The first episode of A Sign of Affection (Yubisaki to Renren) is titled “Yuki’s World.” It was released on January 6th, 2024. This new anime is about a young college girl (Yuki) who is completely hearing-impaired. It’s a romance anime targeted at the shoujo demographic.
I’ve looked forward to the start of this anime for several reasons. Firstly, I tend to like the shoujo genre if there are well-developed characters. Secondly, I am interested in seeing anime representation of people with disabilities. I have a disability as well. Mine is psychological, but I’m still keenly interested in characters with other types of handicaps. We might have more in common than I think.
I plan to write episode reviews for this new anime every few weeks. I’ll cover 2-3 episodes at a time. However, for this pilot episode, I decided to go ahead and write an episode review. Please enjoy my thoughts on the first installment of A Sign of Affection.
Part 1: Episode Recap
The first main scene shows 19-year-old Yuki on a train on the way home from college. When a foreign tourist tries to ask her for directions, Yuki scrambles to try to communicate her situation. Just then, a tall young man from the same college appears. He helps out the foreigner and then talks to Yuki, who can read his lips if he speaks slowly. The young man soon gets off the train – but not before giving Yuki a quick pat on the head as a goodbye.
Charmed by this encounter, Yuki asks her friend Rin about it. She knows Rin is in the same college club as that guy. Sure enough, Rin confirms that she loosely knows the man and that his name is Itsuomi. He works with cousin at a small bar. Since Rin has a mad crush on the cousin (who owns the bar), she suggests visiting the bar together. Yuki will come along to suppot Rin and for a chance to see Itsuomi again. Both girls plan to ask their crushes for their contact information.
At the bar, Rin and Yuki get to see Itsuomi and Oushi (the latter is the cousin and bar owner thaty Rin likes). Yuki is impressed to learn that Itsuomi is trilingual. He knows Japanese, English, and German. After Rin succeeds in getting Oushi’s phone number, the two girls head out for the night. Yuki was too anxious to ask for Itsuomi’s number. Much to her surprise, however, Itsuomi offers to walk her home since it’s dark and cold. Rin goes her own way, leaving Yuki and Itsuomi to get to know each other.
During the walk, Itsuomi hears a speeding motorbike and quickly pulls Yuki to his side to make sure she didn’t get hit by it. He holds on to her hand after that, which makes Yuki both flustered and strangely emboldened. She stops and finally asks for Itsuomi’s contact info. In reply, Itsuomi asks Yuki to teach him how to say “Yes” in sign language. Yuki is delighted that he’s willing to learn a sign already, even though it’s not necessary.
The two start texting each other as they prepare to part ways for the night. Suddenly, Yuki asks if Itsuomi thinks the world is large. The young man types, “Yes, it’s huge.” After a brief pause, he adds something along the lines of, “I want to see Yuki’s world.” This meaningful and romantic statement makes Yuki so insanely happy that she does a little dance of joy. Itsuomi finds it adorable and grins at her. So begins the love story of Yuki Itose and Itsuomi Nagi.
Part 2: Responses and Thoughts
The first episode was a great experience, making me optimistic that this will turn out to be a genuinely enjoyable anime. I have a few thoughts on art and audio, but before that, let me share some notes about the characters and episode events.
The scene on the train showed how the anime will handle dialogue with a hearing-impaired character. Most of the time, the audience can hear what’s happening. Sign language is sometimes used. Even it’s not being used, the screenplay is full of gestures and movements as the characters communicate. We constantly hear Yuki’s inner monologue. She also carries a tablet for writing/typing. (I’m not sure if Yuki is speech-impaired or to what degree, but we haven’t heard her speak out loud.)
Itsuomi was insensitive at first, getting into Yuki’s space and marveling at her novelty. He wasn’t used to interacting with someone with a disability. He probably never considered before how one would function without hearing. But you can tell Itsuomi has good intentions because a) he helped Yuki deal with the tourist, and 2) he purposefully made it easy for Yuki to read his lips after she implied it was difficult for her.
To me, Itsuomi already seems extremely interesting. He’s intelligent and curious, and has an unusual hobby of backpacking in the mountains. Though he isn’t trying to make anyone uncomfortable, Itsuomi is a very physical person. He is likely to get very close to you, pat your head, or touch your shoulder. Though he seemed more expressive and inquisitive on the train, Itsuomi is also cool-headed and quiet in general. Given his text to Yuki at the climax of the episode, he seems to be a bit of a romantic, too.
I like Yuki so far as well. Her inner monologue is introspective and rather poetic. (Or she wouldn’t keep going on about how love is like snow and such.) She carefully analyzes others and wonders about their perspectives. When Yuki likes someone, she wants to understand them and their world. Yuki is honest with her self-expression, always showing how she feels. Her dance of joy after Itsuomi’s text was too adorable to be legal.
Speaking of Yuki, I loved the moment when she starts to feel awkward and melancholy at the bar. She saw that Rin was explaining her disability to Oushi, reminding Yuki that she doesn’t quite fit in. She can’t hear the languages Itsuomi speaks, which is also a bit sad. I really felt for Yuki in this moment. The things we stuggle with are very different. Still, I understand the feeling of not really “getting” what’s happening around you, and/or being the odd one out.
In addition to the promising characters, I loved how this episode was so overwhelming “shoujo.” So many young romantics (girls and otherwise) squealed internally when Itsuomi pulled Yuki close to “save” her from the motorbike. Shoujo is so magical and sappy. Sometimes it’s over-the-top or dumb, but absolutely love it nonetheless. So far, A Sign of Affection’s shoujo vibes are highly enjoyable.
Now, let’s go over my thoughts on the audio and visual elements. The intro song is an easygoing, acoustic ballad – and I like it. It’s called “Yuki no Oto” (meaning “Sound of Snow”) by Novelbright. The instrumental music is nice and reminds me of Fruits Basket with the emotional piano bits.
The ending song is “Snowspring” by ChoQMay. I don’t really like the style of this song, but I do like the vocals. Speaking of voices, Sumire Morohoshi is the voice of Yuki. I became a fan of Miss Morohoshi after she played Emma in The Promised Neverland. It’s good to hear her acting again. I’m not too familiar with the rest of the cast so far.
The art and animation in general are fine. I especially love the visuals for the opening song. There is some stylization of the character’s faces – mostly eyes and lips – that I really like. The style makes the characters look a bit more mature than in standard anime. The color pallet is nice, though it’s slightly strange to see Yuki with bright pink hair when most other characters have more natural or commonly dyed shades.
The animation for sign language looks great, so I hope there’s a lot more of it in the episodes to come. My only complaint about the visuals so far is that the backgrounds and sets are extremely simple. It’s a bit distracting to me to see such bare-bones rooms and buildings. Otherwise, everything looks good.
That wraps up my thoughts on the pilot episode of this beautiful new anime, A Sign of Affection. As always, I really appreciate you guys for reading my work.
Thanks for reading~
PATREON
