Attention to details is always nice.
Summary:
- A Sign of Affection’s animation pays a lot of attention to the characters’ hands.
- Each character signs in a different way.
- The way they sign depends on their personality.
A Sign of Affection (Yubisaki to Renren) has been surprising us a lot this season. Its main protagonist, Yuki, is a hearing-impaired student, but it doesn’t prevent her from living her best life.
This approach to a character’s disability is very refreshing, as 90% of series like to make it the main focus of drama and quickly get really dark and deep. But A Sign of Affection is not like that. The hearing impairment is in the story, and it’s paid a lot of attention to, but it doesn’t make Yuki miserable.
But that’s not the only thing about the anime representation that’s special. Yuki obviously uses sign language to communicate with other people, and fans have noticed some interesting details in the way the hand gestures are animated.
Each person signs differently
We’ve seen three characters sign so far, and they are Yuki, the main protagonist, Itsuomi, her love interest, and Oushi, her childhood friend. And all of them do it in different ways.
A Sign of Affection’s animation pays a lot of attention to the character's hands, and the animators really did a great job of visualizing sign language as best they could. But what you might have missed is that the way the characters sign depends on and reflects their personality.
Yuki is a very pure and wholesome person, she looks like the type of girl who is always there to support you, doesn’t like to break rules and can brighten up any day with her smile. And her signing is just like her: soft and silky.
Itsuomi is also a very kind and easygoing person. But he’s just started learning sign language to be able to communicate with Yuki and out of genuine interest, of course. So his signing seems unsure for now, as he’s not confident in what he’s doing.
It would be very interesting to see how Itsuomi’s signing will progress, by the way, because he gives the vibe of a confident person, so we think that the more he will learn, the steadier his signing will become.
Oushi is frank, assertive and even a little bit rude, and this is also reflected in his signing. His gestures look more harsh, compared to Yuki’s or Itsuomi’s. Even if you turn the volume off, you can tell when Oushi is annoyed or judgmental just by looking at his hands.