A Sign of Affection revolves around Yuki Itose (Sumire Morohoshi), a deaf woman in college. While riding the train home one day, Yuki is approached by a foreigner for directions. The man is later revealed to speak Japanese just fine though Yuki doesn’t realize this and the man doesn’t know about her hearing impairment. Fortunately, a student from Yuki’s university, Itsuomi Nagi (Yu Miyazaki), steps in to help the foreigner in Yuki’s stead. From there, Yuki develops an interest in Nagi.
Yuki then learns from best friend Rin Fujishiro (Kaede Hondo) that Nagi works at a restaurant run by his cousin Kyoya (Ryota Osaka), whom Rin has a crush on. The two ladies decide to visit the restaurant to get their respective crush’s contact information. Rin has little to no problem getting Kyoya’s info though Yuki hesitates to ask Nagi for his, fearing a written request would come across as forceful. Thanks to Rin however, Nagi walks Yuki to the nearest train station and the two share their info with each other.
With the asterisk that I’m a hearing person and therefore not the best person who can comment on the portrayal of deaf characters, I like how the premiere depicts Yuki’s deafness. Moments such as her struggle to inform the foreigner that she can’t understand him and her self-consciousness over how she comes across to people with her means of communication as well as the workarounds to those moments do a good job helping us relate with Yuki, even if we don’t necessarily have the same exact condition as her. There’s good buildup to the revelation of Yuki’s deafness, in which the show muffles the sounds and obscures the character’s hearing aids with her hair. The episode strikes a good balance between the inner monologue voiced by Morohoshi and Yuki’s use of writing, sign language, and reading lips to communicate; allowing you to know what Yuki is thinking at the moment without taking attention away from a major part of her character. I do find a little strange how sparingly Yuki uses sign language in this episode though I get that she wouldn’t use it if the person she’s talking to doesn’t understand it.
One thing that immediately stood out to me about Nagi is how much he ignores personal space. There’s a couple of scenes where he puts his hand on Yuki’s head, either to get her attention or just as a simple sign of friendliness. I don’t know, it seems a bit too forward considering that these two are just getting to know each other. The show establishes that Nagi travels a lot and interacts with a lot of people form around the world so this level of physical contact isn’t that surprising. Of course, the better excuse is Yuki being okay with it, which appears to be the case barring some initial astonishment. If Yuki doesn’t feel hurt by Nagi being so forward and she’s fine with it, then whatever.
Putting that aside, the show makes a good case for Nagi’s own interest in Yuki. The guy travels a bunch and has seen a larger world than Yuki has so the latter thinks he wouldn’t bother with someone like her. If anything however, Nagi’s travels makes him interested to know all the different people in the world and that curiosity extends over to Yuki. The ending is a very wholesome example of this, where Nagi asks Yuki how to sign a certain phrase and he later tells her via text that he would like to be invited into her world. He genuinely wants to know more about Yuki.
I didn’t really investigate the Winter 2024 lineup beforehand but A Sign of Affection was one show I was thinking of covering in episode reviews, before the season even began. The manga the show is based on appeared to be well regarded and the premise sounded very charming to me. I’d like to watch one or two more episodes before I make a final decision. Regardless of that, this premiere is one of my favorite this season and I hope the rest of the show is just as good. This has pretty high potential to being a very enjoyable and very cute romance show.
Watch A Sign of Affection on Crunchyroll
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