Kissaki

Do you drink from the middle, with tea running down to the left and of your mouth?

Or do you rotate it and drink from one of those bumps, feeling like you're drinking straight from a teapot or tea pourer, in an uncomfortable off angle?

Fans created fan content and sent it addressed to voice actor David Wald to Crunchyroll. Instead of forwarding, they opened the package and put the stuff on a freebies table for employees to take.

Dear friends: if you sent me anything care of Funimation or Crunchyroll in the last 5 years, I apologize, I didn’t get it. I learned yesterday that @Crunchyroll opened my private mail, threw away your letters, and passed out any included items to their staff.

Dear fellow workers at @Crunchyroll - below is a photo of the complete contents of one of the packages addressed to me that was opened and distributed to employees. If you ended up in possession of any of it, I would very much like it returned to me.

According to his tweets, he received two items that were still on the freebies table.

A follow-up tweet of his voices further, broader dissatisfaction:

Me, thinking: “…Jeez, it’s a good thing I didn’t tell them about the gay discrimination. Or the medical discrimination. Or the union busting. Or the continuous culture of fear. Or the hostile workplace environment, or…”

I can't navigate or see Twitter unfortunately, but apparently; The disappointed fans commented as well. And other voice actors also vented some of their frustrations in interacting with Crunchyroll.

Episode one has great action scenes and great peaceful-family-life with foreshadowing introduction - in great production quality. To the point where I can point to that first episode as great examples of action and mood-setting life-like family life in anime.

Unfortunately, it quickly goes downhill - for me at least - and by episodes 6 and 8 onwards becomes a CGI mech story with silly over-the-top villains and characters.

I was so excited and hopeful after episode one. Unfortunate.

I sat through the rest of it, which was at times worthwhile, but I skipped through the end which was predictable and more of the same in a style I didn't like.

I can certainly recommend checking episode 1 out for its production quality.

Have you watched it? How did you find it?

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.