English Dub Review: A Sign of Affection “Let me introduce you to my girlfriend; One Small Step”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

With Itsuomi away on a trip, Yuki processes being in her first romantic relationship. When he gets back, they kiss for the first time, followed by him introducing her to Shin, his mutual friend with Emma. In the next episode, Shin reflects on how he, Emma, and Itsuomi all went to High School together, and how he has loved Emma just about as long as she’s loved Itsuomi, but has held off on asking her out because he thought Itsuomi would eventually. Now that he’s with Yuki, Shin tries inviting Emma over to cut her hair to giver the bad news, but can’t bring himself to do it.

OUR TAKE

We’ve affectionately been given a double stuffing of A Sign of Affection this week, likely to make up for that inexplicable blank spot from a few weeks ago. The first of these is basically just about Yuki basking in the afterglow of a new relationship, as well as it being her first ever relationship, and with a nice slab of beef like Itsuomi at that. Given that this series basically revolves around them getting together, it makes sense that we’d get an episode just about them feeling great about being together now. Having been in a relationship myself, the honeymoon period can be a thrilling time where it feels like nothing is impossible and emotions are gushing out of every orifice!…or so I’m told, at least. These are just two nice people now romantically linked and making plans to do a bunch of stuff together. Kinda feels like you could just end the show here, right? A lot of romantic stories tend to wrap up right as the characters get together, but we’ve still got five episodes after this! Well, now that these two have cemented their Facebook official status, we get to deal with the reactions from not only the people who were pining after them, but also the people pining after the people pining after them!

Which leads us into talking about the other episode of this week, which focuses mainly on Shin. He’s been mainly in the background and being around Emma, the girl who has it down bad for Itsuomi. My first guess was honestly that he was just another pretty man design who was simply Emma’s platonic BFF, but we now know that he’s been in an unrequited love conga line with those two for several years now (can’t really call it a love triangle when the arrows are only pointed one way). We see how he came to fall for Emma but hold his feelings back to give her a chance with Itsuomi…but the guy simply wasn’t gonna bite that hook and just stayed single this whole time until meeting Yuki. It at least explains why Emma’s been so clingy and why he hasn’t just told her to piss off, but now that he’s officially off the market he was never really on, Emma’s gonna have to have her heart shattered one way or another. And if Shin’s not gonna do it, she’s gonna find out on her own. Which I assume we’ll see next week. Oh yeah, and Yuki also has Oshi, who’s gonna be feeling the pain at some point too. Maybe he and Emma can get together as revenge, haha.