Deafness Explored in Anime - A Sign of Affection (2024) and A Silent Voice (2016)
Deafness Explored in Anime - A Sign of Affection (2024) and A Silent Voice (2016)
A Sign of Affection (2024) is a very good romance series. (jp Yubisaki to Renren)
A Silent Voice (2016) is a great movie. (jp Eiga Koe no Katachi)
Both explore deafness in a very meaningful way.
Have you watched them? What were your experiences and thoughts on it?
My personal assessment:
A Sign of Affection starts great. Positive, vibrant, and meaningful and with depth, exploring deafness. At some point, I felt like it's kind of the same throughout (stylistically and the kind of things happening), but it never lost its continuous progression in fitting pace or its quality at least.
I've wanted to rewatch A Silent Voice for a while, which also has deafness as a central theme, and I remember it being great - albeit quite different to the aforementioned romance. It has more struggling themes, and is a movie rather than a series.
Both had very interesting, insightful, and respectful depictions of deafness, which certainly elevated them into something very good and unique.
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I'm going to be blunt. A Silent Voice is great. A Sign of Affection...doesn't do anything for me. I only watched a few eps. MC is too infantilized IMO. "Be shy and cute and multiple attractive dudes will put in massive amounts of effort to get to know you, overcome your special needs and be your crutch"
I love the depiction in Silent Voice where MC doesn't speak fluently but kind of grunts. But in A Sign of Affection her inner voice has perfect diction and that IMO completely takes away from the depiction of deafness. The anime director could have been more creative in how to express her inner "voice", if an inner dialogue was needed at all
I've thought about the clear inner voice during watching too. I found it acceptable, not that detrimental. Something different could have had more impact, but I didn't find it that bad.
It's certainly the easier way in terms of directing.