Tomohito Odaโs Komi Canโt Communicate began in Weekly Shonen Sunday on 18 May 2016 and ended on 29 January 2025 at chapter 537, collected in 37 volumes. On the first day of high school, Shoko Komi is treated as unapproachable because she is quiet and beautiful, and only her deskmate Hitohito Tadano works out that she physically cannot get words out in front of people.
What Komi writes on the blackboard in chalk is that she wants a hundred friends, and Tadano starts helping her get there. Roughly one new person arrives per chapter, and most of them are skewed in some extreme direction of their own. The craft of the series is that it never treats her condition as tragedy: conversations are built out of silent panels, expressions, written notes and where people are looking.
Even as the cast grows, the through-line holds, with Komi moving a little further towards speaking first. Complete at 37 volumes, with an animated adaptation.
