This is the second sports anime I’ve watched. The first was Free. I wanted to share my thoughts so this is my first review on this site.
Spoilers. I suggest watching all 12 episodes before reading my review.
Plot:
It’s a Sports Anime/ Romantic Comedy about a young man named Yuri Katsuki. He’s a 23 year old professional figure skater who thinks he sucks (made it to the Grand Prix but whatever), and is therefore contemplating retiring. However, his idol Victor Nikiforov, a 27 year old enigmatic goofball and five time world champion, shows up out of nowhere and offers to coach him. This begins his second
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chance battle for gold. However, he's up against anxiety, other well trained skaters, and Yuri (Yurio) Plisetsky, a 15 year old prodigy . You’ve seen this story before,but as the saying goes it’s not the destination but the journey. Also there's an adult cast and no high school setting?! What have I done to deserve this bounty?
Characters:
Pros-
Yuri is our protagonist and main (unreliable) narrator. He’s very relatable, likable, and adorably innocent. His anxiety was frustrating, but realistic. It didn’t just suddenly disappear in eight months. His struggle with it was constant the entire show. The biggest enemy in the series is his low self-esteem, and his journey is to manage it so that the great skater within him can finally come out.
Cons-
Yuri is to codependent on Victor. It got to the point that I was asking does he even like skating for himself or does he only like it because Victor does? He’s very obsessed with him. He was like this before Victor officially entered his life, and it just intensified from there. It also bothered me that his town, family, and friend’s lifelong support was treated like chop liver. You were definitely all alone there Yuri. No support whatsoever until Victor fell from the heavens.
Pros-
Victor is the deuteragonist,Yuri’s coach,and love interest. He has a very charismatic and playful personality. He can be perceptive and serious, but his default is to be a child in a man’s body. It’s impossible to dislike him.
Cons-
As far as overall depth goes there's only crumbs to be found with him. I want more than the tiniest peek behind the curtain, and considering he's the second lead we should have gotten that. Victor's just not a fully realized character. His sole purpose is to seduce the pork cutlet bowl out of Yuri’s pants. If other people didn’t see and interact with him I would be convinced he was a figment of Yuri’s imagination.
Pros-
Yurio rounds out the mains as the tritagonist. He’s the defacto next Victor of the skating world. I like watching him skate (agape mostly), and he can be funny. Yea, that’s all I got.
Cons-
His personality can only be defined as a violent, angry asshole. He’s a nasty piece of work. His disgusting behavior is either ignored or played for laughs. The one time a character genuinely called him to task the scene was over before it truly began. I was not happy.
Pros-
It was nice that the side characters each had their own distinct personalities.
Cons-
They took away too much screen time from Yuri and Victor. The sides were likable in their own right, but I just didn’t care about them. However, I had to put up with their presence for long, boring, and repetitive skating sequences. Honestly, if it wasn’t the two Yuri’s skating I pretty much zoned out.
Romance:
Pros-
Shh, don’t tell anyone but our main couple they’re …two guys. Let’s be real this is the strongest reason this show was watched. They're both very likable, and have great chemistry. Their interactions were charming, tender, heartwarming, and funny. I rooted for them to get a happy ending. Their story is a nice template for romantic arcs.
Cons-
The overall execution is timidly done.
The only kiss in the series is very quick and censored. An engagement is treated in an oddly humorous and escape clause like manner.They have a fifties sitcom sleeping situation. They're a couple right? Why are they sleeping in separate beds? Also for two people who are supposedly together there's curiously an awful lot of tease and switch scenes.
Biggest skater on the planet engaged? Apparently the world's just not going to talk about that. Fiancé? What’s that? A side character gets to say girlfriend and fiancé. Another gets to visibly kiss his ex-girlfriend in photos and say that he loves her. What’s different about their relationship and our main’s?
Their moments are severely mired in skater rhetoric. There’s no frank discussion about their feelings toward each other at all.Their coupledom exists in a strange bubble.There's no concrete acknowledgement of its existence.Not even from them.
Their romantic and professional relationship is treated like they’re one and the same, and the writers seem afraid to detangle the two. They won't fully commit to this utopia. Simply put any occasion that could possibly cement their relationship is meshed into a coach/student excuse or goes to wonderland.
This peculiar coyness is allowed to permeate,but nudity, raunchiness,and people letting their bodily fluids lose on the ice is apparently a-okay.
Furthermore there are pacing/off screen issues that make their moments have a did I miss something air to them.
A utopia doesn’t mean push things under the rug. It's fine that the negatives don’t exist in this world. However, why are the positives covered with skating excuses,and thrown down the rabbit hole. Their romance is executed like an oddly vague fanfiction. The biggest outrage is it doesn’t have to be. Despite thoughts to the contrary there's no network/media censorship for this show. The odd censoring is creator inflicted. Why?
Animation:
Pros-
The more adult looking art style worked well for the show. I also liked most of the character designs, and very much appreciated that everyone looked like a different person. Also when the show didn’t look like it was a having a budget crisis it could be very pretty and smooth looking. Characters would look really well drawn, and the choreography for the skating wouldn’t look like a bunch of choppy arms and legs flailing about like a deformed baby walrus. Basically when the animation was nice the skating would actually look like a beautiful dance as it should. Also the opening has the three mains show off their skating. It was repetitive, but nice to see. I didn’t particular care for the art style though.
Also from a personal standpoint I liked the contrast of Yuri’s design.Eros Yuri and Regular Yuri are both him. He was nerdy looking but still attractive. The show didn’t make this some mutually exclusive thing.
Cons-
I sometimes asked myself where the budget was going. There were a good helping of off model shots for the characters and skating routines, frame rate issues, and general texture weirdness etc. Basically too much choppiness, stiffness, and general derp plagued this show. It didn’t look like an abomination, and I wouldn’t watch 12 episodes of a show that looked like it crawled out of the abyss, but the graphical abilities of the overall series were very inconsistent both on and off the ice.
Also red lines kept appearing on the characters noses. I noticed this on Victor and Yurio the most, and it was a distracting design choice. There were also sometimes black lines on the characters necks and foreheads. This was also an artistic choice that was not required.
Skating Know How:
The show was not made for the layman. Basically unless you already have some skating knowledge get ready to be loss. If there’s a difference between quads and quads or regular jumps and quads the show most certainly didn’t care to share.The basics of the skating techniques weren't explained in any real depth in the show itself.
Diversity:
It’s an international stage and yet everyone is white. Yuri himself is the most Caucasian looking ‘Japanese’ man I've ever seen. His ‘Japanese’ family, friends, and peers all look very white as well. Some people will try to do mental gymnastics,but every anime has this precise problem. There’s a word for it, but I’ll leave it to myself.
Music:
Some of the the skaters had some admirable pieces, and the background music was nice to. The skating standouts would be Yuri on Ice and Agape. On Ice is basically Yuri’s character in music form, and it’s a very beautiful, regal piece. Agape is hauntingly pleasing. It’s basically lyrical innocence. This piece is played while Yurio skates, and it almost makes you forget he’s the biggest bastard on the show. Almost.
History Maker is the opening, and it goes well with the theme of the show, but I personally didn’t like it.
You Only Live Once is the ending music. It has a nice,catchy electronic beat to it that also fits the theme of the show.
Comedy:
The show is very comedic in nature, and the jovial tone fit the overall narrative,but I do wish it was more serious than what was presented.
Voice Work:
I’m a dub watcher and this was done by one of my favorite companies Funimation. They did some brilliant work here. Standouts of course are the three mains. I adored Yuri's voice. It was perfect for him. Yurio's was also well chosen, and it fit him to a tee. Lastly, Victor’s voice is my personal favorite. Like yurio he has a russian accent, and it was this pleasing mixture of sensual and carefree. I loved it.
Ending:
It was odd. There was a lot of deus ex machina, character regressions, pacing issues, and miscommunication melodrama etc. Basically the last two episodes (12 especially) felt like they were narratively disconnected from the episodes that came before it. Instead of making a strong series finale they decided to milkage bait a second season.
In Summary:
The show overall has some execution issues, but despite that I enjoyed the series. I’m on my third and final rewatch after all. I’ve also gotten two others to view YOI, and they loved it as well. Basically what the show does well it does very well, and the cons didn’t take away from that. Therefore it ultimately gets an 8 from me.
Jan 30, 2017
Yuri!!! on Ice
(Anime)
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This is the second sports anime I’ve watched. The first was Free. I wanted to share my thoughts so this is my first review on this site.
Spoilers. I suggest watching all 12 episodes before reading my review. Plot: It’s a Sports Anime/ Romantic Comedy about a young man named Yuri Katsuki. He’s a 23 year old professional figure skater who thinks he sucks (made it to the Grand Prix but whatever), and is therefore contemplating retiring. However, his idol Victor Nikiforov, a 27 year old enigmatic goofball and five time world champion, shows up out of nowhere and offers to coach him. This begins his second ... |
