Komi Can’t Communicate, Vol. 36

The journey to 100 friends begins with a single conversation.

Socially anxious high school student Shoko Komi’s greatest dream is to make some friends, but everyone at school mistakes her crippling social anxiety for cool reserve. Luckily she meets Tadano, a timid wallflower who decides to step out of his comfort zone in order to help her achieve her goal of making 100 friends.

Tadano used to want to be average more than anything, but now that he and Komi are dating, he’d rather be by her side than average any day. He’s worried that his epiphany came too late for him to get into the same university as Komi, but she knows exactly what to do--a super-intense study camp at Grandma’s house.

Tomohito Oda won the grand prize for World Worst One in the 70th Shogakukan New Comic Artist Awards in 2012. Oda’s series Digicon, about a tough high school girl who finds herself in control of an alien with plans for world domination, ran from 2014 to 2015. In 2015, Komi Can’t Communicate debuted as a one-shot in Weekly Shonen Sunday and was picked up as a full series by the same magazine in 2016.