A Sign of Affection: Why do the characters have pronounced lips? Design decision, Explored

A Sign of Affection is one of the spotlight series of Winter Anime Season 2023 as it brings a different approach to a romance series. The series follows the story of a girl with hearing impairment who uses the lip movement of other people to understand what they are saying.

The series follows beautiful animation shots and stunning music pieces, but a highlight in this series confuses fans. The lips of most of the characters are given a pronounced look, which doesn't fit the overall look of the series.

The reason behind this design choice relates to the condition of the female protagonist of the series. It makes the lips more realistic and their movement more meaningful, thus helping the female lead of this series understand what others are saying.

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Exploring the reason behind the pronounced lips of characters in A Sign of Affection

Nagi (left) and Shin (right) as seen in A Sign of Affection (Image via Ajia-do)

One of the unique design details of A Sign of Affection anime series is the pronounced lip art style that the production team has adapted. The structure is pretty different from the regular design of lips animated in anime because it has a more detailed design.

Introducing such a realistic lip design structure might be due to Yuki's hearing impairment. As she reads the lips of others to know what they are saying, the anime production team pronounced the overall lip structure of the characters so that their movement looks as close to reality as possible.

'A Sign of Affection' is a romance anime series that follows the story of Yuki, a university student with a hearing impairment (who cannot hear). She knows how to use sign language, but she also resorts to noticing the lip movement of others to know what they are saying.

However, due to her impairment, she hasn't made many friends, and her only friend is Rin, a classmate. On her way home one day, she meets Nagi, a silver-haired guy who shows interest in her sign language and how she can read the lips of others.

As days pass, Yuki and Nagi interact more than ever, and she learns that Nagi knows many languages other than Japanese. He is showing the same interest in Yuki's sign language, but is there something else Nagi is interested in besides her language?

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The impact of the art style as compared to other animes

Kou (left) and Gojo (right) as seen in anime (image via Production I. G & CloverWork)

During the speech, the shape of the lips matters as this makes the words come out more transparent. If a person tries to speak without making the natural shape of their lips during speech, the words that come out of their mouth will be crumbled.

The simplified design of lips shown in most anime series doesn't have this capability because this design is limited to making only a few movements. So, the lip design in A Sign of Affection makes more sense as they adapted the story of a girl with a hearing impairment.

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Final thoughts

Lip reading is now considered a study and is taught to people who are born with congenital (by birth) deafness or people who face this issue during the progression of their lives.

Another reason A Sign of Affection anime series paid such close attention to lip designs might be for the people who cannot hear and might want to enjoy the series like an average person. But all of these are just speculations because nothing has been revealed officially.