Reviews

When reviewing part one, I said this show suffered from unfunny comedy and too much repetition, but even having read the manga myself beforehand, I don’t think I ever truly realized how much worse my own complaints could get. Part two of Komi-san wa, Comyushou desu is excruciatingly shallow, and it proceeds to accomplish little aside from proving my point that there was no substance to be had beyond the very first episode. In my first review, I explained how the manga this anime is based on was originally a one-shot, and how it was clear that the one-shot's success is what prompted the long-running manga's serialization and never-ending chapter count. My argument was essentially that the story and characters were perfectly fine vehicles for achieving what the author originally set out to achieve, but what the author originally set out to achieve was accomplished throughout the course of the one-shot (the first six chapters of the serialized manga and the first episode of the anime), so by cynically saying, “Well, the story was satisfying and complete, but look at those sales figures! People really like this shit! I know this concept and these characters were only designed to exist for a single, well-paced, tightly-written one-shot, but if we wanted to, we could make a long-running never-ending manga out of this to capitalize on its popularity, so let’s do that!” the author/publishers were condemning the series to a fate worse than death. Rather than allowing the one-shot to be a brief success that was remembered fondly, they opted instead to turn it into a manga (that was then turned into an anime) that will be endlessly dragged out until the sales figures drop low enough to justify axing it, and the result, I think, speaks for itself.

However, I also said in my review for part one that despite dropping it, I didn’t actually leave the manga with a bad impression of it, so then why has my score for the anime already dropped from a six to a four? I mean, the anime still hasn’t reached the point in the manga where I stopped reading, so why is it already worse? Well, I’m actually not sure, but if I had to guess, it would probably be because I don’t know how to read manga. When Made in Abyss first came out in 2017, I was absolutely dazzled, and when it ended, I felt empty. Crumbling under the weight of unbearable longing and impatience, I said fuck it and started reading the manga, and that was such a huge mistake. It was good—don’t get me wrong—but it was not the same for many reasons. Firstly and most obviously is the fact that the majority of what made that show so deeply special to me were aspects of it which could only exist in an anime format. Aspects including but not limited to the music, the colors, the voice acting, and most importantly, the directing. People who prefer manga over anime will often say the reason they like manga better is because “they decide how fast it goes.” They like that they can just pick it up whenever they want, read it at whatever pace they want, and put it down whenever they want, and while I definitely see the appeal of this, I personally could not disagree more. I agree that most seasonal soup is not particularly well-directed or well-paced, but most anime fans don’t even appreciate good direction or good pacing wherever it does actually exist, and whenever you come across anime that do have these qualities, the resulting experience is in my opinion far more engaging than any self-dictated session of manga reading could ever be.

When you watch something written and directed my true masters and artists, you feel like you’re watching something truly masterful and artistic. You feel no needed to turn up the playback speed, check the time, or modify the viewing experience in any way, because what you’re watching is already perfect the way its being executed and the way its being paced. Maybe this level of immersion is possible with manga as well, but if it is possible, I personally have never experienced it. I don’t read much manga, so I’m not very well-practiced in the art of doing so. When I read Made in Abyss, I found it impossible to figure a good balance between reading the text and looking at the artwork. Indeed, I’m sure there were many pages where I didn’t even look at the images at all and just read through it like a book with nothing but dialogue. I was so invested in the story and characters thanks to the anime which I had originally fallen in love with that this obsessive interest in seeing what happened next made it so I couldn’t appreciate the manga properly. There was no director or screenwriter forcing me to focus on certain shots for certain amounts of time, thereby forcing me to appreciate everything as intended. There was no musician cluing me into the emotional tone of the scene, and instead just the quiet hum of my air conditioning turning on and off in the background. There was no art director making things pop, thus guiding my attention where it needed to go visually, and instead just vaguely paneled, monochrome images for me to glance over as I pleased. Again, this is one of the things manga readers say they like about manga—this control they have over the experience—but I don’t want this control, because when I have the control, I risk warping the experience.

Case in point: Made in Abyss, the unequivocal creative masterpiece, was warped into something I found to be frigid and emotionless thanks to my tendency to read too quickly, while Komi-san wa, Comyushou desu, a one-shot that was unceremoniously stretched almost four hundred chapters beyond its intended limit, was warped into a fun little experience where I could carelessly skim through each chapter without really paying attention to or focusing on anything, but always be rewarded nevertheless with the shallow, repetitive, yet wholesome moment provided by the end of every chapter. THAT’S why the anime became less enjoyable to me so much faster than the manga did, and why I’m already giving the anime a four while the manga which I read over a hundred chapters of managed to keep a six the whole time—because I don’t know how to read manga, but I definitely know how to watch anime. If I’m reading the manga, then I can just see Katai, or Nakanaka, or fucking Yamai, and immediately start flipping pages. If I’m watching the anime, however, and I see one of these annoying fucking characters start doing their annoying fucking unfunny gimmicks for the millionth fucking time, then I’m trapped. Then I’m bored; then I’m turning up the playback speed; then I’m checking the time; then I start thinking, “You know what? This show just isn’t for me.” Komi-san wa, Comyushou desu isn’t awful. No matter how creatively bankrupt it is, it can still be touching and cute, and considering some of the downright torturous characters it has, it also has a lot of characters who are undeniably lovable—the main duo being the biggest sweethearts of all—but sometimes I just find myself wishing there was more than one dimension to any of them.

They say repetition is the mother of learning, but learning is very rarely entertaining, and this show stopped teaching after episode one.

The MAL synopsis provided by Netflix currently reads the following:
“Second season of Komi-san wa, Comyushou desu.
Komi and pals are back! Who else will Komi make friends with? How will her relationship with Tadano evolve?”

The answer to the first question is nobody important, and the answer to the second question is simple. “It won’t.”

Thank you for reading.