I found Kuragehime through the anime first. Waiting for new episodes was taking far too long, so naturally I went online looking for the manga it was based on.
That turned out to be a very good decision.
The manga didn’t disappoint at all. In fact, it gave me much more of what I liked about the anime. The story is longer and much more detailed, and I loved the artwork. It was very much to my taste.
What makes Kuragehime so much fun, though, is that it is really a story about otakus — people who are completely obsessed with their own particular thing.
Tsukimi is a jellyfish otaku, living in a house full of women who are equally obsessive in their own ways. There is a train otaku, someone obsessed with the Three Kingdoms, and another whose world revolves around traditional Japanese dolls and kimono. Then there is the mysterious person who apparently lives in one of the rooms but whom we almost never see — and yes, eventually we finally find out who that is. 😂
They are a wonderful collection of people who have very little interest in fitting into conventional society.
Then Kuranosuke crashes into their world.
He loves fashion, Tsukimi loves jellyfish, and somehow those two completely unrelated obsessions become the basis of one of the strangest and most entertaining partnerships in the story. Their talents come together through fashion, and eventually this whole den of NEETs and otakus ends up being dragged into something they could never have imagined — including becoming models themselves.
I loved that.
There is also an ugly-duckling element to the story, but I don’t think that fully describes it. Tsukimi isn’t interesting because someone discovers that she can be made pretty. She already has this huge inner world built around jellyfish, and that very obsession becomes part of what makes her talented.
And then, somehow, this jellyfish nerd ends up being loved by two half-brothers.
One is Kuranosuke, the beautiful cross-dresser who loves fashion and barges into her sheltered life. The other is his older brother, a thirty-something politician who is painfully inexperienced with women.
It is such an unlikely love triangle. 😂
But that is exactly the kind of thing that made Kuragehime feel different from other manga I had read. The romance is important, but the story is also about these strange, obsessive people finding something useful and even wonderful in the things everyone else thinks make them odd.
I loved the whole series enough that I would happily reread it.
My only real complaint is the ending.
I wanted more. 😅
For me, the ultimate romantic happy ending is still marriage and children. After following these characters through the entire series, I wanted that completely satisfying, unmistakable ending.
Instead, we at least get Kuranosuke finally coming to terms with the fact that he has fallen in love with Tsukimi.
I’ll take what I can get. 😂
Would I reread it? Absolutely.
Rating: ★★★★★