The 2020s have seen several manga and anime franchises become huge properties, with the increase in anime’s popularity being a rising tide for the medium as a whole. One of these success stories was Komi Can’t Communicate, with the immense sales of the manga resulting in a hit anime. Said manga has now come to an end, and this means big things for the adaptation.
The Komi Can’t Communicate anime only adapted a small part of the award-winning manga, leaving a lot still on the table. It didn’t help that the manga was still running, creating the risk of catching up with the source material too quickly. With that no longer the case, there are multiple episodes and perhaps even seasons in the future for the slice of life anime.
Komi Can’t Communicate’s Journey from Manga to Anime Adaptation
The Popular Manga Has Finally Concluded
Komi Can’t Communicate was created by Tomohito Oda, with the manga running from 2016 to 2025 in the Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine. The storyline involves the titular Shoko Komi, a high school student who makes a major impression on her classmates on the first day of school. Despite her beauty, class and grace, Komi suffers from extreme social anxiety that makes merely communicating a difficult task.
Nevertheless, she sets out with the goal of making 100 new friends, and with the help of classmate Hitohito Tadano, she intends to see this through. The manga as a whole is a coming-of-age, slice-of-life story that deals with concepts sometimes overlooked in manga. This can be seen through its cast of dysfunctional characters, with their own personal quirks being used both as serious explorations of different concepts and hilarious running gags full of chill, lighthearted silliness.
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βConcluding on January 29, 2025, the Komi Can’t Communicate manga will be completed in collected form with its 37th volume. The manga had 499 chapters overall, and throughout this publication history, it amassed quite a bit of popularity and financial success. By 2025, there were 16 million copies of Komi Can’t Communicate in circulation, with this just being one manifestation of its popularity.
For instance, 2021 saw the release of a live-action Komi Can’t Communicate TV show, which lasted for 8 episodes. That same year saw the release of the first season of the Komi Can’t Communicate anime by the studio OLM. The anime aired on the Netflix streaming service, with the second season airing in 2022. Since then, however, there’s been relative radio silence about the anime’s continued production. This was for a good reason, but that also means that the anime can finally continue.
How Many Chapters Did the Komi Can’t Communicate Netflix Anime Adapt?
The Komi Can’t Communicate Anime Series Still Has a Lot to Cover
By the time that Season 2 of the anime began airing, the Komi Can’t Communicate manga was already halfway done with its run. When this season concluded, there were 26 volumes of the manga, meaning that only a little over 10 more volumes of material were left. Of course, those volumes didn’t exist at the time, but what did exist was being adapted at a fairly brisk pace.
The Komi Can’t Communicate anime only adapted up to Volume 10 of the manga when it finished its second season, and given how quickly the second season came out after the first, a potential third or fourth season would have easily eaten up the remaining material at that time. This would have resulted in an issue that many anime from previous decades had to contend with: catching up with the manga.
It was a problem that mainly affected anime based on popular shonen manga, but there were shojo and slice-of-life manga that ran into this developmental issue, as well. In times past, anime used filler to space out the production gaps between the anime and manga, doing so with entirely original story material. This proved to be a controversial practice, especially for shonen anime.
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For instance, the filler episodes of anime such as Dragon Ball Z and especially Naruto are largely considered to be some of the worst in those anime, giving the practice a bad name for a generation of fans. Another method was to simply diverge entirely from the source material, resulting in anime with completely different plot developments that are wholly distinct from the manga.
Examples include the original versions of Shaman King, Fruits Basket and Fullmetal Alchemist, with their manga later receiving a second anime in order to fix these mistakes. In recent times, however, anime adaptations have taken to adapting story arcs as movies in order to space out releases in an organic fashion. Ironically enough, this might be perfect for bringing the rest of the Komi Can’t Communicate manga to life.
How Many More Seasons Does Komi Can’t Communicate Need?
The Netflix Anime’s Return Could Go In Several Different Directions
As mentioned, there are going to be 37 volumes of Komi Can’t Communicate in total, with 10 having already been adapted through the first two seasons of the anime. These were 12 episodes each, and if the anime comes back and is produced at the same rate, it would take roughly around five or six additional seasons/72 episodes to adapt the entirety of the story. This potential development cycle comes with a lot of caveats, of course, with the biggest one being the rate at which the anime adapts the manga.
It’s highly likely that the first two seasons of the Komi Can’t Communicate anime slowed down their pacing somewhat in order to not catch up with the manga too quickly. That’s no longer a risk, and there’s a clear throughline for the story in terms of what all remains to be adapted. Thus, future seasons could adapt twice as much manga material at a faster rate, with single seasons instead covering about 10 volumes each instead of five.
Another option might be to adapt the rest of the manga in the form of movies. This would be similar to how the Demon Slayer anime is going to be concluded, with anime movies having overtaken the TV anime itself at this point. Given that Komi Can’t Communicate is more of a comedic drama than an action-based franchise, there may not necessarily be much in the story that’s particularly cinematic.
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At the same time, this could be used to the potential anime movie’s advantage, as it would likely be more efficient to adapt large swathes of the manga into a 1 1/2 or 2-hour anime movie than to tell this story across several episodes. Likewise, these could be sold as “events” in the same manner as the Demon Slayer movies or, for a more accurate comparison, the Rascal Does Not Dream anime movies.
The latter is much closer to the tone and scope of Komi Can’t Communicate, so it gives a better idea of how such an anime could transition to the big screen. If nothing else, OLM can alternate between new seasons of the Komi Can’t Communicate anime and anime movies that continue the story, with the finale (which would likely adapt fewer volumes) being a movie.
Transitioning to movies would be a good way to bring attention back to the anime, especially since it hasn’t really been spoken about since 2022. With the Komi Can’t Communicate manga now finished for over a month. It remains to be seen when or if OLM will pick things back up. With little news of a continuation or a cancelation, it seems that OLM can’t communicate when it comes to the fate of the anime adaptation.
