Komi Can't Communicate is a charming slice-of-life anime series with a minor romantic subplot between the silent dandere heroine Komi Shoko and her first-ever friend, the kind and empathetic Tadano Hitohito. Meanwhile, their classmate and friend Osana Najimi is the life of any party.
Najimi is known for a number of factors, from their playful gender ambiguity to their prankster tendencies and, of course, their incredible social skills. Indeed, Najimi does have a whole battalion of friends, but it's likely their claims are seriously exaggerated. According to real-life science, no one, not even Najimi, could actually have millions or even thousands of friends.
The Limits Of Najimi's Social Circle in Komi Can't Communicate
Social media platforms allow a user to have potentially thousands of "friends," but Facebook friends and Twitter followers are not the same as real-life friends, and the concept of organic human friendship is vastly older than any digital platform. Human beings are social creatures, and anthropologists have studied apes and other primates to find patterns in their behavior, sometimes to compare the data with humanity itself. Some researchers suggest brain size correlates to the size of an ape's social circle, and human beings' mental capabilities allow them to have unusually large social circles, especially extroverts. That said, there are some loosely-defined upper limits to this.
Komi Can't Communicate's Najimi is definitely an extrovert who loves making friends, but they claim to have thousands or even millions of childhood friends -- as their name would suggest -- which is simply impossible. There's some ambiguity on the theoretical limit of a person's social circle, but if only true friends are being counted -- as opposed to casual acquaintances -- the limit is closer to 150. That's not a hard figure, but many researchers seem to use 150 as a general rule. A given person might recognize any of thousands of people whom they've come across in life and perhaps even remember their name, but not all of these are actual friends.
No doubt Najimi could recognize every single classmate and neighbor they've ever had, but calling them all proper friends is a serious stretch. Human psychology simply doesn't allow it, and spreading oneself so thin among thousands of people means none of them are more than a passing acquaintance. Most people have, at most, 50 real friends or so. Anything beyond that is too much to handle, and relationships will end up falling apart. So, some friendships would have to be dissolved or abandoned to make room for new ones in a person's mind.
The Unreliable Narrator Of Osana Najimi & Anime In General
It might be tempting to dive deep into Najimi's character and determine a tragic reason why they feel the need to exaggerate so much about their social life. It could be a case of overcompensation or insecurity, such as Najimi making up for a bitterly friendless early childhood, but that doesn't seem likely. There's no hint that Najimi is compensating for anything with their claims of having millions of friends -- rather, this may be a simple variant of unreliable narration.
Unreliable narrators can make any anime more intriguing and colorful by exaggerating or distorting the material through a certain character's eyes. This may happen due to the character's romantic feelings, trauma, anger, confusion or more, but in the case of Osana Najimi, it's probably something more innocent. In the Komi Can't Communicate manga and anime alike, Najimi established themselves as a reckless and impulsive character who seems rather fond of fibbing, pranking others and exaggerating, meaning the other characters and viewers alike should take everything they say with a grain of salt.
Najimi is a cartoony but lovable character whose job is to put on a show and add some excitement to the story, and wild antics and nonsensical statements are a part of that. Najimi is the wild card of Komi Can't Communicate, just like Fujiwara Chika in Kaguya-Sama: Love is War -- someone whose primary role is showmanship. No one should take Najimi's word for it on much of anything, but then again, their sharp social skills and huge circle of friends are easy to see, meaning there's at least a grain of truth to what they say. This character doesn't feel the need to make up outrageous lies to make a point, but fun exaggeration is fair game; and that's what makes Najimi, and Komi Can't Communicate as a whole, so much fun.
