A Sign of Affection – Anime – Recap and Review – Complete

A 2024 Japanese anime about a sheltered young deaf woman who meets a handsome, interesting, world-traveling guy.

You can watch the trailer here.

Country: Japan
Local Title: ゆびさきと恋々
Year Released: 2024
Number of Episodes: 12
Genre: Youth Romance

Main Voice Actors:

Sumire Morohoshi as Yuki Itose
Yu Miyazaki as Nagi Itsuomi

Pre-Recap Information:

Time to change things up a little and recap an anime! Because I’m petty that way.

I’ll admit my heyday of watching anime was a … few… years ago. Okay, I’ll be frank, I come from the dark ages. Back then we had to go to this building called Blockbuster. Once inside you had to search hard to find a tiny selection of 8 videotapes with titles you’d never heard of that inevitably turned out to be tentacle porn.

It really sucked.

Gone are those days! But I don’t watch as much anime these days, though I dabble in it from time to time.

This show got my attention because it’s firmly in my wheelhouse. You may have noticed that I like for Deaf characters in romance, with my recaps of Silent, On A Starry Night, and Moonlight Chicken. Here I finally get a romance where the woman is Deaf.

The story is shōjo (少女), so its target audience is young women. The male love interest is the stuff of my unreasonable adolescent fantasies. He’s mature and tough and worldly, but also kind and sweet with our heroine. The story isn’t particularly complex but it gets the important things right.

The animation is strong for an anime. It’s not visually stunning but the colors and textures are nice. It matches the look of the manga and creates nice emotional moments.

You can easily pick up a little JSL・日本手話 (日本＝nihon=japan, 手話＝shuwa=sign language) as you watch, so we can call it education as well.

If your inner High Schooler longs for a sweet, traditional romantic fantasy this could work for you. It’s what I wanted to find on the shelves of a video rental store a million years ago.

(And I am confident that at no point will it become tentacle porn.)

(The manga is available in English.)

You can read my final general review of the series including the ending here.

Recaps and Thoughts: