Anime Lectio: A Sign of Affection

                                                           1. Why do Anime Lectio? 

Anime Lectio is a time for us to stop and take a breath. Between work, activities, family life, and social media, our minds are always moving. We rarely take time to contemplate and ask, why am I watching this anime? What’s the point of all this? And, how is this making me feel? 

2. Put away all distractions 

(phones, work, etc.)

We are so enslaved to things that stimulate our minds. Let this be a moment for us to free our minds, look inside of ourselves, and be at peace.

3. Deep Breathing

Take several deep breaths. Let your mind relax. If you’ve had any questions, desires, or struggles that you’ve been hiding or stuffing away, let them rise up to the surface. 

4. Open yourself to God’s Presence

Remember God places all our thoughts and desires inside of us, and He uses them to draw us closer to Himself. God gives us a community to help us understand who we are and what He is calling us to do. The faces of other people you know and don't know are like signs of God’s presence.  

5. Think About What’s on Your Mind in Relation to the Anime

Think about what’s been on your mind in relation to the anime.  The following is an example of such thoughts written by me. 

Falling in love is something that everyone does in their own way based on what people want and need. This depends on who you are, what you do, and other things like why and how you do it. What's also important in any relationship, whether that be a relationship between two people, which is what romance anime, and romance in anime, usually focuses on, or a relationship between more than two people (usual examples are some kind of community/family - this can be seen in anime too), is all of the people involved. All relationships take more than one person to make it work. An example of this can be seen in the anime series A Sign of Affection.

6. Brief and written explanation of the anime

Pay attention to how the brief and written explanation of the anime seen on this blog, or seeing the anime for yourself since that's better than any explanation, might “speak” to you or shed light on the things that have been on your minds.

A deaf girl falls in love with a guy she goes to college with who is a friend of one of the deaf girl's friends. Despite the fact that the guy is trilingual, and likes to travel a lot, he doesn't know how to really interact with the deaf girl until he starts learning sign language. Since the guy is interested in learning other languages, as well as about other people, and in turn himself, which is why he likes to travel a lot, the deaf girl figures he's just learning sign language to learn another language. However, it becomes clear to the deaf girl that the guy isn't just interested in learning sign language just to learn another language. Besides, spending time with the deaf girl in a more serious kind of relationship is how he can learn more about her, as well as himself, which doesn't just happen by traveling the world, even though he still likes to do that and the deaf girl wants to do that with him. All of this involves their other friends too, who support their relationship in their own ways while also working on their own relationships.

7.  Reflect on the anime

Has this brief and written explanation of the anime shed any light on what's been on your minds?  The following is an example of a reflection on the anime from me.

I first found out about A Sign of Affection by reading the manga. I came across the manga when looking through the selection of manga that was available at the time I checked it out on Crunchyroll (around the time of my Manga Lectio post about the series). Not only was it a short series (at the time anyway - don't know how far it is now), but it also involved romance, which is something that interests me a lot when dealing with anime and manga, as well as how long it is. While anime does interest me more than manga for several reasons that involve their obvious differences (basically the difference between the book and a movie based on the book), both are similar in the sense of the story, which in this case is about falling in love based on your wants and needs and learning more about the relationship you are in due to falling in love.

8. Final Prayer

Please voice any prayer intentions for friends, family, or people around the world that relate to this anime.  The following is an example written by me.

Let us pray that we can take the time to understand the relationships that we end up in due to falling in love, starting with the understandings that any relationship involves at least two people and that all relationships are different based on wants and needs.