#actively changing his dialogue at Ioder in Halure to /outright threaten him/

[goldentigerfestival]

@likestoimagine16

#Ngl but I play the game exclusively wit Japanese dialogue for exactly this kind of stuff#I love the fact that Yuri is just unabashedly soft in Japanese#or I guess he’s more adaptable?#I dunno#there are people he’s more openly soft with and people where he ‘masks’ it a little more#(using the term incredibly loosely cuz it’s more like ‘plausible’ deniability of softness rather than an actual disguise)#and I feel like it might be a ‘reaching where the other person is at’ type of thing#or mirroring?#something#I have to admit I’m going off of memory and my incredibly haphazard understanding of Japanese + vocal tones#but I get the sense that when he’s not actively antagonizing people for fun and profit#he’s really good at meeting people where they’re at and connecting with them

Yes! Exactly! All of this! Yuri has his fun but he knows when to take things seriously, and that shows a lot in Toriumi's performance. Yuri will match the energy of the other person. Like I mentioned in my video of him with Don in Don's last moments, they clearly respect each other but there's still a softness in Yuri's voice as he knows he's talking to this man for the very last time, and he understands this - dying - is not how Don wants things to go, but that he's just taking responsibility. He's doing what Yuri does, which is taking on the burden for others/caused by others.

In general Yuri has a lot of vocal nuance in JP. Whether it's matching someone's emotional energy to let them feel less alone or more understood, or even just soft sounds like sighing or verbal hesitation, you can hear the tiny indicators in his mood. I don't know if Toriumi was directed that way, added it in himself or both, but it comes out sounding very amazing and keeps me very engaged in Yuri's character, even when I already know it and have been through the game multiple times.

Yuri, typically, is very playful and/or casual, but when his mood shifts you can hear it. When he's trying to connect with someone and drops his own energy to let them know he's there for them, you can hear it.

This is partly (among other things) why I say the dub lost so much of who Yuri is, because most of those same lines are spoken with a neutral tone. There are times when Yuri sounds like he's about to cry, or he's at least got his voice cracking (at least three off the top of my head) that got changed in the dub. It loses so much raw emotion from Yuri himself. Yuri is as much emotional as he is silly, and that emotion has a range. It's especially true when something is emotional for someone else, or it's something life altering for him or someone else (like Don's final moments).

Also? The scene after Schwann "died"? Yuri was so understanding and reasonable with Leblanc - as soft as he'd ever been with him. He knew it would hurt Leblanc to hear the truth, but they couldn't risk being stopped so he made his point, but at the same time he also was in pain from the presumed loss. Usually he and Leblanc didn't get along, but Yuri met him in the middle because he knew it was going to be painful for Leblanc to learn that Schwann was still stuck in Bactian as it was collapsing. It was a shared pain and you could hear that from Yuri.

In general though yes, Yuri is way, significantly softer as a person in JP. He is more human and shows a much larger range of emotion. I've always loved Yuri, but the more I dug into other content (even things as non-canon as TalesFes, because Toriumi to date has always been there and always gets to voice for Yuri there during their skits) the more I just fell in love with that intense range of emotion - especially from a male character (i.e. there's no "he's a man so he can't possibly be an emotional human being", and this game was also released back in 2008. That stuff might seem more common now, but it wasn't during Vesperia's time). Eventually I just decided you know what, I need to get this out there to people who are interested in knowing about JP Yuri because he really is a brilliantly written character.

Sorry for the tangent LOL. I just have. Feelings. About JP Yuri. All very good feelings.

I repeat, I am a sucker for soft, gentle Yuri, and the way Yuri goes so soft for Karol because Karol just wants to be believed and is sad makes my heart a little puddle.