English Dub Review: A Sign of Affection “Promise”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Yuki begins her new job, while Shin finally works up the courage to tell Emma both that Itsuomi has a girlfriend AND his long kept feelings for her.

OUR TAKE

Second to last episode of the series and it’s about as eventful as you may have come to expect. There are technically other smaller things than the ones I described above, but…do they really matter? Does ANY of this matter at this point? There’s no tension left with the main couple, so now they have to get the drama from people who were pining after one of the main couple instead, which also turns out to not be very interesting. I barely liked Oushi to begin with, so now seeing him very clearly going after Yuki despite her being very happily committed to Itsuomi just kinda makes him look worse, especially because we’re not going to see any of that go anywhere with one episode remaining. Likewise, I didn’t like Emma AT ALL from the start, which goes to show how important her getting over Itsuomi is to the story, which is to say not very important AT ALL. Shin honestly deserves way better, but I guess he’s only going to get that after he finally gets to date her. Which also may never happen, but dammit they’ve put so much friggin focus on this subplot and I’d honestly be more satisfied if the series ended with Emma going on a killing spree.

Though I think my feelings on this, and how I’ve increasingly felt overall about this show since it started, is that I guess I’m just not the target demographic for this kind of story. Not that I dislike romance stories, there’s plenty I enjoy quite a lot, but the priorities of this show seem to pretty much just be about letting the main couple get together as soon as possible and then have the story shift to being how everyone in the surrounding social circles react while the main couple just does cute things indefinitely. Well, the focus on Yuki’s disability is also at the forefront, but it’s also not a barrier for Itsuomi because he’s just SUCH a great dude that he’s diving head first into learning how to sign, which is admirable, but still means there’s no real emotional journey for him or her to go on. And…fuck it, maybe there doesn’t need to be one. Maybe a story just about a healthy couple that love each other where one happens to be deaf and the other is THE PERFECT MAN is all the plot some people need at the end of the day. Anyway, one more episode to go before we’re done.