#and it's just a scene of him reminiscing since yuuri will be in russia and close to victor's roots

[rikeijo]

Victor as Princess Aurora from The Sleeping Beauty ballet

This probably was brought up in the past, when YoI was ultra popular, but Victor story pre-Hasetsu parallels Princess Aurora's story so well, that if it wasn't intentional, Sayo or Mitsurou was surely possessed by Tchaikovsky's ghost.

In episode 1, after Yuuri met with Yuuko for the first time in 5 years, he starts reminiscing about Yuuko and the time they've spent skating together in Hasetsu. One highlight of Yuuri's memories in that scene is that it was Yuuko who showed him Victor for the first time on TV one day when he was still 11-12 year old.

The directing in that scene though...

First of all, we have a fragment of The Lilac Fairy variation as the music Victor perform his program to. The first thing that came to my mind, when I read that it is there (quite easy to miss if you don't pay too much attention) was that it is such an odd choice of music for Victor's program! It's a very monotonous piece and I'd say it would be most likely quite boring to skate to. It's like the same melody on repeat. In addition to that, Victor skates in the "Eros" costume, which is well, almost all black. Why didn't he choose something a little bit more fitting, e.g. a lilac costume for The Lilac Fairy program? If he skated to Sleeping Beauty medley type of song and the costume represented a different character, then it means the creators still decided to deliberately put The Lilac Fairy fragment in this particular scene...

The way I see it, every time when you watch YoI and there is a moment in the show when your brain goes like "huh? wait a sec..." it means that there is probably something extra hidden there.

So I started to wonder – in the scene we have Yuuko, Yuuri and Victor (Takeshi couldn't care less) and the main characters in Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty ballet are Princess Aurora, Prince Désiré and The Lilac Fairy, who is the godmother to the both of them. So... could it be intentional?

Well, I think so, because it’s just crazy how well it fits if we assume that Victor is Princess Aurora, Yuuri is Prince Désiré and Yuuko is the Lilac Fairy. The seemingly "???" choice of music also makes a lot of sense, if that's case imo, because the real focus of this scene is Yuuko (we see Yuuri's memories of her, after he met her for the first time in 5 years, and when the Lilac Fairy music plays, we are in the room with Yuuko and only see Victor on TV) and this piece, imo, symbolizes her role in the story, as Yuuri's Skating Fairy Godmother.

In the ballet version of The Sleeping Beauty, it's the Lilac Fairy, who tells the prince about a sleeping princess (Act 2. Scene 2. The Vision).

In Yuri!!!, just as the "Lilac Fairy" scene starts, Yuuko stands in front of a TV and tells Yuuri about Victor Nikiforov from Russia : “Victor Nikiforov from Russia just got a gold medal at Junior Worlds! So cool~ (ロシアのヴィクトル･ニキフォロフ世界ジュニア 歴代最高得点で金メダルだって カッコよか〜)".

Victor has just won Junior Worlds, his first international success and the first crucial step on the road to Victor's "love&life"-less life (=the curse put on Aurora) he had before meeting Yuuri. Of course, Victor himself says he has been neglecting his love and life for over 20 years, so since he was younger than 7-years-old and that means most likely since he started training figure skating. However, a prepubescent child's "love and life" and teenager/adult's "love and life" mean something very different, and the focus here is the adult love and life. In the Sleeping Beauty, Aurora was just about to meet her suitors and one of them could become her future husband, but the curse was triggered and she falls asleep without knowing adult "love and live" for 100 years, until her prince wakes her up.

The Lilac Fairy tells Prince Désiré about the Sleeping Princess.

In the ballet version, Lilac Fairy then conjures up for the prince a vision of the sleeping princess dancing, the prince falls in love with her and after the vision disappears, he decides to find her with the Lilac Fairy's help – they travel together through a forest to Aurora's castle...

In Yuri!!!, as Yuuko is gushing over Victor, about how cool he is, she starts jumping in front of the TV and the next thing we see is Yuuri's reaction as he watches a (tele)vision of Victor skating. (Interestingly, we also see Victor in this scene, just before we see how Yuuri is looking at him for the very first time and then goes "Waaa~". And Victor is... “sleeping”, or "falling asleep" perhaps while skating. It's worth keeping in mind that he really skates the Sleeping Beauty story in his program.)

Vision of the Sleeping Princess.

Yuuri, of course, instantly becomes smitten with Victor and so this scene is also the beginning of his dream to one day skate on the same ice as Victor = meet with Victor as his equal – the dream that eventually will lead to the events at the Sochi banquet.

Prince Désiré smitten with the vision of the Sleeping Princess he’s just seen.

Just as we see Prince Désiré travel together with the Lilac Fairy to the castle where Aurora sleeps, we also see Yuuri practicing skating with Yuuko. His goal - become so good at figure skating, that he can meet with Victor one day.

Prince Désiré and the Lilac Fairy on their way to the Sleeping Princess.

Yuuko is also the person who motivates him to achieve his dream. Yuuko: "You really like Victor so much, don't you~ I want to see you and Victor competing together soon." (ホントにヴィクトルのことが好きなんだね〜 勇利くんとヴィクトルが戦ってるとこ早く見たいな).

But...

Eventually Yuuko moved on from the childhood dreams to start a family. I'm sure that it was quite painful for Yuuri, because in a sense, he lost the person that understood him and his passion for skating (and Victor) the best.

Yuuri, on the other hand, didn't gave up on his dream... Eventually, he managed to achieve it: he skated on the same ice as Victor in Sochi and at the banquet he, at last, woke the princess up from the "no love and no life" sleep (...and soon after left him there alone and completely forgot that he met him. Again, it's interesting that in the Perrault's version of the Sleeping Beauty, the prince also leaves that night, after he woke Aurora up, to go back to his castle and she has to wait for his return). Victor of course doesn't just wait - eventually he travels to Hasetsu to be with his prince... Only to find out he was turned into a pig. And so begins Princess Vitya's quest to get his prince back!

No wonder that Yuuri wanted Yuuko, his Lilac Fairy and skating godmother, to see him skating in ep. 1 when he needed to once again get his motivation to skate back - she was the source of his motivation when they were younger, his only companion in this difficult quest to one day get to meet the sleeping princess.

And, yeah, there's actually an illustration of Yuuko as Yuuri's Fairy Skating Godmother in the anime:

Other interesting bits:

In Charles Perrault's version of Sleeping Beauty, which is the basis for the ballet version, Aurora is "15 or 16 years old", when she falls asleep. It is very curious that when Yuuri saw Victor for the first time, he was either 15, according to the interview Yuuko has: “Even though he is only 15, he possesses both solid technical skills and artistic expression which entrances the spectators (...)” (15歳にして確かなスケーティング技術と観客を魅了する表現力を兼ね備え(...)) or 16 according to Yuuri: “When I was 12, Victor, who is 4 years older than me, has already been on top of the world.” (僕が12歳の時には４つ上のヴィクトルは世界のトップに立っていた).

The point of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale is to show, that it's better to wait (sleep for 100 years) for the right person to get married rather than get married too soon – Victor surely waited without love for over 20 years for Yuuri to come and find him (...and propose to him. Yuuri ganba–!). Supporters of Freudian psychology, like Bruno Bettelheim in The Uses of Enchantment, believe it’s not so much about marriage but about sex, on the other hand.

The very first time we see Victor in the show in real time (the very first scene in ep 1 is imo just symbolic representation of Yuuri observing Victor throughout the years) Victor is "asleep". This is also one of just two scenes, when we see Victor pre-Sochi banquet. It's hard to see in the show, but thankfully we have Mappa's Select book:

Vitya the Sleeping Beauty in ep 1.

And lastly, the Stammi Vicino program starts with a move which imo can absolutely be described as "waking up" (The first time we see the program in the show is post-banquet and the lyrics, imo, fit too nicely to not be about Sochi banquet too).

Stammi vicino – waking up motion.

Conclusions: Victor really is a Disney Princess (and Makka the cute animal sidekick).

[r-herring]

L Words, Dreams, and Seagulls: Viktor’s Past and Future

I’ve been sitting on this meta for a while, mostly because I wanted to touch on Viktor’s past and—as you all know— we know zilch about Viktor’s past, so firm conclusions are impossible. That being said, beach and seagull symbolism is very important in YOI and I’ve been wanting to write this meta for a while, so I gave it my best stab. Thank you @darrkwhisperings for bouncing ideas with me.

In episode four, after repeatedly failing to get Yuuri to open up to him, Viktor bursts into Yuuri’s room and demands suggests that they go to the beach. 

“Ohayo, Yuuri. Let’s go to the ocean.”

The important detail to note here is that Viktor suggests the beach as a location for their heart-to-heart chat. Hasetsu is a beachside town, so going to the beach might seem the obvious choice, but why not talk right in Yuuri’s room? I believe Viktor is trying to seek neutral turf, somewhere where they both can be comfortable.

Why would Viktor choose the beach as a comfortable location? He’s from St. Petersburg, which also has a waterfront (and numerous canals), so he probably associates the beach with good memories. In episode three, we get a glimpse of a large piece of artwork in Viktor’s room. The art depicts a woman with what appears to be silver hair walking on the beach. 

I have no support (other than the woman’s hair color and the size of the photo/painting indicating that it’s probably important to Viktor) to back my gut belief that it is his mother—but my gut says this is probably Mama Nikiforova on the beach. We have yet to see a silver-haired background character in YOI, so who else would this be other than a Viktor relative? She looks young, so either a) it is simply an older photo/painting that Viktor likes, b) the Nikiforovs age really well (other than receding hairlines), or c) Mama Nikiforova is dead or estranged and older photos/paintings are all Viktor has.

For now, since we have no Viktor background information, let’s just assume that he has fond childhood memories of the beach. He grew up by the water and feels comfortable there. Viktor’s relative comfort is clear since he is actually the first one to carefully toe out into no man’s land and offer some information about himself. 

"Oh, seagulls.” 

“Umineko,” Yuuri corrects.

Umineko, or the black-tailed gull, translates to "sea cat.” They’re so named because the gull's cry sounds like a cat. They are native to East Asia. (More on black-tailed gulls, for the curious.) We’ll see more of these gulls later in a rather unexpected location.

Seagulls, and birds in general, symbolize freedom to many cultures. However, the symbolism of birds in Japanese culture is particularly nuanced. There is a ‘language of birds’ similar to the ‘language of flowers.' In this language, black-tailed gulls are assigned the meaning 'co-existence and co-prosperity.' 

“Ever since I came here, I’m reminded of St. Petersburg when I hear seagulls in the early morning. I never thought I’d leave that city, so I never used to notice the seagull’s cries. Do you ever have times like that?”

Here, the gulls are flying in an overcast sky. In fact, they never leave the darkest part of the sky. Yuuri and Viktor are both still fighting alone, neither one opening up or allowing themselves to rely on the other for support. 

Let’s fast-forward to episode 11, to Viktor’s flashback after Yuuri’s botched SP, in which he reflects:

“When I approached every program like a new beginning, I could always surprise everyone. But that also held me back…’I can only find new strength on my own.’ That’s what I always thought.”

“Now I can feel new emotions flowing into me through Yuuri. What should I give Yuuri now?”

Given the symbolism of black-tailed gulls ("I never thought I’d leave that city, so I never used to notice the seagull’s cries”), Viktor probably ignored all potential sources of support in St. Petersburg and isolated himself, leading to the lonely, burnt out Living Legend we met in episode one. It was only once he left St. Petersburg that he started to appreciate the support he had there, particularly from Yakov and Yuri. In episode six, we see Viktor trying to get Yakov’s attention and later, in episode nine, he begs for his help. When overwhelmed by sadness and desperation over Yuuri’s retirement, he hugs Yuri for comfort in episode 12—only the third character he’s touched in the entire cour. 

Now, back to episode four!

After Viktor finishes reminiscing about the gulls in St. Petersburg, Yuuri tells him about the girl in Detroit, who he pushed away because he didn’t want her know he was unsettled after his rinkmate’s accident. More to the point, he talks about about how he took his friends and family for granted; they never treated him as a weakling and had faith he’d grow as a person. He was only able to appreciate them once he moved to Detroit. 

Like Yuuri, Viktor took the seagull’s cries, the support around him, for granted and only recognized it once he left his home of 27 years. 

Once Viktor and Yuuri start to open up to each other, the sky clears. 

During this scene, Kamome (Seagull), which can be found of the Yutra soundtrack, starts to play. We hear this track two other times in the anime. In episode two, it plays while Yuuri laments that Yuri has more potential as a skater and, “above all, he's comfortable in front of Viktor." It continues to play into the next scene, where Viktor seeks out Minako to learn about Yuuri and later finds him skating figures at Ice Castle (“I know a lot more about Yuuri now”). It plays again in the episode 10 Christmas market scene, when Viktor makes the observation that Yuuri’s eyes sparkle when he’s searching for an answer. Viktor knows Yuuri much better at this point and decides to “watch over him without making conversation.” Kamome plays in scenes where Viktor and Yuuri learn more about each other and how to become stronger together. 

Let’s continue in Barcelona. Remember how I said we’d see the black-tailed gulls again? Here they are, flying in blue sky this time, but very far away from home. Black-tailed gulls are not found in Spain (I checked). 

Given the creators’ exceptional attention to detail, it was likely a deliberate choice to use black-tailed gulls which, again, symbolize co-existence and co-prosperity. 

“If I'd stayed in Russia as a competitor, Yurio wouldn’t be this motivated to fight. And neither would I…”

“This place reminds me of Hasetsu’s ocean.”

“I thought that, too.”

This time, the gulls are flying in clear skies into the sunrise, symbolizing a new beginning for Viktor. In fact, it was confirmed by Kubo-sensei that Viktor is starting to consider his future in this scene.

He can picture his future now with Yuuri, and also with his coach, his teammates, his fellow competitors, and friends—a future in which he can dream bigger because he does not need to shoulder the weight of his dreams alone. 

“There’s a place you just can’t reach unless you have a dream too large to bear alone.”