Anime Analysis: Yuri on Ice

(I had this draft since December but I'm finishing/posting it now because... procrastination.)

Considering I've only ever properly watched Free!, Haikyuu and only a few random episodes of other sports anime, I am clearly not the go-to expert of the genre.

But even so, Yuri on Ice was... unlike all the sports anime I've ever seen.

I was pretty hyped for this show months before it aired, ever since I saw the promotional clips on the Internet. Figure skating, fluid animation and pretty boys! What could possibly go wrong?

The end result was slightly different from what I had imagined.

Synopsis: (from MyAnimelist)

Reeling from his crushing defeat at the Grand Prix Finale, Yuri Katsuki, once Japan's most promising figure skater, returns to his family home to assess his options for the future. At age 23, Yuri's window for success in skating is closing rapidly, and his love of pork cutlets and aptitude for gaining weight are not helping either.

However, Yuri finds himself in the spotlight when a video of him performing a routine previously executed by five-time world champion, Victor Nikiforov, suddenly goes viral. In fact, Victor himself abruptly appears at Yuri's house and offers to be his mentor. As one of his biggest fans, Yuri eagerly accepts, kicking off his journey to make it back onto the world stage. But the competition is fierce, as the rising star from Russia, Yuri Plisetsky, is relentlessly determined to defeat Yuri and win back Victor's tutelage.

TL;DR review summary: It Was Okay - it had good ideas, but lackluster execution.

Here's my take on the entire show, in parts. Warning: ALL OF THE SPOILERS.

The Narrative:

The overall synopsis sounds pretty great actually, but unfortunately, the narrative structure was what I thought was one of the weakest parts of the show.

A) Pacing

It seemed like Yuri on Ice wanted to be a lot of things: a serious skating anime, a romantic comedy, and a drama about an anxious protagonist who has to overcome his challenges.

The problem is that this show only had 12 episodes so it couldn't really be all three of them at once. But it still tried. And that didn't work out too well.

The pacing of this show is all over the place, and I personally felt like some plots/characters needed more time while others could have been cut short or omitted altogether.

B) Protagonist faces no real challenges

In a regular sports anime, even if we expect the protagonists to win at the end, it is the intense challenges and struggles they face in the way that still grab our attention. YOI didn't have any compelling enough challenges that put me on the edge of my seat.

Yuri K. keeps facing these talented and impressive skaters throughout the competition who clearly seem better than him at first glance, but then these so-called "strong" skaters conveniently underperform for no logical reason other than plot so that Yuri makes the minimal requirement of points needed to qualify the Grand Prix Final and, ultimately, win a medal.

Honestly, the only real challenge Yuri K. constantly faces is his crippling anxiety, which his coach and idol Victor helps overcome with moral support.

And that would have been fine, except Yuri K.'s anxiety doesn't lessen over time - rather, despite Victor's moral support, it gets better and then worse at random intervals during the series. While this would be an accurate case study for general anxiety disorder, it's not very effective as a narrative of overcoming challenges.

So Yuri K., this anxious mess of a child whose faith in himself fluctuates throughout the entire series, keeps making it to the next round not because he overcomes his challenges, but because the universe dictates it.

C) Protagonists do no face any real consequences

The characters also do not face any real consequence or events that make you go "oh shit, how will they go about this situation?"

A series of events happen throughout the course of the series that you would expect would have some significant consequences, or at the very least, would come back to affect the characters later on.

A five-time world championship figure skater suddenly fucks off to a random part of Japan to coach a younger skater. Two prominent skaters from Japan and Russia publicly compete to win over this champion skater's tutelage. We don't know what Victor will do after he finishes coaching Yuri. K. A coach and his skater get really, really close.

And these are treated as a really big deal. These actions get talked about in-universe, posed on social media and reported in the news, but nothing of consequence happens to them due to those things. No one's career is jeopardized and no one botches their performance due to public pressure or backlash. It's like the protagonists exist in a safe, inpenetrable bubble.

The only time I had an "oh shit" moment was when Victor's poodle choked on some buns and almost died. It's a skating show and the most intense moment was about a dying poodle. That is not good writing.

D) Why does Yuri P. even exist in the story?

No, seriously, why does he even exist? What purpose does he serve?

In the beginning, Yuri P. is built up like he's going to be the main rival who Yuri K would eventually face off in the Grand Prix Final. Their encounter started off rocky (see image) but you expected them to respect each other in the end.

Technically those all happen, but it was done in the most confusing, puzzling manner that I constantly questioned why he even existed.

In the beginning Yuri P. has clear reasons to be mad at Yuri K., since Victor promised to coach Yuri P. first but then changed his mind and began coaching Yuri K.

But Yuri K. doesn't particularly feel guilt or insecurity or fear towards Yuri P. - to Yuri K., Yuri P. is just a hormonal teenage boy who's really good at skating. So throughout the series it's just Yuri P. one-sidedly sulking angrily as Yuri K. advances in competitions, while Yuri K. just treats Yuri P. like a little brother.

IF Yuri P. said mean things to Yuri K. to trigger his anxiety, OR if Victor agreed to coach Yuri P. if he won gold at the Grand Prix Final, THEN we'd have some conflict and some reason to pit them against each other. But that doesn't happen.

And in the final moments of the show, we find out that all his temper tantrums wasn't because he hated Yuri K. - he actually really admired Yuri K. and wanted him to do better, he just expressed all that in the worst possible way because he's a dumb 15-year-old.

I know 15-year-olds are dumb and hormonal, but his story arc makes no goddamn sense in a narrative standpoint. Yuri P. is not a source of challenge or conflict, nor does he bring any threat of high-stakes consequences for Yuri K., essentially making him the most useless "rival" of all time, he's more like some asshole kid who sulks a lot for no good reason.

But I suppose a blond-haired pretty boy who's an asshole but secretly admires you is a totally marketable character.

The skating:

This line from an online review sums up the skating in the anime perfectly: It didn't get me hyped for figure skating.

The YOI team clearly did a lot of research on professional figure skating, and the good news is that it shows.

But their execution is such that the skating segments - in a show about figure skating - are quite possibly the most boring parts of the show.

A) The show does not explain how figure skating works.

The show has no Figure Skating 101 moment for the general uniformed audience to learn how figure skating works. The show does mention briefly that skaters require x number of wins in y number of competitions to qualify for the Grand Prix Final, but we don't know exactly what jumps and spins the other skaters do, how they do it, why it's important, and what gets them their overall points in the end. So unless you already know what figure skating entails, you're just kind of... watching endless performance clips for about half the series. 

B) The show also does a poor job using figure skating as a narrative tool. 

In the beginning they had something going on; Yuri K. was bummed about his lackluster professional skating career, Victor no longer felt motivated when he skated, Yuri P. knows his assets (his pretty boy face and lithe body) will go away as he grows older, which fuels his desire to win when he still got his advantages.

But after that great setup, everything just kind of boils down to "win gold at the Grand Prix Final". There was no joy or pain or struggle while skating. Everyone skated because that's what they have to do, they're professional skaters.

You can cut out like half of the skating sequences in a skating show and would not lose much story-wise. That does not seem like a good sign.

C) The repetitive skating programs 

As per actual skating competitions, we see the skaters repeatedly skate the same program for all their competitions. 

The skaters technically make small changes in their routine and technically improve their program, but I'll be damned if it just felt like watching the same clip over and over and over again. The show could have used better directing so that all the little changes the skaters make feel fresh and significant, instead of making it seem like watching 90% recycled clips.

D) Drop in animation quality

After the absolutely beautiful skating sequence in episode 1 (the gif posted above), the animation quality promptly drops, and subsequent skating animation becomes choppy and ugly. I would have included gifs for comparison but no one made gifs of the badly animated scenes.

I am aware the animators are drawing under unreasonable deadlines and all of this are fixed in DVD releases. And I know that anime TV airings are basically advertisements for people to purchase the real moneymakers, namely merchandise and DVDs. But do I care? No, I don't, since it's only going to be the hardcore fans buying stuff and it wouldn't hurt to have animators working in more humane conditions, but I suppose that's more a criticism against the anime industry as a whole rather than the series proper.

The Relationship:

Most people familiar with anime will already have heard by now that Yuri on Ice is pretty gay. I mean this in the most literal possible way.

The show has two male protagonists who fall in love, share a kiss, and exchange rings.

But there is some debate on the exact nature of this relationship, namely: Who is the target audience of this gay relationship, and is this a respectable portrayal of it?

A) For: respectable portrayal

Supporters of point (A) argue that the show is a pioneering moment for LGBT representation in anime as it made a male-male relationship canon instead of merely teasing at it like other shows. Many also consider this a portray of a healthy, functional relationship between two men who gradually and very clearly become closer to the point they exchange rings.

B) Against: respectable portrayal

Camp (B) argues that while the two protagonists may officially be in love, it still fetishizes a male-male relationship and still serves to titilate a largely heterosexual female audience rather than it being a real relationship. 

My personal opinion is that it's (C), probably a bit of both.

The creator of this show made a tweet saying that the universe in which YOI is set has no discrimination towards same sex relationships. I'm willing to give the benefit of doubt and believe that her intention was to be more inclusive. The other characters in the show certainly do not bat an eye at Yuri and Victor being close, which is admittedly nice to see.

Victor and Yuri also seem to genuinely like each other and do get more familiar with each other, which is incredibly evident throughout. There were moments where the two interacted where I audibly mouthed "ohhh" because I felt moved by it.

But there is no arguing that regardless of context, there are TONS of homoerotic "fan service" scenes in the series clearly meant to excite the viewers. (Read: hot springs, drunken antics, and pole dancing)

And for their all their various displays of love, there is still something ambiguous and indirect about the whole thing. The Big Kiss is covered by Victor's arm, leaving the situation up for viewer interpretation. Yuri tries to be coy about the ring exchange by saying it's a "good luck charm" while Victor playfully says it's an engagement ring. And the two never actually explicitly say "I love you," to each other.

Not everything in life has to be explicitly stated and there's beauty in subtlety and ambiguity, but if YOI really wanted to be revolutionary with its romance, I feel like it could have done more, because there is still sort of this "will they or won't they" vibe about the two that leaves much to be desired by the end of the series. Whether or not all of that is all a cop-out is up to individual opinion.

I suppose how one feels about the relationship will be entirely subjective.

The other characters:

TL;DR: Other characters are shafted at the expense of the protagonists and their romance.

Which is a pity, because YOI had plenty of interesting-seeming side characters.

A) Lack of screen time

Barring one or two of them, most side characters didn't have enough screen time, period. I dare you to recite the names of every single one of them after watching the entire show. Some of them barely even had speaking lines.

EXHIBIT A: SEUNG-GIL "ONSCREEN 3 MIN 40 SEC" LEE.
POOR BABY DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER.

B) Lack of purpose to the overall narrative.

Competing characters in a sports anime usually exist to challenge the protagonist or have the protagonist challenge them.

I know skating is an individual sport and not a team/duel, but even then, they should at least exist to influence each other. What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? What can our protagonist learn from watching their performances?

Yuri K. learns absolutely nothing from his competitors. Hell, he doesn't even watch half of them skate. In turn, the other skaters don't learn anything from Yuri K, either.

Some of them are impressed with Yuri's performance, but ultimately they're too busy performing their own routine and having their own life flashbacks, after which they disappear as they score lower than the protagonists in each competition.

Seunggil didn't even have any flashbacks! He just botched his skating and cried silently

90% of the side characters existed to merely fill up slots for each competition and disappear after losing. And they had a pretty diverse cast from around the world, too! (The American skater Leo was Mexican American! When does that ever happen in anime?!) I'm just saying YOU COULD HAVE DONE SO MUCH MORE WITH ALL OF THEM.

Miscellaneous:

The English language songs in this show can go die in a fire. If I have to hear "Shall We Skate" or "Theme of King JJ" one more time I will strangle someone.

The skating program music that doesn't have lyrics are pretty good. The opening and ending songs are okay.

Final words:

So I was kind of harsh in this review because I was trying to properly break down what I considered were its flaws, but the show isn't bad, not at all. There were bits of funny, enjoyable moments here and there.

It was just something that worked better in tiny parts and was, to me at least, a very incohesive whole.

And so, the final verdict was, is, and always will be: It Was Okay I Guess.

Watch YOI for: a stress-free romantic comedy between two male skaters with lots of homoerotic teasing onscreen.

Do not watch for: plot, competitive figure skating, other characters.