After 9 years and 497 chapters, beloved rom com manga Komi Can't Communicate will end in just 2 weeks

Komi and friends. — (Image credit: Shogakukan)

It was announced in July last year that Tomohito Oda's beloved long-running romantic comedy manga Komi Can’t Communicate was about to enter its final arc. Now we know exactly when the series will end.

According to the cover of this week's Weekly Shōnen Sunday – the magazine that publishes the series – there are only three chapters remaining, with the first of those running in this week's issue. That suggests that the concluding chapter 497 will be published on January 29 (somewhat confusingly, issues of Weekly Shōnen Sunday are published on Wednesdays).

Rumors that the series was about to end abruptly started last week with unofficial reports from Twitter user @MangaMoguraRE suggesting that only three chapters remained. With the publication of this week's chapter 495, the news of the series' ending became official. The Weekly Shōnen Sunday website now bears a line that reads (when translated from Japanese via Google) "The final chapter! As high school life comes to an end, preparations for the graduation ceremony progress!!"

Komi Can't Communicate began as a one-shot in 2015 before being expanded into a full manga the following year. The series follows high school student Shoko Komi, whose extreme social anxiety makes it hard for her to make friends with people who all assume her quietness is simply her being cool. Classmate Tadano Hitohito sees through this, however, and sets out to help her make 100 friends. It began as more of a slice-of-life story, but just as its art style evolved and sharpened, the story progressively took on a rom-com bend. It has been collected into, to date, 37 volumes in Japanese, with 32 of those having been translated into English. You can also read chapters of the series in English on the Viz website. An anime adaptation ran for two seasons and is available to stream on Netflix.

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Will Salmon is the Streaming Editor for GamesRadar+. He has been writing about film, TV, comics, and music for more than 15 years, which is quite a long time if you stop and think about it. At Future he launched the scary movie magazine Horrorville, relaunched Comic Heroes, and has written for every issue of SFX magazine for well over a decade. His music writing has appeared in The Quietus, MOJO, Electronic Sound, Clash, and loads of other places too.