English Dub Review: A Sign of Affection “I Don’t Want to Leave”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Itsuomi, Yuki, Kyoya, and Rin go on a nature walk, where Kyoya and Rin finally confess their feelings for each other. Later, Itsuomi and Rin hang out at his place, but Oushi’s friend spots them and tells him, though he pretends it doesn’t bother him.

OUR TAKE

We’ve established the main couple of Yuki and Itsuomi, and it looks like we’re not going to do much more with Emma and Shin, so I guess the next thing to take care of is finally hook up the B couple of Kyoya and Rin. Much like with the main couple, there wasn’t really much in the way of tension regarding whether they were going to get together, which is more or less fine. Not every romantic story has to necessarily be a “will they, won’t they”, but the romantic plots have been basically separated into “they’re gonna” and “never gonna happen and we gotta see them suffer for it”. The former feels like a drawn out formality while the latter just feels weirdly mean in a way. Thankfully this week is mostly just about that drawn out formality but it’s still at least cute to watch, which I guess was the point. Kyoya is practically a nothing character but Rin has been drooling over him since the beginning of the series, so it’s nice she gets a win. They’re definitely the more conventional couple of the two, seeing as neither of them are disabled, so there’s no major hurdles for them to worry about.

And thankfully they don’t have to worry about other people who were pining after the two of them taking up screen time licking their wounds after a rejection. Well, we do have a co-worker guy who was hitting on Rin, but he seems more like a device to get the ball rolling anyway. So congrats Rin, you made the brave choice to pick one nothing dude over a different nothing dude. But speaking of taking up screen time, the end of this episode basically sets us up to give Oushi, Yuki’s childhood friend, a whole episode to just cope and seethe about how he never got with her despite liking her for so long. I’m sure that’ll be a fine episode on its own, but I also can’t say I’m all that excited about it. Itsuomi and Rin are, at least so far, doing perfectly well now that they’re together, so what’s this story really heading towards anymore? I don’t need to see them at risk of breaking up or anything but it would be nice to see them face SOME challenges. Not necessarily ones relating to her deafness, but…shit, SOMETHING. With three episodes left, who knows if we’ll even get that.