Yuri on Ice, Born to Make History

Mochi Matcha and Karin-chan
Jan 1, 2017
9 min read

Mochi- In Green

Karin- In Blue

With the New Years and a great new start, it's time to look back on one of the few good things of 2016 (because it was mostly a lucid like nightmare of a year). It's the anime that should have been rightfully dubbed "Yaoi on Fire" but is called 'Yuri on Ice'.

With my close friend Karin-chan, we're going to go through all our pains and joys of this beautiful series. If you have yet to watch till the end, I'll give a short non-spoilers paragraph to read first. You can come back and check the rest when you're done. If you want to of course.

(non-spoiler talk)

Before I go in-depth, I have to talk about Yuri on Ice's genre. It's an anime about Ice Skating, so at it's core it could be considered a sports anime. I'm not saying that it isn't, just don't expect it to be all heart stopping action like the fast paced Kuroko no Basuke or the school spirit and team spirit Daiya no Ace and Haikyuu!! emphasizes. Ice Skating is a solo or duo based competition and in Yuri on Ice it focuses on the men's single ice skating grand prix. The series stars a grown sportsman, Katsuki Yuri, instead of the typical high school protagonist. It deals on how close age will affect possible retirement and facing the younger generation. By looking through the main character's eyes, it is more of an emotional journey of what step to take next. This anime also focuses heavily on relations formed between Yuri and his coach Victor Nikiforov, who doubles as his idol, and is overall an anime about how that bond develops from a coach-student relationship to a deeper bond. Together, they strive to reach the end goal of his first gold medal for his last competition as he feels like 24 is a good age to retire. I can't say anymore so as to take away from the whole experience one can get from watching it first hand. With that ends the non-spoiler segment.

(non-spoiler talk end)

Let's begin proper now with first impressions of the anime!

(First impressions are everything! Too bad it doesn't go quite as smoothly for the two main characters in the anime lol.)

Yuri on Ice is by no means by first sports anime and as a huge fan of the genre I went in with certain expectations. Well, I watched the trailers so I knew it wasn't going to have the normal team building dramas with senpais leaving next year but I still anticipated the rivals and friendships. Since, you know, it starts a single male competing in the single men's ice skating tournaments. The fujo-bait (gay pandering and fanservice) was something I anticipated too. Remembering Free! the anime, I was kind of worried as fanservice could go all ham and take away from the narrative or even be queerbaiting.

When I watched the first episode though, despite the end with a screenshot that I cannot show, the animation blew me away. Sure, it was full of shippy potential and pretty boys all around. But it was also filled with this really smooth animation and a potentially interesting protagonist with tons of character building ahead. Sure I would continue to wonder if it was queerbaiting for the next few episodes and the animation did not keep to the quality of episode one, but the emotions the characters give off and let you feel overflow as each episode goes on.

Yuri!!! On Ice is a figure skating anime with a Japanese male, Yuri Katsuki, as the main protagonist of the story. This show has been so popular that it broke Tumblr (^_^). How did I find this show? I was scrolling through the Tumblr, months ago, and stumbled to a lot of post talking about this show. Here are some of the comments I saw;

“Oooh it’s so gay!”

“They should call it Yaoi On Ice instead!”

Well, I guess you might have heard it somewhere too.

Me, as a fan of Shounen-Ai and Yaoi genre (boys love), was really intrigued to watch the show after seeing the reactions from multiple sources. I thought it was going to be similar to Free!, a sports anime about swimming that queer baited the audience a lot. Well! Good news for all of you, it is not queer baited!

I fell in love merely seconds after watching the first episode. The opening sequence was gorgeous, the music and lyrics were captivating, completed with the three character (Yuri Katsuki, Victor Nikiforov, Yuri Plisetsky) dancing on the ice.

The first episode started with Victor Nikiforov, Russian figure skater whom Yuri adores and looks up to, skating through the ice with a beautifully. The protagonist, Yuri, was narrating the scene. He was a huge fan of Victor since he was young, he even adopted a dog of the same breed as Victor’s (named Vicchan). So, we have a man idolising the prodigy, right?

Yuri Katsuki, the only Japanese skater that proceeds to the Grand Prix Final, lost big time and was in the last place. He fumbles his jumps and all, that’s why he felt that he failed horribly. Feeling incredibly depressed, he shuts himself inside a toilet stall to call his mother and cry his heart out. Someone kicked his door open, and Yuri recognised him as the Russian junior gold medalist, Yuri Plisetsky. The Russian Yuri accused him of being weak and dared him to retire instead, because he ‘didn’t want two Yuris in the same division’.

The scene progresses to Yuri, preparing to leave the arena, dragging a luggage in his hand. Suddenly, Victor Nikiforov and Yuri Plisetsky passed by next to him, and Yuri subconsciously stared at him. Victor caught his stare, and offered to take a photo together with him. The surprising thing, was that Yuri remained silent and left Victor instead.

That was how the three main character of the series met each other for the first time. So cold, right? Don’t worry! There will be tons of character developments from the three of them:3

(That's not even the whole cast!!)

(Everyone--)

It's hard to have a favourite in this anime. The cast is big. I mean really big even if you don't count the people outside of the ice skating tournaments. Everyone is memorable enough to make it hard though. Even if one character only gets their focus in a single episode, they leave a strong enough of an impact that you know what they're about and what they're skating for. Even if you originally didn't like a certain character, you'd end up at least respecting who they are (or convert to a fan of theirs entirely).

(What even is Chris)

(And then there's this douche)

-insert few episodes later-

(OMG This Cutie is basically Victor's Pichit And his possible bf is cute too :3c )

(Oh Damn... He's pretty human despite his rockstar persona before....And his fiancee is the MVP of episode 11~~)

Neither of the two above are my absolute favourite but I did grow to like them~

So while it was hard to choose, at the end of the day I guess if I had to pick, my favourite character would have to be Katsuki Yuri himself. Reason being is that he's pretty relatable. Through the course of the whole anime, we get to ride on Yuri's emotions and carry his worries and anxiety with him. Despite being an athlete he's not always in shape as he eats when stressed. He constantly feels like he's not good enough and tries to put others he cares about before himself. That said, he's strength, determination and love for Victor pulls him through. There's a lot of emotions and feeling I have about Yuri but I always find myself at a lost for words the more I think about his character. He's someone I grew to wish nothing but his success and got sucked in through the ride. Because you always feel like you relate to him you want him to win, want him to overcome everything and remain happily.

(He's so precious my heart hurts)

Oyaoya! It's my turn! Let's see.. who's my favourite character? I love every one of them just like my own child so it's hard to choose. I guess I’ll give this one to the small Russian punk-wannabe, Yuri Plisetsky. This child beat Victor’s world record for the Short Program (SP) on his first senior debut! His passion drives him to reach his goals, beating everyone else along the way.

As quoted by Otabek Altin in episode 10;

“Yuri Plisetsky has the eyes of a warrior.”

(Punk-wannabe?)

It is true, Yurio always strive to be the best among the rest, and never scared to take challenge. But the reason I like him as a character is not because of this, but because of his character development.

He went from an angry teen into a cuddly kitten!

Yurio isn’t forward regarding his feelings, he always give this image of a strong punk that will kill everyone. There are subtle hints about his true feelings he has. However, he could be soft at certain times.

(Yuri is flying mid-air...?)

(So precious!?!)

In this scene, we could see that Yurio was actually fond of Yuri. He memorised Yuri’s birthday and even asked his grandpa to cook a katsudon pirozkhi for Yuri. If he really disliked Yuri, he wouldn't remember his birthday, right? ^_^

He totally went from "I hope you retire, dumbass" to "Don't dare retire, you dumbass"

But, to be honest, every character in this anime is very lovable. I like how this show also breaks stereotypes, like how the Canadian is the shithead, or how the Russian was flirty as hell. They have good representation of POC too!

Not to mention Phichit!? The captain of the ship!? Who's a selfie expert!? Every character that appeared in this show is my favourite, hahaha. But the award goes to our fancy Yurio.

(Look at him!!)

(Captain of the ship!! SS Victuuri ^_^)

Before I go into what I enjoyed about Yuri on Ice, I do want to point out things that, while didn't deter my enjoyment still made me a little sad. I mentioned it before but the animation quality didn't maintain itself all they way through ice skating scenes and the budget seems to have been thrown into fanservicey emphasis.

(Compare episode 1 to like)

(Episode 6. Leo you okay?)

(The budget was splurged on scenes like this probably. Well, I cry and smile at the same time)

Well, I agree on this one. Yuri On Ice already has beautiful story telling, gorgeous characters and all, and I don't think I can pinpoint any flaws except for the funny animations. (Like, dude, Leo looks like a limp spaghetti or something).

Everything. I mean it. Even with all the random quality of animations, everything else about Yuri on Ice is absolutely wonderful. The characters and their individual growths, the "subtle"(-ish) romance of Victor's and Yuri's, and how all the final six rivals play off each other. I can't tell you what you yourself will love about it so I'd love to hear your expression of love for this anime~

Of course, if I had to highlight two things, it be the fact that the fanservice is not just that. It was the fact that it was really the development of the relationship despite not being in a shounen-ai or yaoi anime and done seriously... That made it so wonderful for me. All the way up till the kiss I was worried it was all just queerbaiting. Of course, it all went in a surprisingly nice direction and I screamed all the way.

The second thing is the big reveals of Victor's and Yurio's in episode 10 and 12 respectively that add a whole bunch for a rewatch value. You see, Yuri on Ice knows how to play around with character point of view. Since we follow Yuri, we tend to see things from his point of view. We believe everything he says. It's not until deep into the series we learn of his status as a somewhat unreliable narrator. It's only when we see other POVs we learn new things. That Victor fell in love with Yuri even before he was his coach and all his weird behaviour in earlier ones all making sense. Or that Yurio was Yuri's fan the whole time. Wow.

(Ep.10. This changes everything---)

(Ep 12. Introducing Yurio, Katsuki Yuri's closeted fan)

(In other news I will never stop rewatching and forever be dead because of this anime.)

My favorite thing about this show (beside the gayness) is how they represent other cultures and POC! As I said, this show broke various types of stereotypes, and I think this is very important. Like Otabek Altin, he's from Kazakhstan, and I don't think the mainstream media portray that part of the world before (correct me if I'm wrong), I like it especially because he came from Almaty, because I have a Kazak friend from that city. She said "Otabek" was actually a typical Kazak guy name ^_^.

(I will do it in pictures cause don't they means a thousand words)