English Dub Review: A Sign of Affection “What Kind of Voice?”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Yuki, Itsuomi, Kyoya, and Rin all go out on kinda sorta double date.

OUR TAKE

Things continue to progress between our A and B couples in a more casual setting, but we also get some signs of two branching triangles that may become problems later. As mentioned previously, there’s Oshi, Yuki’s childhood friend, who runs into her on a train to the hangout and feels oddly protective of the fact she didn’t tell him about it. This then leads to a bit of a confrontation between him and Itsuomi, essentially being the subtle equivalent of, “she’s busy bro”, which clearly pisses him off…but then I don’t really know what exactly he intends to do about it. It’s blindingly obvious at this point that Yuki and Itsuomi are on a collision course to Facebook official status, which we do get some further insight into as to what exactly they like about each other, but it’s more of the same, really. Yuki doesn’t have a lot of chances to learn more about the world because of her disability, while Itsuomi is well traveled but sees something fascinating in Yuki. This is apparently unique behavior for him, as his cousin Kyoya points out to Rin in a later scene, as Itsuomi is very driven on his goals to the point he often ends up losing interest in many women.

That leads to the other scorned love interest on the other end, Ema, who is clearly crushing on Itsuomi but is not even given the time of day. She spots the sign language books and is confused by them, but the preview for next time seems to hint that she’s gonna connect the dots about Yuki and start making a big fuss about all of this. Which is not something I see ending well for her at all, since she’s in a rivalry with a deaf girl who barely knows she exists. I fully expect to see several scenes in coming episodes where she does some cringy tactics to get Itsuomi to look her way that all end in failure. She doesn’t even have the kinda-not-really advantage of being a childhood friend that Oshi has, but even that isn’t gonna help HIM in the end because Yuki clearly is not into him that way, so Itsuomi doesn’t really have much to be worried about there. Then again, his journey might be at least somewhat interesting as Oshi comes to terms with feelings he may be unaware of, even if he can’t really do anything about it either way. Been there, buddy, been there.