“A Sign of Affection,” Volume 1, is a sensationally crafted first installment of a new shojo manga series. I honestly read more action/fantasy shounen and josei titles than romance—let alone shojo romance—as a woman. However, “A Sign of Affection,” Volume 1, catches my eyes and my heart with its all encompassing storytelling and its relationship content. The relationship dynamics check all the right boxes for me. Readers who appreciate and love the “show, don’t tell” mark of mature storytelling will love how “A Sign of Affection” takes advantage of commonalities of whole communication between Sign Language and the shojo manga genre. Both require attention to more than just spoke/sign shape dialogue in order to “hear” everything being communicated. The mangaka duo state how these commonalities were an inspiration—and portraying the sign language, a challenge—they wanted to tackle in an interview published in this volume. You can eat a delicious dish in the first bite. Then start to take your time to notice the individual ingredients you taste, techniques used on those ingredients, and how they all come together in your eating experience. Volume 1 of A Sign of Affection is that kind of dish, that kind of story. The pacing of the story and the relationship progression feels just right even with multiple re-reads. Everything set up in Volume 1 gets expanded upon in future volumes, both for our main couple’s relationship journey and potential other couples (and couple challenges). And to address the common shojo story pattern: no, the wait for girlfriend-boyfriend status will not drag on for a long time like other popular shojo anime (and their manga originals). The pacing and timing for that—while in later volumes of “A Sign of Affection”—is quite nice too.

Such a beautiful story can’t wait for more chapters