At this year’s Kodansha House, we had the amazing opportunity to speak with mangaka duo suu Morishita about all things A Sign of Affection. Now in its twelfth volume, the imaginative series follows Yuki, a college student who’s into friends and fashion — and also happens to be deaf. A chance meeting on a train leads to a serious crush for Yuki, launching the start of a well crafted romance story. In addition to A Sign of Affection, suu Morishita is known for other shojo series including Shortcake Cake and Like a Butterfly. The duo includes Makiro-sensei, the story writer, and Nachiyan-sensei, the illustrator. Alongside their work being showcased as part of Kodansha House’s activations, the two were kind enough to speak with me about coming up with the ideas for A Sign of Affection, different aspects of its story and characters, how they originally met and starting working with one another, and many things that make the story so grounded and great.
Portions of this interview have been lightly edited for clarity.
Q: What originally inspired the choice to create a manga centered around a person with hearing loss who communicates via sign language? Were there any real world inspirations or influences?
Makiro-sensei: This is actually a pretty frequently asked question. When we went to Germany we had answered pretty elaborately on why we chose this theme. I thought it was an easy question, but after I came from that trip to Germany I felt like there was a lot more to it. There were many points in our lives that led to this decision. For example, I had a neighbor who was hard of hearing. There was also a school for the deaf nearby in my neighborhood. I saw many people talking and having conversations and signing. When I saw that, it gave me great inspiration. How cool is it to speak in this way? Sign language is a really cool language. That was always in my mind. However, at a point in our career, we were switching to a new publisher. We had a new editor, and they asked me, what do you want your next manga to be about? Both of us were thinking. We were both lying down on the bed like this (mimics relaxing on a bed with arms folded behind the head), “What should we write about?” Nachiyan-sensei actually said to me, “What about the sign language?” And she said, “Yeah, I want to do that.” Because this was a time in our life that was really important. When we switched to a new publisher, we felt like we were ready to take on a new challenge. This is a subject that was worthy of taking on as a challenge.
Q: Did any major aspects of the work change from the time when you first thought of it to when it began being published?
Makiro-sensei: For the story there hadn’t been that much of a change. [To Nachiyan-sensei] Do you have anything for illustration?
Nachiyan-sensei: One of the challenges that came with the series is how to draw hands. In manga, this is one of the most difficult things to draw. In fact, a lot of creators have such difficulty drawing hands. So I knew this was going to be a challenge for me. But I think I became better at it as the series went on.
Makiro-sensei: I think the biggest driver of this series is the characters. If those characters are solid as a foundation, then the communication would naturally flow from there. So it’s really important to have very solid characters.
Q: Speaking of characters, when it came to deciding the personalities of main characters like Yuki and Itsuomi, how did you come up with them? Did characters like that come prior to the story, or did you think of the story first?
Makiro-sensei: One of the main things that I started out with to build out the characters was that Yuki was somebody who we feel very close to and that therefore it feels like having a disability is quite normal. When you’re somebody with a disability, you’re still into things like idols, or cute fashion that you can buy for really cheap, or good food. Those are the kind of things we all relate to. One of the things I wanted to convey through this character is how normal would it be to live when you have a disability.
Q: Since Yuki has no speech bubbles, even more focus goes into the non verbal elements of communication. Do you feel like focusing on a character like her enhanced your art and caused you to pay more attention to other characteristics?
Nachiyan-sensei: One of the main things that I focus on when I’m illustrating the characters is where the characters are looking. Because in order to understand sign language, you have to be able to see that person. So it is crucial to, in the manga, show that a character is seeing that person. When we were writing the scripts in the early stage, there was direction coming from Makiro-sensei. In this scene, this character is not looking at that person. So this is actually a very crucial part of the expression in this series.
Q: When it comes to working as a duo, what are some unique experiences or requirements that come from working as two people rather than an individual?
Makiro-sensei: I honestly feel no demerit from it, working together. When we were coming up as a newcomer artist, it was the most difficult time when we were trying to submit a new story to the publisher to find a series that could be serialized. That was a really long and difficult time. But when we are working together, we can go through that together as well. After we started the series together, we share those weights together, and we can also travel together. We feel quite natural to work in this way. We complement each other very well. We don’t hold ourselves back. This is how we like to work together.
Q: How did you two originally meet and decide to work together?
suu Morishita: [Note: the translated answer includes both authors’ responses] We met back when we were high school students. We were both aspiring manga artists at that time. We were working on separate manga. After graduating from high school, we went our separate ways. We got married, and our life was pretty stable. We had extra time on our hands. Around that time, Nachiyan-sensei read the manga Bakuman, which is about two manga artists working together to make a manga. She approached me and said, “Do you want to work on a manga together?” Honestly, it started out as a commemorative act. It would give us a great memory to work on a manga together. Since we worked on it, let’s submit it together. And that’s actually how we started our career as manga artists.
Q: Which scene in the series was the most emotional for you to create?
Makiro-sensei: To begin with, I feel like the story is very much focused on the emotion of the characters in the series. Because that’s such a central focus of the series, I feel like everything is very emotional. It’s very hard to just pick one scene.
Nachiyan-sensei: For the art, I feel the emotions the characters are feeling. Every time it’s a very emotional scene, I feel that emotion as well. And it’s really hard to say which one had the biggest impact on me.
Q: So, one thing I’m very curious about, the series deals with a lot of more realistic and mature elements of a relationship, like moving in together, saving money, staying in contact while far apart from each other. What led you to focus on those layers of a relationship?
Makiro-sensei: Because the main character of the series has a disability, in order to write about her life, I feel like the story needs to be grounded to reality. It cannot be unrealistic. And I also feel like it has to do with the fact that they’re college students in the setting. We couldn’t make the story about high school students because if they’re high school students, we cannot draw any scenes of them drinking alcohol.
Q: Which character is closest to your own personality?
Nachiyan-sensei: I feel like she’s Yuki.
Makiro-sensei: I feel like she’s Rin.
Q: What kinds of scenes in general were the most challenging to write or to draw?
Nachiyan-sensei: For me, it is the love scene. I really don’t want to make it into something raunchy or vulgar. I really want to take some time to make it very romantic and beautiful. So I’m very cautious around it.
Makiro-sensei: For me it was the scene where Yuki and Itsuomi start to live together. But before that, they went to go meet Yuki’s parents. And there, Itsuomi realizes that her parents don’t use sign language. And there are some reasons why. It’s because in families where they use sign language, the child with a disability becomes not so great at reading lips. So they were really trying to enforce her being able to read lips. And that was the environment that they were creating. However, depending on how I convey this, it could be taken very negatively by the readers. And I honestly didn’t want to hurt anybody or give a negative impression on families with deaf members or their stance in their conditions. So I was very nervous to write the story and the scene. And I was very careful with it.
We’d like to thank suu Morishita for taking the time to speak with us about A Sign of Affection and give some fantastic insight and perspective into both of their creative processes and histories. We’d also like to thank Kodansha for putting on such an exciting event with Kodansha House and bringing creators to New York City. Alongside Kodansha House, you can head over to the Kodansha Reader Portal to activate your free account and read A Sign of Affection Vol 1-3 for free through October 19th 2025. You can learn more about Kodansha House on their official website.
A Sign of Affection © suu Morishita/KODANSHA LTD.
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