Komi Can't Communicate

 Komi Can't Communicate (古見さんは、コミュ症です。) is a 24 episode slice of life comedy series based on the manga of the same name by Oda Tomohito.  The anime originally aired between the Fall of 2021 and the Spring of 2022.

     Komi Shoko is a beautiful and admired first year high school student who suffers from comically debilitating social anxiety.  The struggles to talk with others or even express her feelings, ending up alone in class.  The boy next to her, Tadano Hitohito realizing her anxiety and social awkwardness, offers to be her friend and help her bridge the communication gap with others in school.  Their goal, get Komi one hundred friends.  Tadano thinks that a good start is his friend from middle school, Osana Najimi, however that task comes with it's own complications.  Najimi easily makes friends with everyone, considering everyone they have met as their childhood friend.  Unfortunately they had first met Komi when younger an the experience has put them off.  Komi's expressions of frustration and doubt come across as her being upset or annoyed.  Tadano is able to convince Najimi of the misunderstanding and they quickly choose to become her friend.  From there it should be pretty easy go gain ninety-eight more friends right?

    Even with the eternally energetic Najimi, and her status as the goddess of their class, Komi continues to struggle with making friends and easily expressing herself.  Some of that however is not her fault, while their school is a high caliber private institution that has excellent academic results, its admission policies are mostly concerned with finding as many strange personalities as possible.  Everyone in class and by a large extension the school, is unique in their personality.  Komi has to contend with a wide variety of strange people who she tries to be friends with.  Agari Himiko is a nervous, glasses wearing buxum girl who desires to be Komi's faithful dog, Yamai Ren is a dangerous stalker who wants to sexually assault Komi, Nakanaka Omoharu is a chunibyou.  Through strange interactions and misunderstandings these form the core of the friend group which at times appears to be den of enemies instead.  Komi, Tadano and the others go about their normal daily lives, enjoying their youth and helping their hapless friend have a better high school experience.

     This series does a passable job of breaking out of the rote 'tonari no' routine where the story focuses almost exclusively on Tadano focusing on Komi's problem.  As it progresses an increasing number of oddball characters are introduced that allow a larger narrative to unfold.  This makes for the two season run to not feel tedious or oppressive.  Instead we get to experience a number of different perspectives and story lines that lightly revolve around the central plot of getting Komi one hundred friends, which in it's self is largely ignored for the sake of advancing the plot.  Instead we see something mare akin to the progressive but isolated stories of the cast similar to Azumanga Daioh or Cromartie High.  The real point of the story is coming up with strange situations for strange characters in the backdrop of normalcy.  Everyone is a caricature of reality but lack any real depth outside of their stereotype.  Even Komi lacks any level of complexity in her character and Tadano serves little more than to be the benchmark of normalcy and narration.

    Where the original source material appears to lack any real substance the series is made more enjoyable due to the animations directing.  I was not a fan of the character designs either, particularly with Komi's hair making it look like her head was lopsided.  Without reading the original manga, perhaps the weakest point of the anime is the source...the animation is well done aside form the characters, beautiful at many points.  But something just seems to be lacking over all that made this something only worth passing the time with and not really being impactful outside of that.  Twenty-four episodes of middling writing to waste some time on a slow day.  Really sad when I think about it...there is some promise and this had the potential to enter the pantheon of epic slice of life anime, but the story just isnt there or didn't push enough into epic territory to make it noticeable.

     The series was produced by and is currently available in sub and dub format on Netflix.