English Dub Season Review: Komi Can’t Communicate Season 2

After an exciting and momentous cultural festival, Komi continues her personal goal to make one hundred friends alongside her friend and classmate Hitohito Tadano. As winter begins, the class is joined by the seemingly delinquent student Makoto Katai, who has been absent since the first week of school. Despite his intimidating appearance, Katai has difficulty communicating with others and just wants to befriend her classmates much in the same way Komi does. As new friendships form and current ones deepen, Komi and Tadano’s relationship begins to change—though not necessarily for the worse…

Much of the same production team has been carried over from season one to season two as it’s still directed by Kazuki Kawagoe, with Ayumu Watanabe serving as chief director, scripts by Deko Akao, character designs by Atsuko Nakajima, and music by Yukari Hashimoto. The opening theme for season two, “Ao 100 Shoku” was performed by “Miku Itō, while FantasticYouth performed the ending theme “Koshaberi Biyori”.

While the first season delved into some unique ideas and concepts even if much of it wasn’t properly executed. At the very least, the show inspires empathy and acceptance towards people with flaws and disabilities which are well-intentioned, noble, and altruistic traits our current generation should have. Friendship, despite differences and individual quirks, and to some extent, it remains consistent in that regard. Yet occasionally it shoots itself in the foot for the sake of wacky cringe humor and forced drama due to random miscommunications between the two romantic leads with sometimes a wholesome moment here or there.

Throughout the entire series, Komi’s “communication disorder” is not once a proverbial roadblock to her in any serious way. She’s capable of writing on a chalkboard or in her notebook to get her message across, but when people with communication disorders in other forms of media are depicted as perfectly capable of communicating non-verbally, and unaffected by any prejudices or stereotypes about them, it also doesn’t help anyone with actual communication disorders who are usually normal in appearance but are unable to accurately express their thoughts in any capacity.

What sets itself apart in slightly different ways compared to Season One is the added appeal to those that have similar eccentricities/quirks to the characters that Komi befriends. This time, we now have a student named Makoto Katai who joins the class. who has a misconception because he looks like a muscled thug. But in reality, he’s a kind-hearted dude who’s heavily implied to have a similar disorder to Komi, yet Makoto also holds Komi in high regard. And Naruse Shisuto. A narcissistic dude who believes that all people are his fans and that they are too afraid to approach him due to his “breathtaking handsomeness” when in reality people avoid him due to his overly flashy behavior.

Aside from the newly introduced characters, it still attempts the balancing act of being an episodic “slice of life” comedy with occasional progression from the other characters. Of course, to some people, comedy is subjective since many of these jokes don’t always stick to the landing due to their cringe nature. Comedy usually works when it plays with audience expectations. And for a show like this, it’s bad because the mere presence of certain characters when they show up can make every joke cliché and predictable in every scene they appear, and there’s nothing new to them once they’re introduced.

Overall, a decent sequel to the first season, but arguably leaves more to be desired. Even with these newly added characters, Komi making new friends and overcoming her extreme social anxieties, all could still work if the show was better paced and the person in charge of this series got their shit together. But it largely suffers from the same mistakes as the previous season. Let’s hope that if Season 3 becomes a thing, it’ll change the status quo towards something more compelling in the future…