Of all the manga series that get pushed on me by friends and colleagues, it seems like Komi Can’t Communicate is the one that gets mentioned most often. While I do fully intend on reading the manga in the future, at this point I figure I might as well wait for the anime adaptation, which just released its first promotional video on Tuesday, August 17th.
As you saw in that video, it looks as though all the main story beats are going to be true to the source material. In the series, the main character is an extremely average high school boy named Hitohito Tadano who prefers a relaxed life as a wallflower. This changes for him, however, when one day he finds himself alone in the classroom with stoic beauty Shouko Komi and he learns her biggest secret: she’s not really a quiet beauty who keeps people at arm’s length intentionally. She actually has severe social anxiety and doesn’t know how to talk to people. Tadano’s new mission is clear: Help Komi make 100 friends.
Created by Tomohito Oda, the series actually began as a one-shot which was published in Weekly Shonen Sunday in 2015. It wasn’t until almost a year later that the series began properly in the same magazine, launching in May 2016. The series is up to 22 volumes as of August 2021 in Japan, while Viz Media is up to fourteen volumes in English as of August 2021.
The anime adaptation of Komi Can’t Communicate is going to be handled by the team of studio OLM, with director Kazuki Kawagoe and chief director Ayumu Watanabe (Space Brothers). The scripts are being penned by Deko Akao (Snow White with the Red Hair, My Roommate is a Cat, and so many others), characters designs are being provided by Atsuko Nakajima, and Yukari Hashimoto will compose the background music. The series will premiere at midnight Japan Standard Time on October 7th.
The known cast for the series reads as follows (Character names first):
Shōko Komi: Aoi Koga
Hitohito Tadano: Gakuto Kajiwara
Najimi Osana: Rie Murakawa
Ren Yamai: Rina Hidaka
Omoharu Nakanaka: Rumi Okubo
Himiko Agari: Yukiyo Fujii
Narrator: Noriko Hidaka
As I said above, this is the series that fans have been salivating over for months, if not years, now. In 2020, this series topped AnimeJapan’s annual “Most Wanted Adaptation” poll. I just hope that the final product is worth the wait and anticipation that fans are putting behind this one.
Source: Ryokutya, Anime News Network
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