Even if you weren’t very into sports anime, or even anime in general, escape from ‘Yuri!!! On ICE’ was practically impossible when it was released in 2016. Despite being a completely original story, this spokon had the internet on edge for weeks and quickly became one of the biggest hits on MAP.
Flips, Axels and competitions around the world
Later would come ‘Jujutsu Kaisen’ and ‘Shingeki no Kyojin’, but despite not starting from any known work, ‘Yuri!!! On ICE‘ became a worldwide phenomenon and even professional skaters jumped on the bandwagon to follow it chapter by chapter and even replicate the choreography that the characters performed in the anime.
The series follows Yuri Katsuki, a figure skater who suffers a brutal defeat during a championship and decides to stop skating. Months later and already back home, a video of one of his training routines in which he imitates his idol Victor Nikiforov leaks onto the internet and quickly goes viral. As a result of this, the Russian champion is planted in his house to start training him for the Grand Prix of figure skating and return Yuri to the track.
‘Yuri!!! On ICE’ is in many ways a textbook sports animewith a protagonist who must train very hard and overcome different tournaments until he reaches the top. Yuri starts out at the bottom, with very little confidence in himself and his skating abilities.. But thanks to training with Victor and an incredible support network around him, he manages to get out of the hole he’s gotten himself into and prove his worth.
It is a series that hooks you because of its characters, because in addition to the main Yuri, Victor and the Russian Yuri, we have a gigantic cast of international skaters with a lot of charisma and who help shape international competitions.
Although with 12 chapters it doesn’t give time for everything, there is a good balance between the protagonists and the subplots with the rest of the competitors, whom you can’t help loving even though they are skating against the main team. The story is what it is, and it is predictable at certain pointsbut if you are a regular of the anime of the genre, unfortunately, it is something that you should wait for.
Though the animation falls off a bit comically in some scenesshines where it should, especially in the skating sequences of the final chapters. Yuri’s journey as he makes his way among the best in his sport is one you follow with excitement.and even if you don’t have a clue about ice skating, you’ll be left in suspense seeing how each one of the intricate choreographies is solved.
In addition to the attention to detail with the skating choreographies of Kenji Miyamoto, at the time ‘Yuri!!! On ICE’ was also crucial in talking about “several elephants in the room” and it especially does a brilliant job of capturing how anxiety affects its protagonist.
Not only that, but within the limits allowed in Japan, It is an anime that breaks barriers with cannon fire regarding LGTBI + representation despite the immense homophobia that exists both in the country and towards the world of figure skating.
Beyond the archetypal relationships (and often neither too realistic nor free of its “problematic” sections) of yaoi, ‘Yuri!!! On ICE’ achieves a magnificent gay representation by showing its protagonists as two characters who develop a romantic relationship in the most natural way in the world. And yet, first and foremost it’s a sports anime where the romance happens tangentially.
As unfortunately happens with ‘The Official Heaven’s Blessing’, Sayo Yamamoto and Jun Shishidō they cannot be as explicit and direct as we are used to in other media. Still, and considering how things are in Japan with same-sex couples, You have to take a bite in your teeth and value the giant steps that this anime took in terms of representation at the time.
Although the story of ‘Yuri!!! On ICE’ it is well contained and has a beautiful and satisfying closure, It certainly has the potential for much more.. It is already known that there is a prequel movie centered on Victor, ‘Ice Adolescence’, in the works, but the project has been on hold for quite some time.
Every once in a while MAPPA gives us a little bit to remind us that the movie lives on, but with everything the studio has going on it’s no wonder that figure skating anime is still waiting in line for production. Although while we wait, the anime series is available on Crunchyroll.