Komi Can’t Communicate is a comedy about a 15-year-old girl with extreme social anxiety who attempts to make friends. It fluctuates between “Mildly entertaining” and “One of the most unfunny comedy anime I’ve seen in my entire life.”

Komi begins the show with the goal to “Make 100 friends.” That premise becomes irrelevant when you realize everyone is magically drawn to her. For some reason, everyone in this high school finds her irresistibly attractive. She quickly becomes a passive protagonist shortly after meeting her second friend. Her goal no longer motivates the plot. Instead of making 100 friends, she should’ve filed 100 restraining orders because these students are absolutely insane. In the first episode, the recurring, completely unnecessary narrator warns us that the school is full of weirdos, creeps, miscreants, but they’re far worse than she made them sound. Everything the narrator says reiterates what we’ve already seen, adding no comedic value. There’s a wide variety of appalling cliched archetypal characters who hover around her like a swarm of bloodthirsty mosquitos: stalkers, psychotic lesbians, and more creeps.

Komi’s first friend is Tadano, who sits next to her in class. He makes it his job to help her form a friend group by communicating with her via writing because her anxiety prevents her from talking. The romantic feelings between them progress at a snail’s pace, but hey, it’s better than nothing. Their relationship is wholesome and unique, aside from a few weird comments from Tadano. The first red flag was when he described her to the audience, “Her skin is pure white…her hair is smooth, she smells good….” Dude, can you turn down the creep factor a bit? Honestly, Komi-san would be a decent slice-of-life if you removed everyone but Komi and Tadano. You’d get a show like Teasing Master Takagi-san without teasing and replace Takagi with a knock-off Rei Ayanami. But then they threw in all of these god-awful stereotypical characters that do nothing but drool over Komi like blossoming sex offenders.

Creeps and weirdos from Komi’s high school fawn over her so much that it crosses a line into sexual harassment territory. One of the lesbians tried to make Komi eat her “sausage,” and I want to ask the author, what the fuck were you thinking? Why would you add raunchy sex gags in a wholesome slice of life? Another girl lasciviously pleads for Komi to ‘abuse’ her—which is just her misunderstanding Komi’s anxiety as disgust. We’re not even at the bottom of the barrel. Some of Komi’s stalkers kidnap Tadano because he’s getting too close to her for their liking. It’s like I was suddenly watching an episode of Mirai Nikki, except everyone was the yandere. Then as if nothing happened, everyone went back to being besties. It wasn’t funny when Kazuya stalked Chizuru in Rent-a-Girlfriend, and it’s not funny now. The way to make stalking humorous, if it’s even possible, is to humiliate the stalker. They attempted to do this with an ironic sight gag in episode 2: While Tadano followed Komi, right behind him was a sign that read “Watch out for stalkers,” and passersby proceeded to mock him. The side characters who aren’t bizarre homophobic tropes or mentally ill are simply annoying. Your enjoyment will depend on whether or not you think yelling is funny. Audiovisually, the presentation accomplishes very little to elevate the underwhelming sense of humor.

I don’t get why people say this anime has great animation. The studios blew the budget on the OP art and the first two episodes. The character designs are barely animated besides a few motion-tweens, slight movements, and lip flaps. Aside from the opening, it is very drab to look at. There are only a handful of ways this adaptation takes advantage of the animation medium, such as adjusting the aspect ratio during flashbacks. There are a handful of clever transitions in the second episode. Using an analog rewind effect to portray multiple awkward conversation attempts is a genius idea but underutilized. A real problem was how they simply put manga text boxes on screen a lot of the time. In moderation, this is fine, but it’s all the time. Since Komi can barely talk, she writes her thoughts in a notebook for Tadano. It makes sense, but then they use text boxes for everything else. Perhaps this would work for an animated comic, or if they were translated at all. They did not translate much of the text in every version I watched.

Another gag comedy that lacked impressive animation was Saiki K. Except where Komi-san’s jokes failed to land, Saiki K’s rapid pacing and excellent comedic timing kept it fresh and hilarious. Often the jokes left me thinking, “That’s it?” Good anime gag comedies employ a loud bang or crash in sync with a joke’s punchline—Komi-san has those, but frequently they’re too soft, mismatched, or flat out missing. More elegant directing and sound design aside, Saiki K had way better material to work with thanks to the over-the-top personalities of the vast supporting cast. On the other hand, Komi-san has perhaps the WORST side characters of any comedy anime I’ve ever seen. And I’ve watched the depths of the genre.

Najimi is the side character I’m most conflicted on. They identify as male or female whenever they want because they're gender fluid. Part of their running joke is that “they’re actually a boy even though they look like a girl!” All I ask is to let trans characters be funny on their own merits rather than relying on unfunny 2012 “trans panic” jokes. In the second episode, a brutish man grabs Najimi and threatens to sexually assault them—all of it is played off as a joke! Najimi is portrayed as manipulative in how they trick people with their gender, exploitative of Komi’s kindness, and sexualized with fanservice. It sets a horrible example because they’re the only gender fluid character in the show. It is no surprise the fandom debates what their “true gender” is because the author treats being trans as a joke. One of the only funny jokes Najimi is associated with is when they found communication and speech textbooks under Komi’s bed. The gag works because it relies on the funny parts of their personality, not mocking trans people.

I don’t know anyone who has anxiety so bad that it prevents them from speaking personally. However, I know it is not uncommon for people with extreme social anxiety to learn ASL. But part of the appeal here is watching Komi struggle to communicate for laughs—at times, it’s painfully relatable seeing her dread awkward social interaction, like worrying how to tell someone they have food on their face. Sadly, this author is not concerned with alleviating Komi’s anxiety, educating the audience, or portraying her disability in any way resembling reality. Throughout the show, she becomes slightly better at communicating. But it’s hardly a driving force of the plot. They could fix this glaring issue by making Komi the narrator or perhaps the main character rather than Tadano. She may be non-verbal, but she’s full of thoughts—why not let us hear what she’s thinking? Movies about deaf and non-verbal people have used this storytelling tactic. It would help the audience empathize with her. To see her as a real person instead of an artificial waifu figurine manufactured to be laughed at and pitied.

There are a ton of better comedy/slice-of-life anime you should watch instead of Komi-san. Here are a few to start with: Cromartie High, Kaguya-sama, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K, and Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-Kun. The premise is tone-deaf, the comedy is painfully unfunny, the romance is stagnant, and it lacks a distinctive style or visual spectacle to be worth watching for surface-level entertainment. Just as I don’t get why the vast array of awful characters adore Komi so much, I don’t get why people love Komi Can’t Communicate.