Sandbox / Komi Cant Communicate Shouko Komi

Komi Can't Communicate Character Index
Main Characters (Komi Shouko) | School Friends | Itan High School | Family Members and Related | Other Characters

Komi Shouko

Voiced by: Aoi Koga (Japanese), Amber Lee Connors (English), Estel Tort (Castilian Spanish), Jessica Angeles (Latin American Spanish)

Introduction: Chapters 1 thru 7 (Manga)

So... Would you make me... your first friend?

An overwhelmingly beautiful and quiet girl who is the object of admiration for all of the school body at Itan High School. Though she is put on a pedestal, in reality she's painfully timid and has a severe problem with communicating with others, making her isolated and lonely. She is named class "goddess" by her classmates, an informal position made up by them because they deem the position of class president as too lowly for her, making her a member of the class bureaucracy and thus providing her with interaction with the other members, President Tadano (her very first friend), Vice-President Najimi and Library Committee member Agari. Her dream is to have one hundred friends, a goal that she starts slowly reaching through Tadano and Najimi's help.

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• Affectionate Nickname: She has a bunch:
  • "Shouko-onee-chan" - by her cousin Akira and her mother's friend's daughter Rei;
  • "Scary-nee-chan"/"Shaa-nee-chan" - by Onemine's younger siblings ("Shaa" due to the fact that their older sister tells them that Komi is shy);
  • "Shokotaso" - by Manbagi's friends;
  • "Sile'Kill-Neechan" - by the neighborhood kids who witnessed her snow fight "execution" of Yamai;
  • "Discommunication Komi" - by the first year delinquents at school (though this one is not as affectionate and it's mistakenly used to refer to Katai instead of her);
  • "Chocolate Mama" - by the workers at the cat café she frequents, due to her closeness to the boss lady cat Chocolate;
  • "Cocco/Kokko" - by a baby she smiles at so he stops crying.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Komi looks the part, being a tall, much-admired beauty with long dark hair who comes off as cold and quiet. However, she's not aloof, just very nervous.
• Animal Motifs: Komi frequently gets compared to a cat, both because of her long legs and seemingly standoffish personality. Whenever excited, she also has a tendency to sprout cat ears.
• Art Shift: When people who don't know Komi well interact with her, she looks like she does in the folder picture - beautiful but set apart. When people who do know Komi well interact with her, she's drawn with massive, staring eyes and no mouth to symbolize how nervous she is.
• Attractiveness Isolation: Komi is so profoundly beautiful that people are afraid to approach her. This, in turn, makes her think that they don't approach her because of something bad about herself.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: One of the nicest characters in the story. She's also very beautiful.
• Best Friend:
  • Tadano is in equal parts her best, first and dearest friend. Without him, she'd still be trapped in a bubble that was none of her own making. Due to this, and regardless of any possible romantic development, there is already a precious place in Komi's heart reserved for Tadano alone.
  • Manbagi, Sasaki and Mikuni are shown to be her most intimate and precious girl friends. Manbagi eventually becomes her very best girl friend after they have a mutual Platonic Declaration of Love in Chapter 228.
  • Played with in the case of Najimi, who is alongside Tadano, her most constant companion. However, theirs is an Odd Friendship, as detailed on Najimi's entry of said trope.
• Betty and Veronica: Veronica to Manbagi's Betty. Though it's just because of her mysterious aura, as she isn't by any means standoffish and unapproachable.
• Blessed with Suck: Too much of a good thing is bad, and Komi is not the exception. She's so beautiful that it kept people away from her for fear of her possible disapproval. This led her to believe that there was something wrong with herself, and grew up isolated for most of her life.
• Born Lucky: If luck is a factor in any game she plays, she'll probably win it. She also draws a Great Luck fortune during the New Year lottery.
• Broken Record: Poor Komi becomes this during the first year without the aid of something to write on, being unable to pronounce but the first syllabes of a word, such as "Nananana-"^note Possibly trying to say "nante", which means "what", "Mamamama-"^note "Matte", wait, "Tatatata-"^note "Tadano", and more.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: To the point that nobody has ever even realized it was supposed to be a joke. Tadano even mistook it for some sort of code.
• Character Development: It's subtle and painstakingly slow for her, but there are hints of her slowly growing out of her dependency of using notebooks as a way to communicate.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Downplayed, but Komi has gone through bouts of jealousy towards both Katai and Onemine when she misinterpreted their interactions with Tadano as them having feelings for him.
• Cool Big Sis:
  • Her cousin Akira views her as one, and is quite close to her, often imitating how Komi acts (including sprouting cat ears at times)
  • Rei eventually starts to see her as one, to the point where she starts imitating Komi's mannerisms, and even nearly calls her "Shouko-onee-chan" at one point.
  • She becomes this to the neighbor kids after her categorical triumph at the snowfight.
  • Though it's hilariously subverted when it comes to Shousuke. She'd like to be viewed as one, but her attempts tend to lead to her overly doting on and pestering him. However, it's shown that Shousuke denies her nothing in spite of his grumbling.
• Covert Pervert:
  • In Chapter 143 she blushes and looks away when she catches a glimpse of Tadano's briefs, but then immediately looks back in the next panel. The next page has her sneaking another look.
  • When Tadano dresses as a maid for the culture festival, Komi tries to feel his "boobs".
  • In chapter 349 Komi spontaneously starts enthusiastically brushing at Tadano's face with her hair, she gives no explanation for her behavior (though it happens in response to Tadano saying he likes every part of her) but is extremely earnest, perhaps aware that Tadano long ago developed a "fetish" for her hair.
• Creepy Loner Girl: Played with. Before she met Tadano, Komi's impression of herself amounted to this. She thinks of herself as weird and gloomy, this being the reason why she thinks people keep away from her and murmur while ogling at her, as she doesn't perceive their awe and admiration of her presence.
• Crush Blush: Whenever the subject of her feelings for Tadano is brought up. She is very tenderly in love with him.
• The Cutie:
  • Almost everything she does is adorable and full of whimsy. This is, notwithstanding that she's already beautiful, which is like the cherry on top of the cake.
    Tadano: (Watching Komi trying to catch goldfish) No matter what Komi-san does, it's so picturesque...
  • During one of her first outings with a bicycle with Tadano and Manbagi, she arrives late because she rides below running speed and even has to get off the bike to make turns. She's like a little kid who has just learned to ride.
• Daddy's Girl: She's her dad's treasure and his pride and joy, having a particularly close relationship due in part to their shared communicative problems and prevalent use of mutual body language. As a matter of fact, he'd be overprotective if he wasn't as bad communicating as his daughter is.
• Dandere: Komi only regularly opens up to her family, Tadano and few close friends. Her inability to do so otherwise plays a big part in her School Idol reputation, as she comes off as aloof to those who don't know better.
• Death Glare: Subverted. This is what her Face of a Thug often gives away to people; in reality, her look expresses nervousness and her Tsurime Eyes only invoke the wrong feeling. Funnily enough, the one-shot pilot often had her accidentally send people off with this exact expression.
  • Played straight, however, in Chapter 25/Episode 4. After learning Yamai kidnapped Tadano and intended to take his place as her best friend, Komi's◊ expression◊ clearly carries a notable degree of Tranquil Fury.
• Dude Magnet: In droves. Almost every boy she meets falls in love with her, but are usually at odds at how to approach her, as Komi can't provide feedback; as such, there's surprisingly few boys (if any at that) who approach her with romantic intentions that she can recognize. She's just too beautiful for them not to make a mess out of themselves.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The one-shot pilot chapter changed the nature of Komi's Social Anxiety, having her range from being The Voiceless to the Motor Mouth at the drop of a hat depending on her nervousness. The pilot also portrayed her as a slight Cloud Cuckoolander.
  • The one-shot also made a Running Gag out of Komi unintentionally sending people who approach her a Death Glare.
• Elective Mute:
  • Komi can speak, but she's too shy and too awkward to do it often. As such, she resorts to Talking with Signs.
  • Following Manbagi's encouragement in Chapter 231, Komi begins talking more often without having to use her notebook, especially for serious conversations.
• Emotionally Tongue-Tied: In chapter 149, Katou and Sasaki ask her about confessing to Tadano and going out with him, and she turns bright red because she's too embarrassed to do it.
• Entertainingly Wrong: She states to Katou and Sasaki that she's glad that Manbagi and Tadano achieved some common ground because, to her impression, they never got along. This implies that she's completely unaware that Manbagi has a crush on Tadano, and her "bickering" with Tadano was due to the fact that their interactions made her flustered and acted like a tsundere towards him.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Everyone admires Komi, guys and girls alike. Yamai in particular, really wants to get in her pants.
• Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: Out of all the people she befriended, Yamai is the only one she doesn't really like due to her kidnapping Tadano early on. She merely tolerates her presence since then due to Yamai lessening her Yandere and Jerkass tendencies.
• Extreme Doormat: For starters, she befriended Yamai a day after Yamai kidnapped Tadano. Usually, her initial method of solving a conflict between two characters is telling them just to get along.
• Face of a Thug: A rare female example. Her beauty and aloof behaviour invites people's admiration, but also intimidates them from becoming closer to her. On the inside, she's just a very shy and sweet girl who wants to make friends.
• Faster Than They Look: Komi's legs are not just for show. She's an excellent runner, fast enough to compete toe-to-toe with Netsuno-senpai, notwithstanding the fact that Netsuno herself is a multidisciplinary athlete and the very best athlete at school overall.
• Favors for the Sexy: Invoked and subverted. Komi's life has not been particularly easier just because she's gorgeous. Before entering high school, she effectively spent her childhood completely friendless and missed out on a multitude of experiences that were readily available to other children. It's shown repeatedly that the classmates that most adulate her and put her on an altar don't get to be close to her regardless of actively trying to curry her favor because she's the first person who doesn't think that she's worthy of said adulation, so it makes her extremely uncomfortable. In fact, the people she's the closest to are those that simply treat her as a normal person.
• Fear of Thunder: A thunderstorm startles her enough to make her knees give out, and her mother (& Tadano by phone) has to comfort her.
• First Love: Manbagi asks Komi about her first love. While she doesn't reveal his name, Komi admits that it's Tadano.
• First-Name Basis:
  • Manbagi starts referring to her as "Shouko-chan" in Chapter 234 after Komi herself started calling her "Rumiko-chan" in Chapter 228, cementing their status as Heterosexual Life-Partners.
  • She tried to invoke this towards Tadano in an early chapter, but immediately dropped it as they were both Twice Shy about it.
• Florence Nightingale Effect: In chapter 99, during winter break when Tadano got sick with a cold, Komi spent the day nursing him after he accidentally dialled her. Then Najimi barged in when she started holding Tadano's hand as he slept.
• Friendless Background: Komi is clearly unhappy over her inability to speak and make friends, and the story's main plot is Tadano helping Komi make 100 friends.
• Girly Run: Komi provides some exceptional examples during the anime, particularly during the credits.
  • But, realistically, Komi also averts this with prejudice during the school sports contest.
• Go Through Me: Stands up in front of Tadano when Yamai intends to kill him for dating Komi. Yes, that is uncharacteristic.
• Happy Place: Whenever she is despairing and cringing over things, if she thinks of Tadano, she'll calm down.
• Hates Being Touched: Implied as in chapter 54, the narration stated she was scared because Netsuno was too close to her.
• Height Angst: Dislikes being as tall as she is, to the point of openly panicking at the possibility of passing 170cm (about 5'7") and is visibly relieved upon being measured at 169cm (roughly half an inch shorter) instead.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Saw the admiration surrounding her as jeers, which contributed to her social anxiety.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Manbagi, who becomes her most intimate girl friend.
• Hidden Depths:
  • She is a sweeter, kinder and more accessible person than how she appears at first glance. One of the results from her social isolation is the fact that she is enthusiastically curious about experiencing new stuff.
  • She's also academically intelligent, getting above 90 in all her tests.
  • Komi is very detail-oriented and meticulous, and has a tremendous memory of conversations she's had. When Yamai kidnapped Tadano, she later wrote their conversation verbatim.
  • She is surprisingly competitive when it comes to games, sports, interpersonal interactions... and cats. Her competitiveness is a trait she inherited from her grandma and shares with her cousin Akira. In Chapter 212, when she barely loses the interclass relay to Netsuko, she stomps the ground in frustration.
  • It doesn't come up too often, but she has a liking for homophone-based wordplay puns.
• Huge Schoolgirl: Is 168cm (5'6.1") tall; significantly taller than even the average for adult women in Japan, though it causes her Height Angst due to not wanting to be seen as unusual.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Komi dreads being called a "goddess" by her classmates, and the adulation she's given causes her nothing but embarrassment. According to herself, it's because this is completely unwarranted due to the fact she herself doesn't recognize the fundamental source of said praises, but she doesn't have the communication skills or the courage to rebuke those.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Komi's stated dream is to have 100 friends.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: Played with. Komi's beauty makes the clothes work and she can rock anything she wears. She'd look gorgeous even dressed as the Michelin Man.
• Improperly Paranoid: Komi has a tendency to agonize over little things and interaction hiccups that normally should not warrant embarrassment or regret, which she thinks will cause people to alienate her, most of which Tadano helps her overcome. These stem from her initial perception that people's chitchat surrounding her beauty and demure is taken by her as malicious chitchat.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: A somewhat odd example. Komi hasn't had enough significant interactions in her life to be "marred", so all her actions derive out of earnestness, curiosity and wellness for her newly-found friends. For instance, whenever someone she doesn't know interacts with Tadano, rather than getting jealous, she starts worrying about his well-being. She does have her faults, as her silence lends people space to speculate about her, though not always in a good way; she also has the occasional teenager mood when it comes to her parents and her peers' sociability sometimes brings envy on her. So, while she's not made of angelic feathers and is still a human being, she is a teenage girl who may be purely good, but she needs her personality development, that is.
• The Ingenue: Invoked. Komi is considerably more childish than she appears and approaches new aspects of her life with child-like curiosity; being 15-16 years old, she still enjoys stuff like playing in a children's playground. In practical terms, she is emotionally younger than other people her age, an aspect that was brought upon her due to her isolation. For instance, her affection for Tadano is made more profound and poignant due to her innocent and shy approach. This is touched upon by Isagi, who has the impression that Komi expresses herself like an elementary schooler.
• Irony:
  • For a person who speaks so little, Komi is mentioned to have a beautiful voice in the few instances that she does.
  • Albeit she looks like an Aloof Dark-Haired Girl, in reality she's actually a Nervous Wreck. She's an awful lot more of a mess than her appearance suggests.
  • Her best mark on her tests was in English, which she was previously shown as having just as much difficulty communicating in as Japanese.
  • Despite loving cats and having a cat motif, when she visits a cat café, most of them avoid her.
  • For a person that is as beautiful as she is, she holds affections for Tadano, the most plain-faced boy possible. In terms of image, it's a class discrepancy; in terms of feelings, they're meant for each other.
  • Komi, despite having misinterpreted both Katai and Onemine's interactions with Tadano as them having feelings for him, is initially oblivious to Manbagi's crush on him, until Manbagi opened up to her during the school festival.
  • In spite of having the goal of reaching 100 friends, only a selected few from the ones she's obtained can be considered close, intimate friends with her. For instance, most of the friends she made in the first year fell to the side due to the lack of focus on them outside a couple of them (like Agari and Yamai).
  • Komi is an astoundingly attractive girl who greatly dreads to have people's undue attention because she doesn't know how to handle it. The more she tries to avoid it, the more people flock to her.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In Chapter 228, she doesn't allow Manbagi to give up on Tadano for her sake, as she argues that she won't be happy if Manbagi has to pay for her happiness. The fact that Komi doesn't let her cements Manbagi and her dearest and closest friend.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: She is kind and very fond of cats, especially black ones. Being in a cat café makes her exceedingly happy; she also has a number of cat-related accessories, like plush dolls.
• Last-Name Basis: With one or two exceptions, only Komi's family members call her Shouko. Her friends and peers all call her "Komi". A chapter is dedicated to Komi's and Tadano's efforts to curb this and, in spite of their intention to call each other by their first names, they are ultimately unable to do so.
• Leg Focus: Something of a Running Gag that her legs are typically the first feature characters will list off when describing her beauty.
• Living Emotional Crutch: She is one mutually with Tadano. Whereas she relies on Tadano more than he does, Tadano does find solace in Komi's presence. Ironically, even when he is glad to be friends with such a beautiful person, he's even more glad at the fact that when all others ignore him, Komi will always pay undivided attention to him.
• Loved by All: Invoked and played with. All people who meet Komi love her and appreciate her, but it's shown that she has a lingering reputation at school based on wrong assumptions that they make about her; as a matter of fact some of her friends have become so when they have realized that those rumors are not true. It's also shown that the people that resent her have a completely wrong preconception about her.
• Loving a Shadow: Everyone seems to think she is a cool beauty and a class idol, completely unaware she is actually a nervous wreck who can barely speak to anyone.
• Lust Object: How she is seen by many of her schoolmates, at least early on in the series. Simply being near her sends many of them into heavy breathed blushes, or even outright fainting, and the simple opportunity to look at her again has many happy that summer vacation ended. Played with in that many of them lust for her to such an extreme that it transcends to seeing her as a sacred existence that they can't dare fantasize about, let alone actually seek anything with. Such people tend to interpret Komi in very simple ways that correspond to what they imagine her to be rather than acknowledging personality traits she actually has.
• Magnetic Hero:
  • She is dear to an awful lot of people due to the status she's given. If they knew the kind of person she is beneath the surface, she'd be even more magnetic than that. Underneath that astounding beauty lies a boundlessly fun-loving, friendly and sweet girl.
  • Albeit she aims to have a hundred friends, Komi's closest friends (Tadano, Najimi, Katai, Onemine, Otori, Manbagi, Katou, Sasaki, Ase and Isagi) have a place of privilege by her side because they are not selfish when it comes to her (except Najimi, but that is played for laughs) and don't treat her like a golden statue. As such, the more people put her on a pedestal, the less they are her friends and are unable to approach her in a significant way. Also, the less showy her friends are, the closer they become.
• Meaningful Name: Komi's full name refers to her communication problems. Her given name, Shouko, can be read as "glass", indicating her emotional fragility.
• The Mentor: Played for laughs. Katai sees her as this to him, striving to be "as good as Komi is at communicating".
• Miko: She serves as a temporary shrine maiden at the temple at her grandma's town during the New Year celebrations, sharing duties with Inaka, who unbeknownst to her is a local.
• Mistaken Identity
  • A diner that Komi visited mistaken her for the prestigious food critique, "RamenCore" and give her excellent food service in hopes of getting a good review while mistreating Komi's friends. Unknown to them, the real "RamenCore" is actually Agari, who is with Komi at the time. Though they do not find out the truth, Agari gave them a good review fortunately.
  • In her second year, a group of first years mistaken Komi for a head delinquient who ruled the school with an iron first and seeks to defeat her in order to take over the school. However, they mistaken her for Katai instead.
• Morality Pet: Towards most people that meet her, but mainly towards Yamai, who is forced to behave every time they interact.
• Nervous Wreck: The reason she doesn't speak. She's almost constantly two steps away from a Heroic BSoD.
• Nice Girl: Komi is an angel, and nowhere as aloof as people think she is. She is beautiful both physically and emotionally.
• No Mouth: Her face is drawn without a mouth when it switches to her point of view (as pictured above on the right), which denotes her inability to verbally communicate. This in an example of Art Evolution, because in earlier chapters, her mouth was indeed drawn, but it was diminutive.
• No Social Skills: Komi can't talk directly to other people without extreme stuttering. If she's put in an unusual social situation, she freezes up and her mind becomes blank.
• Not So Stoic: In spite of the image of perfection people have of her, Komi is a regularly fussy teenager around her parents and on family outings, though nowhere as fussy as her brother.
• Obliviously Beautiful: Komi is not aware of how attractive she is, thus further worsening her impression of how people see her, which sometimes makes her dwell in Heroic Self-Deprecation. The fact that she doesn't know further pushes the point that she's effortlessly beautiful, and that she is very well put together in a fundamental level. Notably it's not as if she never hears other people refer to her as attractive, rather she has difficulty believing it.
• Oblivious to His Own Description: Komi has a starkly different image of herself compared to who her schoolmates perceive her to be. While this doesn't add up in her mind, she doesn't quite recognize that her presence provokes people to behave the way they do around her, and while said behavior is most of the times unwarranted and preposterous from them, she is 'that disquietingly beautiful, enough for people to get loopy.
• Odd Friendship:
  • With Katai. Unlike most of her new friends, who strive beyond their preconceptions about Komi to be able to befriend her, Komi and Katai's relationship is based on complete mutual misunderstanding of the other's intentions. Komi initially thinks that he's a curiously insistent thug who hangs around Tadano to extort him, though later she starts seeing him as a love rival for Tadano's affections, while Katai thinks that Komi is coaching him to overcome his own communication problems.
  • With Najimi, as they are complete antitheses to each other.
• Official Couple: With Tadano, in Chapter 305.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Twice has Komi stood up for Tadano because of Yamai, and twice has this happened without letting her inability to communicate get in her way. In Chapter 25 (episode 4 in the anime), Yamai insists Tadano makes for a lousy friend and intended to kill him so that Yamai could be Komi's friend. Komi's response is to affirm her, through a note, "I will decide my friends myself.", sporting an uncharacteristic, serious face. Later, in Chapter 306, after Tadano tells Yamai he and Komi are dating each other, Yamai tries to kill Tadano with another sharpened weapon before Komi stands up in front of Tadano before Yamai stabs him.
  • In Chapter 228, she berates Manbagi for trying to sacrifice her own affection towards Tadano in order to make her happy, stating in uncharacteristic ire that she won't allow Manbagi to be unhappy on her account. In perspective, Komi talks more in Chapters 226-228 than in the whole rest of the manga.
• Oxymoronic Being: Before high school, Komi led a life of solitude in spite of being an absurdly attractive person. Being beautiful has given her remarkably few benefits because people believed she was an aloof beauty and her solitude took a toll on her capacity to communicate and her self esteem.
• Peerless Love Interest: To Tadano, who considers her way above his league in terms of beauty and school standing. However, Tadano's pedestal for Komi is nowhere as unreachable as the pedestal their classmates put her on.
  • Ironically, it is Tadano who is this to Komi. Chapter 295 shows how Komi sees Tadano as her only gate towards being liked instead of being a lonely, "boring" girl. While Tadano thinks Komi's affections are just wishful thinking, Komi thinks she doesn't deserve/have the right to like Tadano.
• Perpetual Frowner: Played with. Because of the erroneous Proud Beauty status placed upon her, and due to the fact that her nervous face conveys "anger", Komi can be perceived as threatening and unbending instead of the contrary.
• Proper Lady: How most of the school body imagines Komi until getting to know her. In reality, Komi is completely normal, but comes off as this due to her quiet and reserved nature. Although she doesn't quite get to the point of being considered an Ojou, Komi is both demure and collected.
• Proper Tights with a Skirt: Seemingly the only girl in Itan who has this look, which does nothing to draw attention away from her legs.
• Proud Beauty: Both invoked and subverted. Onlookers think that Komi is this way based on her appearance alone. If anything, Komi is largely unaware of how beautiful she is, further implying that it's almost effortless.
• Punny Name:
  • "Komi" is short for "Komyu" (communication) and refers to "komyushou" (someone with a communication problem or disorder). Her whole family from her paternal grandmother's side follows suit.
  • Possibly unintentional or only apparent in English, but it also sounds somewhat like "Kami", or god. She ends up being elected the class goddess, to her dismay.
• The Quiet One: At ~200 chapters, Komi has spoken only in about a handful of those. Most of her communication outside of her handy notebook comes from simple gestures and body language, and even those are scarce. This further drives the point of how important Tadano is to her as an interpreter, as almost everyone else completely misinterprets her thoughts and actions.
• Respected by the Respected: By Netsuno-senpai, who greatly admires her sportsmanship and competitiveness in athletics.
• School Idol: She's practically worshiped and put on a pedestal by everyone at school due to her beauty, and she even has the informal position of "Class Goddess" in her class. Ironically, Komi herself is incredibly shy, but that only makes her more alluring to most people, which only makes her social anxiety even worse.
• Security Cling: Does a mild one to an unsuspecting Tadano when they are watching a horror movie with their friends.
• Shared Unusual Trait: Most members of Komi's family are strikingly attractive. All in all, they are a very well put together bunch. Excluding those who married into it, most of them also have problems with communication, ranging from severe anxiety, to simple shyness, to general disinterest.
• Shipper on Deck: For Mikuni and Katai. She's also one for Shousuke and Hitomi, as she herself and Hitomi hit off very well.
• Shrinking Violet: Komi is terribly shy. The difference is that her allure draws people towards her, increasing her social anxiety the more people there are. She gets better.
• Shrouded in Myth: School rumor has it Komi is the secret underlord ruling the school from the shadows. She has no idea about this.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Invoked and played for laughs. Komi and Tadano sometimes appear so close and so in tune with each other that people sometimes think that they should just marry already. It's even worse, especially when said people know that they're not an item at least until a couple chapters later.
• Significant Birth Date: Hers is on December 25th, on Christmas Day.
• The Silent Bob: Perfectly capable of speaking (and like the Trope Namer, it's usually significant when she does), but for the most part, she communicates by writing in her notebook, or Tadano will translate for her.
• Single-Target Sexuality: She has eyes for Tadano alone, though very few people are aware of this. It's a good thing, though, as it's pretty much implied that the whole school would kill Tadano if they knew how partial Komi is towards him (as shown during the second cultural festival arc). By the time they do become a couple this pretty much ceases to be an issue, as their whole class is supportive of the romance and Komi shows she's willing to physically get in the way of anyone who would seek to harm Tadano over it. Even in a group setting, she tends to gravitate towards Tadano out of a sincere desire to be in his company.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: The reason why Komi is attracted to Tadano. Tadano was the only one who bothered to understand her and recognize her problem. He is patient and persistent with her, and although Komi hasn't been able to overcome her disorder, her situation drastically improved thanks to Tadano's efforts. For all these reasons, Tadano is one of the most important people in Komi's life and she wouldn't be able to survive high school without him.
• Situational Sociability:
  • She is able to hold a short conversation with Tadano when they speak over the phone, but still can't handle face-to-face. At the end of their first year of high school, she's able to overcome this.
  • Played with. Komi's life-long isolation from socialization has left her blissfully unaware of just how weird her classmates are, enabling her to establish friendships with them. In some cases, just about any other person would definitely not be the friend of said people.
  • She is relatively comfortable albeit still awkward when she is alone with Tadano.
• Sliding Scale of Beauty: Between Level I (Divine) and Level II (World-Class). When it came to the time to choose class representatives, Komi was chosen as the Class Goddess because "class rep" would be too little a title for her. To elaborate, the possible titles were: "Principal - Chairwoman", "She Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken", "Her Majesty", "Boss", "CEO", "Shogun", "Role Model", "Pinnacle", "Queen", and "Goddess", the latter taking more than half of the class' votes.
• Smitten Teenage Girl: Though Komi attains various friends throughout her high school life, it's for Tadano's company alone that she longs for. This happens to be mutual, and it's shown that they start getting equally needy of each other if they're apart for too long.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Komi is a profoundly beautiful girl who is rarely approached by her admirers because they either don't consider themselves worthy, or they lack the courage to do so. It doesn't help that Komi has a bit of a poker-face whenever someone talks to her, even when she's frozen nervous, making people think that their proximity and attempts at conversation make her uncomfortable.
• Spectacular Spinning: The Komi-drill. During the school festival, she gets so excited about all the things around her, that she starts constantly turning...well, around. The spinning effect gets lampshaded by Tadano.
• Sprouting Ears: She has a tendency to sprout cat ears whenever something catches her interest, to illustrate her immense curiosity. Lampshaded in chapter 35, where Komi wonders why she sometimes sprouts cat ears. In chapter 5, it's taken a step further, with her writing quickly on a chalkboard being shown as her hands turning into paws and her scratching the board.
• The Stoic: Not by her choice; she comes across as this due to her communication disorder. She certainly is very emotional, but she's not good at expressing emotions of course.
• Talking with Signs:
  • Komi communicates by writing her responses on her notebook, and it's a Running Gag that she's a very verbose, prolific and cartoonishly fast writer. At ~300 chapters to date, she must have a library's worth full of notebooks.
  • In Chapter 231, Manbagi encourages her to speak, and Komi from that point onward starts talking more often without needing to use a notebook, especially to close friends.
• Tareme Eyes: Switches between these and Tsurime Eyes constantly, usually depending on whose perspective we're seeing Komi from. When the reader sees Komi through Tadano's and her own perception, her eyes, outside of a few select moments, become round and cartoonishly huge. This emphasizes her shy, mild and curious side.
• Tender Tears:
  • When she says goodbye to Rei, who is leaving with her parents to study in the United States.
  • When she convinces Manbagi to not give up on Tadano, in spite of knowing that Komi likes him too.
• This Is Wrong on So Many Levels!: After helping Tadano escape kidnapping by Yamai, she showed great distress at the possibility that Tadano would be hurt because of his proximity to her. Tadano, in turn, assures her that even so, he would not wish to leave her alone.
• Tranquil Fury: As seen in Chapter 25, Yamai trying to get between her and Tadano to threaten him and become the person closest to Komi made her (uncharacteristically) glare at Yamai a new one.
• Tsurime Eyes: Switches between these and Tareme Eyes constantly, usually depending on whose perspective we're seeing Komi from. When the reader sees Komi outside of Tadano's and her own perception, her eyes are sharp and slender (which are their real shape). This adds to the aloof, unapproachable appearance she gives off to others.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Invoked In-Universe. Because of her perceived aloofness, some people that approach her think that her silence means this, and that they are not worthy of her time. It's actually due to her being a Nervous Wreck with a poker face.
• Wham Line: In chapter 223, during the school play. It is one of the few times Komi actually speaks.
  Komi (to Tadano): While I'm with you, I feel as if I could speak joyful words for the rest of my life. I think... I love you.
• What Does She See in Him?: Komi's classmates are at odds with the fact that Tadano is her closest friend and later, boyfriend, Tadano being among the most unremarkable person one can ever meet. First and foremost, Tadano tried, and Tadano helped, this being way more than anyone had ever done for Komi. The people who have actually realized why Komi likes Tadano so much them are precisely the ones who have actually bothered to know and befriend Komi instead of mindlessly adulate her.
• When She Smiles: A tiny, shy smile from her can elicit tachycardia.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: She's terrified of cicadas.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Played with. She fulfills the trope in both appearance and demeanor, though it's not actually intentional from her, and both came from two very different sources. Her looks came from her mother, while her demeanor came from her paternal grandmother. It's shown that her demure behavior is second-nature to her. However, Komi is more of a mess than what the trope suggests, being considerably less collected than she appears to be.
• You Are Not Alone: On the eve of the class trip, Komi is not particularly excited at the prospect, as in previous class trips she was left to her own devices. However, Tadano is quick to offer his companionship, even given the possibility that she decides not to go. This gives her courage to go, admitting that since she'd be with him, she's looking forward to it.