Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.
Discussion Guidelines
Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
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This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.
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Quick warning for people new to reading books in Japanese: the font in this series (and many others) doesn’t use small kana in the furigana. It’s unfortunately something you’re gonna have to get the hang of recognising.
So, you don’t have to try too hard to read everything that’s on pages 4-5 - probably not a spoiler, but every one of these characters will be getting an actual introduction later on… some of them multiple volumes later on. As you can probably glean from it, though, every single character’s name is a pun on their primary character trait. Our task during this book club will be to work out what those are.
For example:
古見硝子＝コミュ症
只野仁人＝ただの人
(I have a slight suspicion that the kanji themselves also indicate secondary character traits - for example 仁人 is in Jisho with the reading じんじん and the meaning “man of virtue” - though I’m not completely certain.)
Trying to figure out if the name of the school is also a pun - いたん written with the kanji 異端 means “heresy”. Or イ短調 is a key of A-minor. 傷んだトマト are rotten tomatoes. I’m reading too much into it, aren’t I?
Nice that we are finally getting started! Looking forward to reading with everyone. I’ve just finished chapter 1, the chapters themselves are not that long but I was pleasantly surprised with the difficulty level, I can follow along well with the exception of maybe page 8, but I think that’s maybe the quality of my kindle images? It makes recognizing the kanji hard… but there are still quite a few new words I’ve learned! I started yesterday before the thread was up, so I took some separate notes for the vocab, but I’ll try to add new words to the vocab list later today
I’m caught up to the current chapters in english, so restarting in japanese is almost nostalgic (especially seeing the original character designs, they are so round). I tried to read a little bit closer than I normally would (got the gist of the background text on pg 8 but largely skipped the specifics, iirc some of these also get more detail later, and also I can’t zoom very well on the sunday webry site).
I really enjoy how flavorful the narrator’s language is
I think there’s probably some of wordplay there yeah, since it feels like almost everything in the series does have some sort of joke/pun…
spoilers for later in vol 1 or 2: If I remember right at some point there’s a narrator reveal that this high school is actually a high school entirely for weirdos based on interview and not test scores, and I wonder if the pun will make more sense with the way that is phrased when it comes up
Seconding the comment about page 4-5, you will meet all of these characters and get to understand their punny names later.
Edit:
I actually didn’t see this in the main thread anywhere, but you can read komi chapters (up to almost the current ones, it’s a week or two behind the print version of the magazine) on weekly shounen sunday’s official website. Not all series are free, but it looks like all of komi currently is: コミュ1 普通の人です。 / 古見さんは、コミュ症です。 - オダトモヒト | サンデーうぇぶり
Glad this club has finally started! I enjoyed the first two chapters, but I definitely felt the first one a bit challenging.
I’ve been reading slice of life manga for a while now, and it’s become my easy zone, but I found I had to look up quite a lot in the first chapter and think a while to figure stuff out. So don’t be surprised if chapter one takes a while to read.
Me too, this is my first beginner book club but with a bit of effort I can understand the content quite well which I’m super stoked about!
Because I read that multiple times, for anyone who’s interested here is the dialogue on page 8 (and my attempt at a translation behind spoiler protection. They are definitely not perfect, there might be some things wrong!), hope it helps:
p. 8 content (+ translation)
僕は知っている。
I know.
周りの空気を読んで、目立たず生きて行く。
I can survive if I read the room and don’t stand out.
それが幸せへの近道なのだ。
That is the shortcut to happiness.
別に中学の時に個性を出そうとしてイタい目を見たとかそういうのはない。
I especially don’t want what happened during middle school, where I tried to show personality and it ended in a painful experience. flashbacks
断じてない。
[not so sure about this one] Absolutely not!
あ、挨拶は大事！
Oh, greetings are important!
あ、この下駄箱ってことは同じクラスだね。おはよ…
Oh, because you’re also using these shoe lockers, you’re going to the same class as me. Good morning…
I am also caught up in english but I think this is a nice opportunity to learn what the pun names mean (I just now realized ただの人). It is different reading it in japanese for sure
It’s something that I wouldn’t personally have the time (and I’m too socially anxious ) for, but setting up a poll to gauge interest is never a bad idea.
For book clubs specifically, and for read-aloud sessions. We still want to keep most discussion on the forums so that it’s easier for everyone to utilize the clubs in future. It’s not anything official or tied to the website, just to be clear! But it is used for read-aloud sessions. The Discord server is here.
I see! I probably don’t have a consistent enough schedule to make any read aloud sessions (for this, or anything else in the near future), but I’ll join just in case that changes someday
I’d be hesitant only because everywhere that kid goes, a dead body shows up. I think the greatest twist is that he is in fact the murderer and manage to frame every single person he put in jail.
really looking forward to reading, good luck to everyone!
) for, but setting up a poll to gauge interest is never a bad idea. 
