate with you, you’ll be sure to enjoy the journey Tsukimi and her friends have in Princess Jellyfish. Regardless of the technical aspects of the story that fall short, you’ll no doubt get to thinking about what brings out the Princess in you — whatever that may be. If you decide to give Princess Jellyfish a try, it is my wish that what you can learn in this manga’s pages will help you find it.
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Mar 21, 2026
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(Manga)
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Saccharine in its message and vicious in its in its cultural critiques, Princess Jellyfish is a unique addition to the Shoujo genre. While not functionally perfect as a story, Princess Jellyfish more than makes up for its structural shortcomings with the sincerity, humor, and enthusiasm that can only come from the lived experiences its author, Akiko Higashimura. If, like Higashimura-san (or me), you are also a woman and an otaku, then you are already primed to enjoy Princess Jellyfish. If you might not be those things, but you have othering experiences with gender, neurodivergence, self-expression, poverty, grief, or relationships, Princess Jellyfish absolutely has something for
...
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