Alternative title(s): Yubisaki to Renren
Manga Adaptation by Ajia-do Animation Works
Streaming on Crunchyroll

Premise

A deaf college student meets a nice guy on the train. She recognizes him from school, and the two instantly fall for each other.

Jel’s verdict: Straightforward

This is the most straightforward (and straight) romance I’ve seen in awhile, and it’s… OK. It is a bit refreshing to see how quickly the main couple acknowledges their attraction to each other, but I feel like even that has become more common in anime these days. We don’t really have time to get to know them too much beyond they are nice people with nice friends, and that’s kind of it. The whole thing has a perfect, fictional romance gloss to it that isn’t necessarily bad, but is kind of off-putting for me personally.

There is one unique thing A Sign of Affection has going for it, and that’s the main girl, Yuki. She is deaf, and while I’m certainly no expert on the topic, it felt like they did their research going in to this. One example is Yuki’s ability to read lips, which is often used in media as a lazy workaround for deaf people to “hear” everything that people are saying. In this case though, we actually see Yuki misunderstand some words and she’s not able to keep up with a group of people talking across the room from her. I’m glad they are not just sweeping these things away for the sake of convenience, and it seems they are trying to give us good representation.

Overall, this episode was perfectly fine. The main characters seem like nice people and their interactions with each other are very sweet. I believe the rest of the series will be about the main guy, Itsuomi, learning sign language and the couple getting to know each other. Is that enough to carry an entire series? Maybe, but I’d like to see a little more first.

Artemis’ verdict: Cautiously Curious

Shoujo romances seem relatively few and far between these days, at least compared to all the action-adventure shounen fare and the usual isekai overcrowding, so I was bound to at least give this one a go, especially as we’re dealing with a college-age cast – even more of a rarity in anime adaptations. A Sign of Affection will likely appeal to many audiences for these reasons alone, but it also seems like a pretty sweet love story in its own right, and one I’ll likely be sticking with for the season. Will it reinvent the genre? I doubt it; deaf protagonist aside, there’s nothing particularly unique about its cast so far, and while more diverse representation is always welcome, that’s certainly not a personality trait in and of itself. I hope A Sign of Affection remembers that. While this was a cute start, it was also quite a slow one, even for a slice-of-life romantic drama, so I’m curious to see what else, if anything, the series can bring to the table.