Komi Can’t Communicate Reveals the Darker Side of Najimi’s Personality

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Episode 12 of Komi Can't Communicate, "It's Just the Culture Festival," now streaming on Netflix.

Najimi Osana is Itan Private High School's non-binary student with the best communications skills. Since childhood, they've met and befriended most of the school's student body and even used those skills to get elected class vice president alongside Hitohito Tadano, who is the class president. Najimi is also Shoko Komi's second-best friend after Tadano, and it was mostly through Najimi's friendship that Komi befriended a few other students and gained new experiences she otherwise wouldn't have.

Episode 11 of Komi Can't Communicate explored the full extent of Najimi's communication skills, including their ability to lead the other students and network. These skills proved especially useful during preparations for the school's culture festival and even taught Komi basic customer services skills for their class's maid café. In Episode 12, Najimi experiences the full extent of their class's success with the maid café and decides to increase profits by employing profiteering tactics.

One way that Najimi increases the maid cafe's profits is by exploiting Komi's popularity with the students. They do this by exploiting Komi's naiveté talking her into doing things they know she wouldn't feel comfortable doing. Najimi eases Komi into her "new role" as the maid café's major selling point by having her walk around the school to attract followers into the café. Najimi also has Komi visit the other class shops like another class's haunted house attraction to attract more followers. At one point, Najimi even has her participate in the culture festival's rooftop confession to promote the café.

While Komi proves to be an easy target for exploitation, Najimi's profiteering practices don't stop with Komi; they find ways to exploit their other classmates as well. In the case of Makeru Yadano, Najimi exploits her competitive nature to charge customers to play a game of janken (rock, paper, scissors) with her. They also get Omoharu Nakanaka to pose with customers for pictures for a fee. Najimi even advertises other non-approved activities such as getting slapped by a maid and being escorted around the school by a maid, among other things, all for a fee.

Najimi's profiteering practices succeed at drawing a lot of customers to their class café. It also gets them noticed by their homeroom teacher, who subjects them to disciplinary action. The first time Najimi is caught, they are briefly scolded by the homeroom teacher, and refunds are issued to the customers who paid for Najimi's unapproved services. The second time they are caught, they get sent to the meditation club to be an unwilling participant in a demonstration for repentance in accordance with the Buddhist belief system. These prove to be the least of Najimi's worries, however.

The major penalty that gets experienced by the entire class as a consequence of Najimi's profiteering is losing the grand prize for their otherwise successful maid café. Since the whole class was penalized for Najimi's actions, Najimi tries to minimize the impact of their actions and avoid accountability by leveraging their own popularity. It ultimately takes Komi stating in writing that the experience was fun to keep the class from taking their anger out on Najimi at the culture festival's awards ceremony.

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