I don’t believe her sweet tooth was influenced by Takuya. Just one thing I noticed right away in response.
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Her sweet tooth is linked to her childish personality, but I’m not sure if we can say it’s been influenced by Takuya.
Her airheadedness is something she developed on her own too.
She’s very extrovert, and while it can be seen as close to her desire to help others, it might be something not related to Takuya.
Just a thought, but if we don’t count the money spent on sweets and the time she (happily) spends helping others, I don’t think there’s any detriment to her. She even tells Kyousuke “Don’t make yourself unhappy” when he was about to donate a full Yukichi to her cause.
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She gives Riki her screwdriver as a present so that he can enter the rooftop on his own. The next day, she forgot her spare screwdriver and couldn’t get onto the rooftop without Riki, which he remarks as her kindness backfiring at her.
These things keep happening. She lends Riki her book and notebook when he forgets his, even though she also needs them for class. She gets called on and self-destructs.
She gets Donuts as a thank-you for doing volunteer work and shares them with the original busters.
Eating with the little busters in the cafeteria, she gives Kengo some pieces of her own cutlet when Masato steals his, secretly. When pointed out, she tells not to mind it and when Kengo and Masato start fighting over it, she’d rather give out her cutlet to make peace.
Riki suddenly wakes her up as she’s sleeping on the roof and even though she hits her head twice, the first thing she asks is if Riki is ok.
She helps completely unrelated people carry books for reasons she doesn’t even remember. When Riki helps her, she says she wants to compensate him for it.
Just to name some instances. Sometimes, it ends with Komari losing out, sometimes, she doesn’t expect a compensation for helping others, but insists on compensating those who help her.
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Oh yes, I had forgotten some of those scenes.
Yeah, she really doesn’t think about herself, sometimes.
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There’s a scene on May 28th where Riki succumbs to Narcolepsy when he and Komari are on the roof. He ends up falling on top of Komari and immobilizing her until he wakes back up.
Now, we all know Riki couldn’t help it, but at that time, Komari was completely unaware of his narcolepsy. For different reasons, this is an uncomfortable situation for her. A male ends up pinning her to the ground for an hour, but she’s so worried about him that she forgot how embarassing a situation it was until it’s pointed out.
Normally, and especially with a tsundere heroine involved, Riki would probably get hit and called a pervert a few times, not because said heroine makes a logical conclusion, but simply as her way of dealing with the embarassment. Komari is super embarassed, but she does none of that.
But what I find even more remarkable is what comes next:
Komari finds it necessary to point out she did not take advantage of him while he was unconscious. It sounds funny here, but if their roles were reversed, it may have become necessary for Riki to clarify the same thing and clear himself of any suspicion, which is why I find it an admirable thing to do on her part.
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I’ll admit that I didn’t notice this. It is such a good touch. I think Riki and Komari have such a nice and natural (if one-sided at first) dynamic that even before they started “dating”, they were considerate of each other. Komari was more forward than I ever expected her to be and that’s refreshing to see from a Key heroine. Makes me excited for Kurugaya.
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The only person Riki is ever straightforward with in a relationship is Kyousuke, anyway. The rest of the girls HAVE to take initiatives otherwise the relationships would never get anywhere. 
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I mean, I can think of another example (no it’s not Masato), but Kyousuke is definitely up there lol
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I’ve said it time and time again, but it’s hearing things like this that absolutely make my heart swell up. You, sir, are a prime example of the success of Key’s writing. I believe that as long as their writing was able to touch at least one person in this world personally, it has already succeeded. No matter how mediocre I make out Komari’s route to be, this alone proves that it has done what it needs to do, and for that, I am overjoyed. Viva Komari! Viva the spiral of happiness!
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About the discussion of whether Komari is admirable or pitiful in her thinking:
I always thought the game itself was trying to subtly imply a flaw in Komari’s world view through the message of her route: “Face reality head on.” I felt that the writers were trying to say that Komari’s world view in general was wrong - that she could see so much good in the world only because she wasn’t looking at the bad.
I think it’s worth correlating the message of this route with the message of Tomoyo After actually: that no matter what happens life is worth living. If you put the two messages together you get something like: “you shouldn’t look away from the bad part of reality, because the goodness of life will always outshine it”
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I wouldn’t agree that they wanted her worldview to seem wrong, per se, but I do agree that it was flawed. Thanks for pointing that out and helping me notice that myself. 
Yes - Komari does seem to simply ignore bad things in life, instead of accepting them and holding her altruism tight. She reminds me of a bird that falls asleep before she touches the ground. This becomes even more apparent as she can no longer even see blood or death without mentally breaking. I think that’s a better lesson than the one I first noticed, actually. Blind optimism is just as bad as constant pessimism; only with the help if Riki does Komari finally strike a balance and open her eyes to the difficulties of life, yet she still leans heavily toward idealism, which is ingrained in her character. That is such a beautiful message. The love of her brother and Riki save her. Perhaps, without love, she would have fallen to the other side of the scale, unable to see anything but the bad aspects of life.
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Wrong is indeed a strong word, and I usually hate using such committal terminology, so I definitely agree that I shouldn’t have phrased it that way.
As for the second paragraph of yours, it makes me wonder whether it was necessary for her to go through a stage of only seeing the good in life. I wonder how she would have turned out if the opposite, like you said, unable to see anything but the bad aspects of life, had become her world view. The route ends with a tidy resolution for her, so I’m thinking that ultimately it was a good thing that she had to go through everything she did - because of how well everything turned out in the end.
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From a reader’s point of view, I think it was necessary to present her with the blind idealism she has. It is something integral to her character that we see in the common route, and we can see the subtle foreshadowing that leads to Komari’s hidden condition. I know for sure I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much if she just became pessimistic, rather than the extremely creepy, trapped-in-the-clouds Komari we see toward the end. That hit like a ton of bricks, meanwhile the downer side may have well been saved for a different heroine.
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Shit I was gonna make a post about it… 
I’m so goddamn slow at writing… よしっ！
So it’s shown in common and the more common-ish parts of her route that she has this rather odd habit of dealing with embarrassment. She tells herself to forget, and then tells Riki to forget, and then suddenly, it’s all ok! It seems like a joke but then you realize that’s just a less extreme form of her coping mechanism.
In the first one, I feel like she may have legitimately forgotten what happened, but in the second one, an external stimulus (Riki) brought it back into her mind.
Same here but this time with Haruka.
It’s also interesting to see that in this last instance, Komari is able to forget again, in a cycle. While normal people could act in the same way, seeing what happens later in the route, I don’t think this is acting. I also enjoy the fact that this progression happens over the course of a few days. It really seems like Riki learns more and more about Komari over time.
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Actually, this made me remember something else - another topic that wasn’t really confronted.
(Refrain spoilers)
Immediately after this scene, Riki collapses from narcolepsy, so they don’t address it any further at this point - but I wonder if it was a natural narcolepsy attack, or if he was being punished for a mistake he made, like at the end of Rin1 or any of the bad ends. This might be grasping at straws, but Riki concludes that he shouldn’t consider the possibility of Takuya having died. It’s a mini version of the choice at the end. And of course, the possibility doesn’t seem to even occur to Komari, which is quite natural.
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I didn’t think too much about that part because it felt quite normal to me not to want to think about the possible death of your friend’s brother, but if we have to find a meaning to it…
(Refrain spoilers, as always)
I haven’t tried to find a connection between Riki’s narcolepsy attacks, but if we had to assume they are to punish him for running away from his fears or something like that, it could be that The World wanted him to consider all the possibilities and not exclude something just because it’s scary… I don’t know, really
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Warning, Refrain spoilers!
Riki developed narcolepsy out of fear of losing people. Whenever he thinks he is about to lose someone, whether it’s physically or emotionally, narcolepsy is triggered before he gets to experience the loss in its full painful glory. In this case, if it’s a ‘triggered’ reaction, I would argue that the prospect of Komari learning about her brother due to Riki pursuing the matter could distance her from him, or he’s simply reacting to the concept of loss and the feelings and memories related to it, even though he’s not directly affected this time.
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(Refrain spoilers)
That does make sense to me, but the timing makes me somewhat doubtful. If that were the case, I would have liked Riki to at least mention a headache or something before dismissing the idea. The fact that the headache - and proceeding narcolepsy attack - only came after he’d decided not to mention or even consider it, makes me think that it was as punishment, like in Rin1, rather than from fear of losing someone, like in say, Mio’s route (when Mio and Midori switch places). It could be explained with a delay I guess, but I feel that if the writers were gonna do that, they’d at least have mentioned a headache or something earlier.
This bothered me from the first time I read the route. I agree that it’s unpleasant to think about, but I don’t think that’s an excuse to dismiss the idea off-hand. It was such a glaring decision on Riki’s behalf that it kind of made me guess rather quickly that the game would involve a lot of Riki’s growth.
And finally, being punished for not considering everything isn’t what I had in mind. I was thinking the punishment was because the idea actually did occur to him, but he dismissed it simply because he didn’t like the idea - he was running away from the possibility.
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TFW Komari’s talks about dreams and past memories and Riki immediately thinks of death 
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I think it was mainly about how the emotional change in Komari was too sudden. I agree that you can feel devastated based one
- If you’re a cat lover like Rin
- If it was your cat that you lost ( I read that, I hope wherever your cat went is a good place )
For Komari’s case, it was neither of the two so to Riki, it might have felt weird to see Komari find it unacceptable
Reading this, when Komari said :
She was telling Riki to look at more positive things ( I mean, it is true that he does say things that are self - effacing and focuses at negatives quite a few times )
Whereas when Riki said the same to Komari, he wanted her to be able to look at the sad things in the world instead of turning away from them.
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