@icezone22 Remind me again why would I bother to reply to someone that purposefully skipping 100 chapters just to complain there is lack of progress in a SoL manga? That is like skipping the entire dessert and straight up complaining to the chef why there is no dessert lmao. That is just plain silly, I would rather not embarrassing myself if I were you.
I told you in the passage before that the manga has established its pacing consistently and it did exactly what it promised, komi steadily making friends and overcoming her disorder. You should be able to see (if you aren't purposefully SKIPPING chapters lol) how different komi is when she started until now, she is no longer that fidgety girl that we are used to and now actively seeking people in need of help with her own means that is shown through her daily antics and fooling around with her group, or in the few dedicated arcs. The progress was steadily paced and subtle, and in-lore trivia between side characters and their interactions with Komi are exactly the place where readers can find the depth that is currently ongoing between characters. So in a sense of 'progression' of the main story it has always been there in the chapters where people loved to call 'fillers', in the chapters YOU missed.
Onto the romance, when romance hint was dropped during onemine's introduction, I knew the manga will eventually shift its focus to finish this secondary plot in the future so when it gets more serious during 2nd year festival arc, I'm not entirely surprised. Yet despite all that the romance subplot has given komi's growth significantly, the way she handled manbagi's position as bff while in the same time trying to win over tadano is amusing to me. It is probably the first time komi knew she had something to lose in the matter and eventually pushing her even further in expressing her own though, and now we got to see her more confident in her verbal dialogue. Putting it off merely as 'forced' romance is just undermining how significant the romance subplot is in giving komi more character to the main story.
The way I see it, Oda is incorporating all these tropes together to eventually came out with similar conclusion, pushing komi out of its bubble. Komi making 100 friends is the main method on how the manga will progress, the romance subplot in this case is just another method for her to overcome it. This is why I said before that I regret the surge of romcom fans that only come for one thing and one thing only, asking komi-san just for its romance. It's like asking the manga for something it isn't even promised yet they judged it only according to one aspect only.
