I’m still not sure just what to make of Komi-san wa Komyushou desu.  It’s weird to be sure, but weird can be good or bad.  I like quirkiness, and this show definitely qualifies.  But there are times when it crosses over into some genuinely strange territory, and when it does, I don’t think I’m laughing when I’m supposed to be laughing.  The balance has been shifting back and forth (last week was better than this week for me) and I suppose with gag comedies, that’s to be expected.

The friend of the week this time is Agari Himiko, another shy girl in Tadano and Komi’s class.  I’m fine with OsanaNajimi’s plan of trying to pair off Komi with students of compatible temperament, but this whole “dog” business just whiffed for me.  It didn’t come off as whimsical or ironic so much as mean-spirited.  I think there’s a larger issue with the series that this chapter plays up, which is that the whole idea that the class wouldn’t catch on to Komi’s condition is ludicrous on the face of it.  Yet it’s the basis of the entire premise, really, which could be a bit of a problem.

Whether it is or not depends, I suppose, on how heavily you invest in the characters and recurring plot and how much you’re just in it for the comedy.  The next chapter is a little better, this time focusing on Komi-san getting a phone (a flip, naturally).  The inherent comic possibilities here are not hard to spot, and the episode does a pretty good job of cashing in those chips.  And we got to hear her voice for by far the longest stretch of the series so far, as she pretended to be a “this number is not in service” message after Tadano-kun called her (returning her accidental auto-dial).

The whole class president thing was a whiff for me.  Not interesting, not funny (and again highlighting the silliness of the premise).  If there’s anything of consequence here I suppose it’s Tadano’s willingness to take a bullet for Komi, though it’s not the first time we’ve seen that and I’m certain it won’t be the last.  I found the last segment much more interesting, the best of the episode in fact.  Teenagers are weird and Japan is weird, so put them together and you’re bound to get some appealingly weird stuff.  But this whole “Saitou-san game” thing (for the record I didn’t really understand the rules of any of these games) was a subcultural entity I had no idea existed.

If you care to go down this rabbit hole, the internet is full of nuggets featuring this strange game (it seems to center around comedians’ catch phrases).  I get the sense it may have peaked in popularity three or four years ago (when this chapter would have come out, more or less), but there are some pretty amazing videos of kids doing this.  It’s quite mesmerizing actually, especially when older kids like high schoolers or college students (it’s even seen at nomikai) who’re really good at it show off their speed.  Here the most interesting part is the way this whole sequence shows off OsanaNajimi’s interesting mix of helpfulness and trolling (I continue to find them the most interesting character in the cast so far).