Komi Can't Communicate Season 2

I find it really funny that, despite the numerous amount of low-balling score and negative reviews made in the review column, at the time I wrote this, both Komi 1st and 2nd season still retain average score above 8. Perhaps people visiting this site still know what they want to watch and certainly able to form their own opinion on the show despite the raging biases. And that was such a reassuring thought on its own. -------------MIGHT CONTAINS A LITTLE SPOILER, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK------------- --STORY & CHARACTERS-- Komi 2nd season is the continuation of the rest of Komi-san 1st Year Journey in Itan high school, itcertainly and most importantly still carried the hype and success from what the 1st season tried to convey. Komi trying to overcome her disorder and anxiety, opening up to the world, and completing her goal of having 100 friends. Sounds cliche? Sure it was, but it was done right and proper. Let's start with Komi herself. Is she still an anxious train wreck? Yes Does she still stutter and writes on notebook? Yes Does she still overthink every mundane shit that somehow her fault? Yes Most importantly, does she grows? HELL YES Komi is slowly but surely letting go of the helping hand that were Tadano and Najimi. She became more proactive, more thoughtful, and certainly getting more used to the environment surrounded with oddballs and weirdos that filled her school roster. Sure she is still dragged around by Najimi's shenanigans, Yamai's bullshittery, or Nakanaka's rowdiness. But she tried to make the best of the situation and opening herself up even more, and it does pay off in the later part of the season. Does that mean Tadano and Najimi's role is now vanished? Nope! They now have far more important role rather than a simple friend, they now became her support system where Komi can safely fall back to, whenever she has doubt or fear on the incoming events she always have Tadano to vent and tell her problems to. While Najimi in the sideline creating Komi a friendly environment for her friend-making mission with their shenanigans. This trio might have the healthiest relationship so far compared to other SoL anime I've watched, and I genuinely love every second of it. How about Tadano himself as an MC? He is far from every generic SoL romcom protag I've ever seen, and his introduction in season 1 definitely didn't do him justice. We were told he was average dude with nothing good going on, and I have never seen such a blatant lie being told to my face. The show never had those tendencies in other SoL-romcom with "Male MC fix every Female MC problems", and Tadano legitemately shows how is it done. He never took part directly in solving every Komi's problem, but instead actively approaching her and providing her space to consult and talk about it. All that with his insecurities of being a chuuni in Middle school and constant repercussion from their classmates? Someone give this man a medal. His consistent upstanding personality really pays off later on, as he steadily increasing his number of friends (and fans, lol) that slowly matching Komi as they grow together is honestly a sweet moment to see. I have no problem with all side characters so far, and I genuinely found them all amusing (except Yamai ofc, but that's a given). For a comedy show that relies on having 100 different casts, the author made the right decision to name them all after a pun and their exaggeration of their name's characters certainly made things easier to remember them. Every side characters, despite being played with 'a week a monster' trope still provide decent environment on the storytelling, each of these characters have their own dynamic with other casts and Komi herself, making it more believable and certainly gave that 'rowdy high school' vibes which I will sorely miss. -What about the romance? Anything good from the romance?- Before you watch this, I must tell you that even in the manga, romance has always been 2nd priority before its SoL counterparts. So I would suggest to keep your expectation low. HOWEVER, I can proudly tell you that even the romance subplot is properly fleshed out with the current progression Komi & Tadano currently faced so far. One thing I love from this show is how both of the casts taking things properly, slowly and surely without overstepping each other bounds and limits. This entertainment imagery is certainly a fresh breathe of air, especially in the amidst of ecchi-riddled romcom for the past two seasons. Just a pure sweet wholesome relationship. --ART-- (8/10) Art is BEAUTIFUL, including both OP & ED. Compared to other SoL romcom, Komi definitely stands out the most. The production value is high despite Team Kojima split attention with Summertime Rendering this season, tho it must be paid with considerable price (Looking at you Ep 22). But other than that episode, it's safe to say your eyes will certainly love the sweets! --MUSIC-- (8/10) One thing I noted about this show is its exceptional amount of battle music. It's a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one as it really brings out the feeling of how chaotic Komi's school are. But in important moments, it will tone down a notch into melodramatic one, making it as soft as possible to keep you company in viewing Komi's journey, some of it legit coming straight out of automata (I kid you not, try Ep 15). The OP song sucks ass tho, if they hired the equivalent of Lennon to sang Cinderella on the first season, this season they hired Brittany from the Chipettes instead. What a loss. The ED in the other hand fares better fate, I found Koshaberi Biyori improvement over Hikare Inochi. Still, I loved how the production team hired less known band to perform. --CONCLUSION-- (10/10) Not enough credit was given to this show, but among all comfort animes out there Komi definitely towers over them. It was a perfect show after such a rough day, either it was work, school, or life problems. It definitely hits that sweet spot between the ridiculousness of Saiki K supporting cast and shenanigans as well as the sweetness of Kimi no Todoke. If you're planning to watch this after Season 1, please do so! And if you haven't watched Komi at all, what the hell are you doing here?

Komi san season 2 was a disappointment for me I enjoyed the first season quite a bit, but after 12 episodes it started to get somewhat stale. I hoped they would improve upon things for season 2 maybe switch things up maybe focus a bit more on the characters at hand, but alas it was the the same old formula. The main premise of the show is what i think works against it, but i will say it is not a lost cause of a show and I think that it has it's redeeming quality and has a decent joke or character every so often. Thecharacters are my biggest gripe with this show, I know that they main premise of it is that Komi wants 100 friends, but each person is more shallow then the last and some are downright annoying even characters from last season which i hoped would be one off characters cause some of them I downright hate, but they played a bigger role this season example Yamai. If this show was just Komi Tadano Najimi and maybe a few others or even make the friends slightly less tropey and make them not drool over Komi with every movement which I find extremely annoying. Although both these points take away from the main premise i still think that it would make the show better.

**Contains a few spoilers** If I’ll give a word that will describe this season, it would be “better”. Despite really hating the first season of this show and being considered to be one of the shows that belong in the garbage, I found this show improving or made sense. Now that I’ve realized it, this is one of the shows that you should never take seriously. Watching a show that isn’t overhyping by many people can be something else. I thought this season will be something else but all hopes seemed lost. KOMI-SAN IS REALLY A GAG SHOW. Forget the idea of having 2 characters, fall inlove, and expect something beautiful. Not your usual romantic comedy that will give something more than the sum of its parts. Even the proper portrayal of social anxiety in the first place. All of that is a massive joke. So let’s talk about the second season… The entrance of the second curtain was the usual mission of completing Komi’s list of 100 friends. One of the new concepts about this season was two characters joined the show. Then a new transferee student, Katai joined the class. He’s having a misconception because he looks like a delinquent. He’s a kind-hearted man and I think he suffers from the same shit Komi’s having. But they started to be friends with her and called himself a disciple of Komi’s. Komi is Katai’s “master” and he likes to talk with Tadano, asking some advice from her and it’s full of ridonkeylous tropes in the end. It seems like a BL, which pretty much looks like it. The second one is a guy named, Naruse Shisuto. A narcissistic dude who believes that all people are his fans and that they are too afraid to talk to him due to his breathtaking handsomeness when in reality people avoid him due to his overly flashy behavior. In short, he’s too confident with himself. And there’s this companion of his that makes him the narrator of his side. To be honest, when I watched the trailer, I thought the introduction of these two new characters would be made an impact and be interesting to the story. My perspective and expectation for Katai in the segment were met because I liked him to be goofier than the main characters. Like Nendo from Saiki K. He looks like a delinquent but he’s one of the characters in the comedy routine of the show. But for Naruse Shisuto, I thought he would be a deuteragonist in the series. Like we don’t know if he’s a rival to Tadano and steals Komi’s attention. But in the end, he’s just one of those random characters in the show. By seeing that, I realized that there’s no way this show will take seriously. That’s the summary of the whole show to be exactly. It’s an episodic gag comedy with some progression from the characters. Like the relationship between Tadano and Komi became to bud into something more. Komi’s past in the field trip was shown and her development of finding new friends, without relying on Tadano. She made girlfriends at that time but still need some progress. The other characters are still the same and forgettable at the same time. Well, if I compare the previous characters into this season, they became worst than I thought. Especially Yamai and his poisoned obsessed henchmen. She became perverted bitch that even she crossed the line when she stole Komi's leggings, wore it and run into the hallway. Pretty disgusting, right? If I'm in Komi's shoes, I would stay away from her forever. Nevertheless, she still her friend like what the fuck. If I pick a proper character that might be memorable to me, it would be either Tadano or Najimi. “The comedy is still great, right?” The comedy Is still stiff. There were parts from the second season that were just trying hard to make everybody laugh their asses out. Some new segments like the boys meeting and finding friends were instantly amusing yet hilarious. The love game from episode 2 was surprising as well. The part where Najimi became an interrupting tool to interrupt the closure of the characters was new. He acts like it was nothing at all, as long as he gets into the fun. Most romantic comedy shows, when the two characters become close and suddenly, the phone rings or anything else. But the rest of the comedy was either cringe or just missed. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the ridonkeylous comedy. The sound is just the same. To be honest, I liked the OP and ED more than from the previous season. The OP gave some romance vibes that led to nothing, but I liked the way they use it when Komi and the others make friends with other people. Like in Katai and Naruse’s case. Yep! It was amusing when they play the OP when Katai speaks to Tadano and Komi like it was meme-fied. I remember in Angel Beats when they used the ED when they amusingly flew the building. The ED is more decent than I thought. I can say that the ED might be the ED of the season. Overall, I still enjoyed the series. I couldn’t grasp the idea that this is just a gag show because it’s better when this show turns into a serious matter. Most of the parts from the show were easily missed and some parts were hard hit. The 2nd season is pretty decent, but at the same time, it could be better. I can't really wait to watch a show about depression and treating it as a joke. Story: 5/10 Animation: 6/10 Characters: 5/10 Sound: 7/10 Entertainment factor (Comedy: 3/5, Romance: 2/5): 5/10 Enjoyment: 6/10 Score: 5/10

If you were to ask if Komi could represent a realistic human being, then the answer is yes, and you have to look no further than yours truly. Five days ago, a strain of COVID viruses had decided to ambush me, and the barrage of coughs that followed had been too much for my poor throat. Since then, I’ve been left without a voice, unable to talk directly with any of my friends (not that I directly met any, as I was in quarantine). I resorted to expressing my ideas through writing (texting), and with the help of my friends, I was able to discoverjoy and happiness even in my deepest times of despair. Well, I still don’t have a friend who is a psychopath that tries to sexually assault me every other day of the week. But I’m working on it. The second season of Komi Can’t Communicate largely suffers from the same mistakes as the first, and there is no greater offender than Komi herself. She is, to put it bluntly, a completely whitewashed version of the disorder that she supposedly represents. Throughout the entire series, Komi’s “communication disorder” not once inconveniences her in any serious way. Let me illustrate an example straight from the story. If you couldn’t talk to anyone and you needed to find a group for an upcoming trip, what would you do? Would you hope to merge with leftover people to form a group? Or would you skip it and try doing something interesting in the meantime? Well it doesn’t matter, because the 20+ people who do nothing but beg and plead for your attention have shockingly and unexpectedly decided to beg and plead for your attention. Oh, and the teacher says that the groups would be a lottery this time around, even though she literally said “tomorrow, we will pick groups” the day before without mentioning it. What about if someone came up to you for conversation, but you were too scared to respond? Maybe you’d hope that they would understand your struggles, or maybe at least shrug it off and leave with no bad impressions. But no, they hail you as a “Communication Master” and regard your communication issues as the holiest teachings in the East. These events are neither humorous nor ironic; it’s ignorant bullshit at best and straight up insulting at worst. And I don’t mean to speak straight from speculation myself. I’ve volunteered in helping children with autism and similar issues socialize with others, and I can say Komi Can’t Communicate is so ignorant it’s truly pitiable. Communication issues affect not only speaking, but writing and gesturing as well. To put it broadly, they affect the ability to express general ideas into a set of words or actions. It seems like the manga author saw someone who was selectively mute (someone who chooses not to talk publicly, but can write) and thought “Hey, that’s cool, do they have a communication disorder or what?” And even if the anime was about the selectively mute, it would still be inaccurate; people who are selectively mute tend to talk to people they know well, such as family or close friends. To say I feel peeved about this portrayal would be an understatement. When people with communication disorders are depicted as perfectly beautiful, perfectly capable of communicating non-verbally, and unaffected by any prejudices or stereotypes about them, it doesn’t help anyone with a real communication disorder, who are usually normal in appearance and unable to accurately express their thoughts in any way. There are many societal norms that prejudice against people less than able to talk, and Komi Can’t Communicate does nothing to dispel them. The other characters are also poorly done. Tadano’s interactions with Komi remain unchanging. It seemed like Tadano started to become a bit more outspoken when he became friends with Katai, but their relationship sadly became milked for homosexuality jokes. Yamai promotes an atrocious double standard. Najimi’s character remains ultra-flat and generic, and Onemine’s only noteworthy role is Tadano and Komi’s fallback. Everyone else just does not meaningfully contribute to the story and character development. One last thing I want to discuss is how the show uses absurdity. I’m a big fan of absurdity in all forms of media; it can convey a message in a way conventional storytelling cannot. Take the famous potato chip scene in Death Note. It, along with being absolutely hilarious, showed that Light has the capability to fully counter L’s attacks; in all prior ones, L had managed to make progress. Or take Iino’s misunderstandings in Kaguya-Sama S2: all of them helped freshly establish her character’s relationships with the rest of the student council. Looking at the absurdities in Komi-san, it is safe to say that they all serve no purpose - the cat scene did not tell us anything new about Komi’s character, the snowball and card game scenes repeats the “Komi beats everyone else” joke, and the masculine pose scene barely develops Tadano. These scenes are all but pointless, only rinsing the same ideas over and over again. After watching the first season, I had hoped that the show would start focusing on quality instead of quantity, but with 100 potential friends to develop, the show’s direction was all but set in stone. Komi Can’t Communicate misses every single mark: it fails to accurately depict communication disorder, develop any of its characters, and introduce any new ideas. This is compounded by the repetitive soundtrack, the intrusive text boxes, and the ever-abundant still frames. Thus, Komi Can’t Communicate can be best described as a thorough waste of time. All I pray for is that it doesn’t get worse.