And now—and only two years after everyone else watched and reviewed it—here’s my review of Yuri on Ice! ;-)
I think I waited too long to watch the series. I’d read so much about it that I built a head of steam around it in my mind. In the end, Yuri on Ice turned out to be both more and less than what I expected.
Yuri Katsuki is a professional Japanese figure skater, nationally lauded and praised by the public. However, after a disastrous showing at the international Grand Prix Finals, Yuri returns to his rural hometown and family onsen business discouraged and considering giving up the sport.
Alone at his local ice skating rink, in a pensive mood, Yuri skates a routine made famous by Russian star Victor Nikiforov, the five-time international figure skating champion Yuri greatly admires. Unbeknownst to Yuri, a secret recording of it gets uploaded to the internet. It goes viral, soon capturing the attention of Victor himself.
Yuri then comes home one day to find Victor relaxing in the family onsen. He has a proposition for Yuri.
No, not that kind of proposition (…yet). Victor offers to coach Yuri to prepare him for the next Grand Prix Finals.
What follows is a pleasant, easy to watch series with beautiful figure skating scenes, enjoyable characters, and a very nuanced relationship between Yuri and Victor. More on that relationship in a moment.
The third lead character is Yuri Plisetsky, a Russian teen phenom figure skater. After discovering Victor has moved to Japan to coach Yuri, the Russian Yuri shows up on the Japanese Yuri’s doorstep.
As foul-tempered as he is beautiful, the punkish fifteen-year-old insists that Victor coach him instead of Yuri K. Yuri P. gets nicknamed “Yurio” to distinguish the two Yuris from each other. Though he hates it, the name sticks.
Although we don’t see any of Victor’s early background, it’s implied that the fiery, brilliant Yurio is following in Victor’s footsteps as a young prodigy. Victor’s old coach is now Yurio’s coach, and it’s clear Victor recognizes Yurio’s talents.
However, Victor has the two Yuris compete to win him as a coach, and the Japanese Yuri wins. Once Yuri P. returns to Russia, his story continues as a parallel to Yuri’s K.’s story, for reasons that become clear in the final episode.
Yuri P. is the best male tsundere I’ve seen since Wolfram in Kyo Kara Maoh, which was a long time ago. Nearly every close-up of his face shows him as pissy or enraged—and he’s hysterically funny.
Now, for Yuri and Victor’s relationship.
Yuri on Ice has been called shonen-ai, BL, and/or yaoi because of the main characters’ relationship. I would argue their relationship is something simpler, more basic than these things.
First, it should be noted what Yuri on Ice is not. It’s not a schoolboys in love story, or an older man/younger teen angst fest like Loveless. Nor is it a comedic will-they-or-won’t-they story like Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi, a yaoi series I adore.
Victor is older than Yuri, handsome and worldly, whereas Yuri is a plain sparrow to Victor’s gorgeous peacock. Yuri even more or less confesses to Victor that he’s still a virgin.
But while this is clearly a senpai-kohai relationship, or coach-student if you prefer—Victor is no Svengali seducing the trembling virgin here. When the story begins, Yuri and Victor already know each other as fellow professional athletes. More importantly, Victor is 27 and Yuri is 23. Though Yuri feels inadequate next to Victor much of the time, he’s a full adult and Victor’s equal as one of a small number of elite international figure skaters. There’s no huge imbalance of power between the two.
This then is a story about two men, adult men, who perform on an international stage in the same profession, who come to love each other. It is a love story, plain and simple, one that happens to involve two men.
The textual evidence is threefold. First, a kiss shared on the ice in front of the crowd. Second, the two later choose to wear rings that are literally wedding bands. And three—towards the end, when Yuri, possibly with the idea of giving Victor the freedom to leave him, suggests that they end their coach-student relationship—Victor becomes emotional and sheds tears at the idea.
What is normally only hinted at in boys-love stories is conducted openly in Yuri on Ice. There’s no need to “read into” the characters’ words and actions for subtext. It’s all canon and textual. The only interpretation needed, if one wants to go deeper, is into what extent their relationship is physical, i.e., sexual.
My personal interpretation is that sometime after the kiss in episode 7, Yuri and Victor begin a sexual relationship. This would explain the two major relationship moments that come after the kiss scene: Yuri’s gift of matching rings for himself and Victor, and Victor’s tears at Yuri’s saying they should end the mentoring relationship. These moments are too deep, in my view, to have come from anything less than a romantic relationship that has been consummated.
One can call Yuri on Ice yaoi, if one likes. But I think “love story” covers it nicely. =D
Yuri on Ice has, besides the Yuri-Victor romance, beautifully choreographed figure skating scenes, ones you’ll be as entranced watching as if they were real-life competitors on the ice. All the skaters are wonderful to watch, but in particular, Yuri’s passion for the sport transforms him; there are moments when his face is ethereally beautiful as he skates.
Where the series left me wanting was in its lack of character development. There’s a curious arms-length distance feel, in emotional terms, to this story. The international skaters, though competitors on the ice, are all friends off the ice. No one has a dark history, or a dark present. Even Yuri and Victor’s relationship has little friction, but deepens in time anyway, despite too few scenes that actually show their gradual building of feelings for each other. Perhaps because Victor lives with Yuri and coaches him for nine months, we’re to assume they spent a lot of personal time together and their relationship grew as a result. Still, it would’ve been nice to see those scenes.
There are many, many ice skating scenes in Yuri on Ice, so many that surely some of them could’ve been shortened or left out in favor of more plot twists and character development.
The final episode of Yuri on Ice concludes in a satisfying way, while leaving the door open for a continuation of the series. A second season hasn’t been announced yet, but seems inevitable given the anime’s great popularity.
When it finally comes out I’ll watch it, because while yaoi stories are great—love stories are even better.
