Back to WreathedLamp's Profile WreathedLamp's Profile

This manga starts out perfectly fine. It's about some anxious loser guy and a girl who likes to mess around with him. It's not a new formula and it doesn't do much to make itself stand out, but it's gimmicks function on a basic level. It generates enough cute and entertaining content to leave the reader with a pleasant aftertaste, even if there's not a lot of actual meat on its bones. The plot is practically non-existent, it's mostly just characters going on outings together, but one doesn't come to a story like this for a strong plot. The characters are okay, the guy's self ... loathing can get a little annoying (he's very "Oh woe is me I can't believe a beautiful girl would talk to someone like me") and reeks a bit painfully of wish fulfillment, but nobody is outright unlikeable and serve their purposes competently. It's nothing to write home about for the first few chapters.

What makes me write this review is the fact that when the second girl comes in, everything goes down the drain very quickly. The story reveals its true colors as being a love triangle/harem and not a seinen-esque romcom. Somehow, this girl's mere presence in the story brings out its worst qualities. The admittedly somewhat speedrun pace from before slows down to a dull crawl of nothingness. The nothing content worked best when it was being shoveled to you in quick and digestible increments, not meandering and stalling. When the story is no longer able to properly focus on our two main characters, the (increasingly overdone) tropes consume the story whole, and it devolves into the most generic and overdone harem shonen. The trashy parts are a lot more noticeable when there's nothing entertaining to distract you with. It also gets kind of repetitive. This actually made me miffed because it's so easy to imagine what the cute story could have been or continued to be. It's hard not to feel a bit ripped off by it, honestly.

This manga is an amazing fluffy slow burn romance that I think everyone should read.

But it won't be for everyone, as the manga is EXTREMELY slow burn and VERY fluffy. It's 144 chapters long and the characters don't confess until the end, it's actually funny trying to see the author use the themes in-story to justify the agonizing pace. There is little serious conflict to speak of. Not in the way where everything is unrealistically sappy and Brady Bunch-y, but in the way that it's often very mundane and so wholesome it's injectable type 2 diabetes. I personally prefer it this way, but to someone ... else it can feel like it goes nowhere. The pace does pick up considerably after chapter 100, but we're talking about this manga, so it's still very slow.

The story is low tempo and no bs, there is almost 0 inappropriate content which is refreshing to the sleazy immaturity of shounen manga that is more tiring the older you get (this manga is actually a Seinen which explains a lot about it.) It hits a lot of the typical manga beats and is not particularly unique, but it gets a lot of milage out of it's common tropes (tropes are tools). The comedy aspect of the series is quite strong, actually, it can get a pretty good laugh out of you. The art is very pretty and gets a post chapter 100 glow up, which is very much appreciated.

The main heart of the story is the charming characters and their relationships. They are why you read it and why you bother to stick around for so long. There's no complex drama or character writing to rival high art, but it is not devoid of substance. The story has discernible themes that make it unique from others, and it routinely tackles challenging traditional conceptions of romance.

The two main leads are absolute weirdo cinnamon rolls and should be protected at all costs. Kubo is the popular girl, highly regarded, lightly teasing, and very interested in the main character's existence. There is, however, more to her than meets the eye. She is someone who is able to hide her true emotions under a web of a cool popular persona and elaborate mind games. She is, in reality, often not that much less of an embarrassed nervous mess than Shiraishi. I think she just has a hard time being vulnerable. I personally think she gets this from her sister, who always seems to be one step ahead of her and puts her on a defensive mode. She is not exempt from human emotion or mistake, which puts her above most other anime girls by default.

Shiraishi starts as a regular background kind of guy who over the course of the story blossoms into this absolutely lovable guy who's just generally happy to be alive. As an autistic person, his invisibility and social struggles resonated with me and it's heart warming to see him get friends and experiences he would've never had without Kubo, I would kill to have someone like her in my life. She basically motivates him indirectly into being more confident with himself. His invisibility adds a lot to the themes and his character. I really appreciate the part where he decides he wants to know Kubo on a more personal level (and this is fairly late in the story), shows the author's effort in adding depth to their relationship. I love his dynamic with Sudo, the way Shiraishi looks up to him and thinks he's super cool even though he doesn't actually know anything and makes stuff up most of the time.

The side characters I think are all very cool. Kubo's friends and family (does she have parents?), Sudo and Tama have a very cute friendship, Shiraishi's family (his mother too must be protected at all costs.) The way they all interact with the main leads and have their own messages to bring is something I really like.

I think the themes are a sort of a special sauce that's added atop this exquisite dish. The story asks what it means to love someone, touches on jealousy, insecurity, explores Shiraishi's loneliness and more.

Overall, I think this series is very recommendable and I love it in a way that's difficult to describe.

I might have rated it an 8 but I am somewhat mixed on my feelings about this manga.

The pros are that for the first 130 chapters, it's pretty great. It's wholesome and sweet and the 3 main characters are entertaining. The art is very pretty (although I'm not sure how to feel about the art from the newest volumes). There aren't as many characters for the story to trip over and it focuses on Tadano and Komi's relationship a lot more.

The cons are, however, that they must have put something in the waters of this manga because after volume 9 it starts to fall off ... kind of hard. By volume 12 It goes into this Simpsons kind of stupor where it goes through the motions of its tropes and safe routine with the occasional good chapter to remind you that it still has its heart in there somewhere. There's a certain charm to the early volumes that seems to be missing once second year roles around. I blame this mostly on the love triangle and new ensemble cast but even when the later volumes have the chance to hit the same highs as the earlier ones it never quite gets there so I can only assume that it is also a general decrease in writing quality. It's not an immediate drop, volumes 10 and 11 are still pretty engaging despite their problems so if you like this manga that much then it maybe could be worth the read, but generally I would recommend pretending that volume 9 ended the series.

Below is a more in depth review of why this series became mid:

I'm aware it's not supposed to be a deep story but it becomes too banal and the repetition starts to grate on you as the manga loses focus of what made those aspects palatable in the first place. A repetitive and extremely fluffy tone can be fairly easily justified by humor, character writing, a sense of progression, mixing things up (do literally anything interesting with your tropes), or even the Coroika Splatoon technique of increasing your intake of cocaine with every new story arc. But Komi Can't Communicate loses some of these skills and never had others in the first place, so it ends up being lexical background noise and sometimes straight up a slog to get through. Komi's goal for making 100 friends seems just to become a side quest to what is now a bad gag comedy first and an okay slice of life second.

The introduction of the love triangle with Mangabi is not something I was really a fan of. At the very least I'm grateful it's not the typical shounen love triangle nonsense and is handled with a sense of communicative maturity, but it flies in the complete opposite direction of having too little happen and in turn forgetting to give me a reason to care.

The romance is so sparse it's almost like an afterthought. I'm all for an agonizingly slow burn, but even this has way too much filler in the middle of inconsequential and generic romantic moments I already don't care about. What makes it worse is since Mangabi gets most of this plot to herself, we just have to watch her dawdle around her feelings when it's very obvious that Tadano has almost 0 interest in her and by the premise alone is almost destined to end up with Komi, so the suspense levels are at an all-time low. It takes 100 chapters for Mangabi to consider confessing, and peeking at later parts of the story, another 100 chapters for her to actually do that. This makes it so that over the course of 100+ or possibly even 150+ chapters the romantic subplot goes absolutely nowhere, especially between Komi and Tadano (who take in total 300 chapters to get together). Mostly born of the manga not wanting to take time to focus on its main characters anymore for some reason.

Mangabi also tends to replace Najimi and it becomes glaringly obvious that Najimi is the backbone of the comedy and provides a lot of the freshness. This series already wasn't all that funny to begin with and when they take a backseat you can feel the lack of their presence. Whenever they show up post volume 9 they're essentially just a "make something interesting happen" button (even if the only thing they can do is make people play games). Due to their decreased utility, any sort of genuine moment or theme they could have is missed out upon (which did happen in early chapters as rare as It was.)

The manga already had a problem with its side characters Komi befriends but that gets dialed up to 11. These are genuinely some of the worst side characters I've ever seen in my life. They come with one super boring and lame gimmick per character that gets increasingly lazy and cringe which each new introduction. This in conjunction to the neglect of Najimi leads to the series becoming thoroughly unfunny. The large cast used to act as an ensemble that could create interesting dynamics but now that they've got so many as well as a new batch of characters somehow even worse then the original ones, the interesting parts are few and far between. By second year you can tell the author started running out of ideas and just made anything into a side character. The manga does settle on a group of side characters eventually but it still won't flesh out any of them. And because the story won't go in either direction of who it wants to focus on, it ends up in every character being nerfed in some way.

So, you dull the entertaining parts of the series (Najimi) and you dull the character driven aspects (Tadano and Komi) and replace them with vastly inferior substitutes (the ensemble cast and the love triangle respectively) and what do you get? Nothing. Komi Can't Communicate becomes a whole lot of nothing.

This manga is highly disappointing. The art is really great but that's the only thing I like aside from the concept. I find Shikimori to be a very boring character and her gimmick is not as great as it sounds on paper. Izumi isn't as bad as her but I still don't care about him either. The romance is either kind of cringe or insufferably tepid. Usually I'm fine with stories where nothing happens as long as the characters are likable, but these are not. Their chemistry falls flat and it's kind of repetitive. I also don't mind repetitive stories, as long as it's a ... good repetition with a spin on it every time. The manga is okay at the "spin" part, but not at the "good" part. It's not really slow or all that meandering but I was still very bored reading it. Overall, it's very okay.

This disappointed me as I was really hyped for the concept and the first 4 episodes. It really had the potential to be something great or at least simple and fun but it kind of went on a downward tilt as it went on. TDLR because this is basically an essay: The show has good points but a very confused plot that drags it down a lot.

The characters were barely just strong enough to carry an episode and its momentum on a moment to moment basis. The ghosts and horror elements were cool, and the concept was interesting. But that's about all the positives I ... can give it.

Some smaller issues first.
I love the animation style and backgrounds but this is barely animated and seems to move more in still frames like an episode of Saiki K. It harbors the action a bit and makes it way easier for me to point out issues when there's no pretty colors to distract me.

I was very disappointed when the story turned out to be 1/3 love triangle nonsense where the main part of the angle (Yashiro) acts painfully clueless about it. It's pretty inconclusive and goes absolutely nowhere.

Sometimes Hanako seemed aware of the location of Kou and/or Yashiro despite his Hakujou (I think that's what it's called) not actually being present next to them.

How do you summon Hanako? The first episode makes it seem like you have to preform the whole ritual but it seems just saying his name (or in the case of the previous issue, plot convenience) summons him. Is it every time you say his name? Do the magical ghost powers know when you intend to summon him?

Why can Kou and Yoshiro see ghosts and no one else? At one point the show makes it seem like you need special circumstances to see them while the first episode makes it just seem like getting lucky. Kou is like, "maybe I can see ghosts because it's my destiny to change the future" in reference to the pink haired guy, but he doesn't do anything to change the future for the pink haired guy, so it doesn't seem like a plausible reason.

Why did the pink hair guy have to make the hands play with the main cast if all he wanted was to drag someone with him for some reason? They go to the bathroom everyday, just pull her in when they get there. Seems more like a way to pad the episode out to me.

Now for the more significant issues.

A lot of plot threads get introduced and then forgotten. What happened to the Third Wonder? Did he just die? If he can still take back his place as the Third Wonder that would mean he's probably not dead but the story just pushes it aside as if he was. Why is there such a conflict between being a Wonder or just disappearing? It's not like there's any downsides to being a Wonder. You aren't required to do much more than spread a couple rumors and you can do whatever the heck you want. You don't even have to kill anyone. Hanako acts as if something bad will happen if the pink haired guy doesn't step down from the position, but nothing really happens? What was he so concerned about? That entire conflict could've seemingly been resolved if they just talked it out and stopped trying to kill each other.

Hanako's brother also seems pretty unconcerned about his death and only uses it against Hanako, but why? What is he getting from teasing him about his backstory? It's not like it's that effective at stopping Hanako from getting in the way from whatever he's trying to achieve. He seems interested in Hanako to use him for something, but he never does anything to him.

(Also if he was trying to fulfill the wish of the pink haired guy, why did he turn him into a monster? The plot twist is that he wanted friends, not attention, and Hanako's brother knows that. Turning into a monster is a pretty bad way to get friends. Apparently it's for Hanako's own amusement but that's not really granting his wish, aren't there consequences for that, because that's his job? The initial explanation they gave of "you wanted attention so I took away your reason" made way more sense.)

What happened to Kou's brother? "I'm just going to stand back and watch for now" isn't really a resolution, more of a cliffhanger. He must know that Kou is still not eliminating ghosts like he wants him to and could step in at any time as a more skilled exorcist. Why is Kou even a main character if he doesn't do anything the majority of the time? He's set up as a rival that tries to eliminate Hanako but quickly becomes friends with the main cast in a way that negates his role as a character. Why is Nene so prevalent if she doesn't do much except stand around and happen to be the main perspective? Hanako and the other ghosts do almost all of the legwork in terms of moving the plot along.

There was that whole thing with the mermaid monster and it was made out to be a threat that would come back and do something really bad, but then it comes back as some regular fishies and are like, "hey u wanna be a princess? it's really cool." and everyones like, "you should do it." but then Yashiro's like, "nah I don't actually want to." and then Hanako comes and they get chased away in seconds. It's such a non-resolution to this thing they've set up since the first episode. What happens if she doesn't drink the blood? Do they make her do it regardless? Why propose an option? Do the fish just die? Do they have to just wait for other people to eat the scales and let their fish kingdom fall into anarchy in the meantime? They don't have time and never explain it.

Hanako is supposed to have his character explored and they kept building up to it but it never actually happens. At the end of the show he's all "hey Yashiro if you wanna learn more about me I'll tell you any time" and he does a pinky promise with her. But we don't actually end up knowing anymore about him since that conflict came up. We know he was bullied and killed his brother for some reason, and it's very vaguely implied he also killed himself (although I don't know for sure), but that's about it, none of that even came from him. When Hanako tells Yashiro that he killed his brother, she reacts somewhat shocked as if that isn't one of the first things Hanako's brother says when he shows up.

The bad guy club tries the whole series to make the rumors more extreme but it's never really explained why. They need rumors to survive but why do they have to be all murdery? The legends already exist, why do they need to invent new ones? Hanako's brother is like "haha I'm crazy I like seeing people when they let go" but when he's making the pink haired guy into a better monster later on he's like "c'mon if you're gonna have murdery hands at least learn how to control it" like he DOESN'T want him to kill anyone and there's no explanation for it.
Why does he want to go after Yashiro? He just kind of stops by the end and even seems nice letting the pink haired guy do whatever he wants. By the end of the show it's unclear if the bad guy club are even bad guys. It's implied it's all a game to mess with Hanako but it's literally one of the last lines in the show so there's no time to explain it.

Very little actually changes or happens after a while. The series ends on almost the same exact note it did on episode 7. Knowing a slither of Hanako's backstory has very little effect on anything, the love triangle is still up in the air (although it's obvious that Hanako likes Yashiro and she returns those feelings. Yashiro is just scarily dense about it), and the bad guy club has only now in the last episode decided to scrap their plan and try something different.

I'm sure most of these questions were solved in the manga or the season 2 it was clearly supposed to have. I think the series would've been much better if it had stayed simple or had a longer episode count to tie loose plot threads, because it's clearly biting off much more than it can chew.

The story is kind of interesting. A cross dressing teacher at a sexist school could maybe provide interesting commentary. But it doesn't bother and instead just has the most basic messages that could've been done. Even by 2001 standards it's downright primitive.

Also that stuff takes a backseat in the mess of a love square that eventually ties back into another message about true love or something. The romantic subplot also has hilariously little interesting things to say despite trying it's hardest to be inspirational.

The art was not very pleasant to look at. It almost gave a cursed feeling. I don't know how many ... songs in the ost there are because I was hearing the same song over and over again.

The characters are flat and Kuzuha's essentially a perfect angel. The mc has the level of personality of your average harem protagonist. It's not funny and very disorienting to watch. There's not even anything to make fun of, which would be a saving grace.

Also I reeeaaally wasn't into the whole teacher-student romantic relationship it was pirating so hard. It was more creepy and disturbing more than anything else. Surprised very little reviews mentioned it.

This show isn't a masterpiece. It's a strange, almost pretentious mess that wasted my time. I was disgusted, confused, annoyed, but I never smiled. How in the lord did I make it through this I don't even know.

The premise is really interesting but in execution it's so ungodly boring.

It's very much not funny and my face was :| the whole time. It feels like the writers pulled random unfunny scenarios from behind their backs and filling in the blanks with stale jokes and called it a day. A tip for this anime, you can't have toilet humor and ecchi this closely laced together, the former will always cancel out the latter in terms of effectiveness. Also toilet humor is for infants.

The premise is silly but that's not an issue for me.
The whole thing just feels like they do random stuff sometimes while ... Sakura is constantly nagging Dokuro about not beating him to death everyday.

I can tell it's just random manga moments being thrown in instead of any sort of flow or continuity connecting these events. I would be fine with this normally, but it just comes off as completely disjointed.

All of the characters are either wet blankets or really annoying. Especially Dokuro. In terms of waifus, I'm not quite sure why anyone would find her desirable despite her being the main girl. She's like a really annoying version of Amy Rose.

But wait! (Side rant because this has confused me for some time) she can't even be your waifu because she's loli bait! (I think).
The premise about everyone else trying to stop Sakura from freezing everyone at 12 is confusing because Dokuro herself is 12. Wouldn't in the anime's standards being attracted to her make the viewer a total weirdo? What about the ecchi? Who is this even made for?
Idk and it doesn't actually matter to me on account this is clearly the writers just making up stuff for the show to work, I'm not sure they even cared about the non-existent demographic.

On the plus side, the opening is a banger.

Let me be clear. This isn't a good manga by almost any means.

Story: It's pretty confusing with the characters just seeming to zip around doing whatever they feel like whenever they feel like and winning most battles purely off of being too stupid to function.
They'll go through things in the game although very out of order and the manga does cross over to both games.
Arcs often end in just a few chapters and can be hard to follow due to the frenetic pace. I will compliment the Emperor arc for having some nice character drama and dramatic tension (even if the motivations following said drama ... were kind of dumb) although it doesn't really get that serious. It's a silly, silly story. Don't go in expecting it to be any more serious than your average comedy anime.

I also wondered how they would be able to advance after fighting the X rank and second hero campaign. And that is by pulling random stuff from nowhere that's not even in the game as we wait for Splatoon 3 (shadow clones and stamp rallies?? lol.)

Art: Cute, expressive art that translates the characters really well. Very pretty.

Character: A lot of them are total loser idiots and none of them are all that dimensional or fleshed out but I'd be surprised if you didn't find every single one enjoyable. And there are a LOT of characters. Even things you'd expect to be one off battles (ex: the team who hates getting dirty) just keep coming back.

They all have names such as "Goggles" or "Glasses" or "Headphones", most of them are based from the gear they are wearing. You can really see the innovation and creativity brimming from these (not at all stupid) names.

Enjoyment: Despite it's not goodness, I was able to enjoy this a lot. Probably way more than I should have. It's a 5/10 but I enjoy it like it's a straight 10. Plus my humor is broken and therefore I find it very funny.

Overall: Cute and funny manga to turn your brain off to (might end up smoothing it over though). It has more of a fanbase than it probably deserves.

I came to this anime expecting Vocaloid but they're barely in it??? Instead it's just the other Project Sekai characters and it's mostly boring and uninteresting.

Zero understandable plot here. Looks like I would have had to play the game to understand what they're doing or how anything works. Pretty sure anime adaptations should be accessible to everyone, but okay.

It's not like what's happening is even that interesting, it's just a music group doing things vaguely related to music but not music itself, preparing for it as if they're actually going to play something. You'd think it would be carried by the characters but I wouldn't ... wish I was watching K-On instead if that was the case.

The characters have all of 1 personality trait each and engage only in mind-numbing moe antics, and on top of that, it's not even funny.

The theme is nice I guess, but the show is not that pretty. Flash does not look very good on anime characters and movement is very minimal. This is too short not to finish, but very obvious this was just made to cash in on Project Sekai, there's not much use to start watching it in the first place.