Today, after a bit over 8 years, one of my favorite comic series ended. I can’t remember what it’s called in Japanese, but it’s been sold in the US as Komi Can’t Communicate. I originally started reading it on pirate scan sites and then started buying it when it actually began being published in the US. The official translation is not as good as the pirate sites, in my opinion, because it doesn’t explain the relentless parade of puns that only work if you speak and read Japanese. The pirate translations would write little notes in the margins explaining that basically everyone’s name is a very blatant pun explaining who they are. Tadano Hitihito, the protagonist for much of the comic, is named thusly because his name is a pun meaning just some guy, more or less. His childhood friend, Osana Najimi, is just named childhood friend. In the anime when they explain that they are Tadano’s childhood friend, even not speaking Japanese, you can hear them saying najimi osana more times than you would need to normally.
I’m not sure doing something like that would work in English since I actually speak it. Having a character named Likes Boobs might be a bit too on the nose in my native language, but it works when filtered through a translation.
The series is very sentimental, and emotional, and sincere. It also rambles a lot, and tends not to get to the point of things, which is something other people disliked a lot, but I enjoyed very much. I would have continued reading the ridiculous stories, without complaint, for basically ever if they had wanted to keep telling them. I’ve been reading them for a little under half the time I’ve been making this comic. Of course they didn’t get published quite as often as my pages do, but still.
I very much liked when the series would randomly tell stories about the courtships of the adult characters, like how Komi’s parent’s met. That sort of thing is like crack to me. Her mother is something of a one note character in the series, but the chapters about her romance with Komi’s dad make her into a much more relatable one. You could basically take any character from the series and make any number of little stories about their adventures, pursuing whatever single personality trait defines them, and I would be pleased to read it. That is functionally what the series does while mostly focusing on Tadano, Komi, and later, Rumiko.
The anime only got 2 seasons and stops before Rumiko is even introduced. She only appears for a second at the end of the final episode, along with a few characters who also never properly appear in the show. Really though, it’s such an odd series I’m surprised it got as many episodes as it did, even though I would have liked to see it all the way to the end.
In any case, the final volume of the printed comic is set to ship on March 18th this year, with the US release appearing in December. So I will most likely read the bonus chapter on the pirate site long before buying the actual book. They may publish it on the Viz app though, so I guess that remains to be seen. That’s how things went with Nagatoro. I’m still buying books even though the series ended a while ago, and I’ve already read the epilogue chapter.
The author of that series started it as a webcomic and has a twitter account that I’ve been following for a while. They basically noodle around the world now, while working on whatever it is they’re working on. It’s kind of amusing how they move from thing to thing after completing their successful work.
As far as I know there’s no account that’s quite so personal for Komi, although I did accidentally find the official twitter account today. Just by happenstance the first post I read was the announcement that the series had officially ended. I already knew it was coming since the comic itself say so as the final chapters came out. I read the last one on the Viz app this morning. I read it later on the pirate site at a size I could see better. XD

I’m very sad to see it go, but happy that it got a nice ending, with the promise of a pleasant capstone later.

Anyway, life goes on.

I hope you have a safe time until next we meet. Support links are where they always are. See you later.

Posts authored by Jackie

2784 Set And Regret.