#and now they’re giving her Yuri with Kouki

[2manyflannels]

Aira has been kind of killing it this arc

[chemicalmagecraft]

Foresight is 20/20 Chapter 7

I groaned and yawned as I woke up with a fuzzy head. I started rubbing my eyes as I sat up a bit.

Then I went back down and almost fell asleep. I didn't actually fall asleep, however, because of a knock on my door. "In a minute," I managed to get out, then rolled off the bed. I eventually managed to get up and open the door to the sight of a woman of the main branch family, if I remembered right. "Sleepy," I blearily muttered as an excuse. I probably had bedhead, which added to the image.

She chuckled. "So this is why you don't let anyone in your room in the morning hours," she said jokingly.

I grunted, licked my lips, then said, "I must look like a little death, huh?" I snapped my fingers at my vanity and my brush and comb flew over thanks to the wind attribute in Kurama's chakra, then started un-messing my hair. She just stared at me incredulously. "So what do yo- ah!" I was interrupted by the brush trying to force through a particularly bad knot. They stopped long enough for me to sort out the knot, then continued. "I told you two to stop if that happens," I chided. I gave the woman whose name I couldn't remember at the moment a small, polite smile and explained, "A jutsu that I made that animates things. I unfortunately don't have enough enough chakra to use anything practical in a fight yet, but I can use it for laziness." I shrugged. "Sure, I have to charge them up every so often or they'll die, but they're pretty nice. So what do you need from me?"

"...Hiashi-sama asked me to give you this, and not to look inside it," she said as she handed me a messenger bag. I grunted a "thanks" and opened it to see a couple of scrolls, a large book, and a file. "If I might ask, what exactly is in that?"

"Top-secret fuinjutsu stuff," I muttered as I opened the file to see medical records and a picture of a small boy with red hair and shadows around his eyes. "If anyone asks, you never saw this. Talk to Father if you want to know why, but just know it comes from Hokage-sama." I put the file back and took the book out. I raised my eyebrows when I realized that it looked like a primer on the theory of poison. "Thanks... uh..." I thought for a moment. "Sorry, I should know this, I'm still a little asleep... Yuri-san?"

"It's actually Yuriko, Kouki-kun," she politely corrected. "I'm going to go now. Good luck with your project."

I sat down at my desk after she left and pulled out all of the scrolls and the file. I sorted through the scrolls, putting the jutsu scrolls back in the bag. When I was done I looked through the final scroll, which was about Gaara's seal. I frowned and ran my fingers through my hair when I was done. "This doesn't make any sense..." I muttered. "Either I'm missing something or Gaara really shouldn't be having as many problems as he has... Maybe it's something to do with Shukaku in particular? Maybe Kurama knows something." I opened the file on Gaara back up to see what I could gleam from that. "Nothing too useful, it turns out..." I sighed. I might have been able to do something with the stuff about his chakra and the symptoms that they knew for sure were from Shukaku, but I'd probably need to consult Kurama first, and he was... actually it was really surprising, but he was playing with Hinata, so I couldn't talk to him. Then I noticed a small sealing tag included with the papers. I picked it up and immediately recognized it as a used Inner Demon Calming Seal. A sticky note on it said that the Kazekage had Gaara use one for practice so I'd have a baseline, which was really good on his part. Would have to tell him he done good.

I took it, pulled out a blank scroll, put the tag on the scroll, and made a half ram seal. Words flowed out of the seal and onto the scroll, forming the statistics on Gaara. I nodded. It looked like the scan function was working perfectly, and the data I got from it was pretty good. I already had the beginnings of an idea just from that, though I decided I should probably consult Kurama before actually trying to work on it as a precaution. When I was done, I made a half dragon seal and pulled the tag from the scroll. The words peeled off with the scroll, and as I flipped the tag around and put it down, the words reconstituted into a sort of spherical barrier that allowed a ball of red chakra to emerge from the seal without dispersing into the air. I frowned as I saw the size of it. "The regulator's off..." The idea was that the seal would take only a little bit extra of Shukaku's chakra from what it was using to suppress Shukaku for me to play with, but there was a lot more than what I was expecting. "Orrrrr maybe it's just that Shukaku wasn't trying to break free or fighting at all?" I realized, then shrugged. "Meh." I made another half ram seal with my left hand and an empty sealing circle formed on it. I shoved my hand into the containment barrier and the red chakra flowed into the seal, forming a slash in the middle, the kanji for one.

kukukuku~

I knocked on the door. Thankfully, the seal on my hand had disappeared after it settled down just like Naruto's. That would've been hard to hide if it hadn't... Because I could feel that nobody was around, I revealed the seal for a bit to inspect it while I waited for someone to open the door. When I felt Tenko about to open the door, I let it fade again and shoved my hands into my pockets. "Hey, Uzumaki-san," I said with a small smile.

"Kouki-kun," she greeted back. "Are you here to see Naruto-kun?" I nodded and she let me inside. The house was nice. It wasn't nearly as big as the Hyuuga compound, for obvious reasons, but it was pretty big for a family of four. Probably because of the prestige of the Uzumaki clan, even if said clan was only the four members.

"How's he settling in?" I asked.

"Kouki!" Naruto shouted as he waved enthusiastically at me, then went back to climbing on Ai.

"Hey, kid," Ai greeted as Naruto managed to get to and start pushing on her face. "A little help, honey? Please?" Tenko giggled and picked Naruto up off of Ai, earning a peck on the cheek as thanks. "Thanks, sweetie."

I chuckled. "So he's settling in nice, then?" I inferred, then beckoned for Naruto. "C'mere, Naruto. I wanna tell you something."

Tenko put him down, but he frowned and didn't come to me. "Why do you have that weird feeling that all the mean people have, Kouki-kun?" he asked me.

I internally sighed and, not for the first time, was glad that my general lack of major emoting most of the time kept my annoyance from really showing. Naruto had noted feeling the malice of others recently, which was from my giving Kurama his yin power back. Still, though, it shouldn't have been strong enough to passively sense what little malice I could generate towards him... I extended my (unfortunately still weak passively) malice sense towards him, or rather his seal, and felt a sort of... "smug" malice coming from Kurama, which made more sense. I sent him a little message of "you suck" and told Naruto, "I dunno, but are you gonna ignore my advice?" He shrugged and walked over to me, allowing me to give him a light chop to the head. On the plus side, I was conditioning him to equate malice directed at him with pain, hopefully.

"Hey!" he complained.

"Don't throw away Gudo Dama, stupid," I chided.

"I don't even know what that is!"

"Powerful but finicky jutsu that you might get in the future if events line up, and in my visions you stupidly hamstrung your ability to use two fifths of it like an hour after getting it by throwing two of them into a Chibaku Tensei in another space-time. Don't do that for real."

"What happened to not punishing people for things they haven't done yet?"

I shrugged. "That was for having the potential stupid to throw away Gudo Dama. You don't even want to know what I'll do if I learn you do it without a good enough reason." Then, I heard the frantic footsteps of a young girl and turned around to see Tenten staring at me with an elated expression. "'Sup," I said.

"Naruto-kun said that you have healing powers!" Tenten said.

I shrugged. "Yeah, but not the kind just anyone can use, if that's what you're asking." Her face fell. "But if it's healing jutsu you want to learn, then you should know that you should have a bit of an advantage with yang release due to being an Uzumaki, which you need for medical release."

"Yes!" she shouted and threw her hands in the air. "I wanna be like Tsunade, she's this really cool kunoichi who's a really good healer!"

Ai pouted. "I'm a cool kunoichi too... And I have weapons... It's because I'm only a special jonin, isn't it?"

I nodded. "Tsunade's got some bad habits that I'm pretty sure your moms would like very much if you never pick up," they both agreed emphatically, "and you don't need to be a medic to be cool, but if you really, really wanna know how to heal people, then..." I took my hand out of my pocket, and a leaf appeared on it. "The other half of the equation is chakra control, so get cracking." I used a chakra thread to put it in her hands. "Well, there's knowledge needed too, but the biggest parts are yang release and plenty of chakra control."

"How did you do that?" Ai asked me, amazed.

I pulled down my sleeve, revealing a wristband with a storage seal on it that I'd made with Kurama's help. Really, why don't more people do that? It's awesome and useful. "I made a waterproof storage seal wristband with variable output, which is a lot more practical than you'd think if you do it right, by the way," I explained.

Ai gave me an eager look that made me feel like stars should have appeared in her eyes, and said, "Teach me your ways, master."

"Hey, I don't actually know how this leaf helps me with chakra control," Tenten complained.

"Naruto," I ordered. He took my meaning immediately and went over to help his new sister with her leaf. I turned back to Ai and said, "Right, so the first thing you need to know is that you can put waterproof seals on fabric surprisingly easily..."

kukukuku~

My eyes closed and my body absolutely still as I sat cross-legged under the shade of the tree, I pondered what Kurama and I had talked about in regards to Gaara's seal. "If I use it like that, the side-effects would actually be beneficial," I thought to myself as I formulated the beginnings of a plan. My thoughts shifted, however, when I finally managed to begin to feel the ebb and flow of the energy of the world around me after what felt like an hour of meditation. Without my eye's secondary powers, I doubted that I would've been able to stop fidgeting for that long...

Thankfully, the fact that I wasn't using toad oil to feel the natural energy meant that I didn't immediately start drawing on it, because at my chakra level, that would've probably been really bad. Without even opening my eyes, which I wasn't even sure I could do without breaking my tenuous natural energy sensing, I focused on the blue chakra in my hand. My idea was to combine the natural energy outside of my body until I felt I could do proper sage mode so as to circumvent the danger of using sage chakra.

Kurama had laughed that idea off at first when I'd told him, saying that there was no way I'd be able to add the natural energy to already-completed chakra until I'd actually managed to get the feel of sage chakra. I then told him that one of my failed attempts at yin-yang release involved me somehow managing to split my chakra back into its constituent parts and then recombining them outside of my body, which made him shut up. I thought back to when I managed to do it, then tried to recreate the feat. As is my curse, actually trying to do it somehow made it exponentially more difficult, though I just barely managed to puzzle it out. After that, I started working on recombining it, but with some extra natural energy. I almost got it... almost... almost...

"Hey, you!" Aaaand I lost it. I sighed, looked over the two chakra signatures that approached me, one of which had a suspiciously familiar signature to it that I honestly shouldn't have been too shocked about given who was writing the story, and opened my eyes to see a blonde girl about my age in front of me with a shy-looking pink-haired girl behind her.

"I-Ino-chan, you don't have to..." Oh, right. Sakura was really shy when she was a little kid. Seriously, though, how did she go from that to where she was at the start of the anime?

Actually it was probably the dumb fangirl thing. Would have to do something about that...

I licked my lips. "Nah, it's okay. I was almost done anyway... Whaddya want?"

"Why were you talking to that one kid earlier," Ino asked. She was referring to how Naruto was talking to me while I was meditating a bit earlier before going to play ninja with Tenten, Hinata, and Neji. "Our parents keep telling us not to talk to him."

I gave her my "I'm silently judging you" glare and said, "If anyone ever spent so much as two seconds getting to know Naruto they'd know he isn't a demon that has become quite jaded with most of humanity on account of their exploitative ways," eliciting a "What?" from both of them. "If either of your parents have problems not judging an innocent boy for events that happened literally on the day of his birth, then they can take it up with the Hokage." An idea came to me and I smirked. "Naruto's actually really friendly, you might like him. If you two want, I can probably get you in their game." I looked at Sakura and gave her a small, wry smile. "Plus, I think the two of you might be distantly related."

Ino sighed. "Why does everyone think that everyone with blonde hair is a Yamanaka?" she asked. "Not everyone with the same hair color are clan members!"

"I already knew that, Yamanaka Ino, heiress of the Yamanaka clan." I internally laughed at her face. "I think there are some redhead Yamanaka too, so explain that. Plus zero members of the current Uzumaki clan, despite three of them having chakra that suggests they inherited at least part of the bloodline, have the traditional Uzumaki red hair. No, I meant your pink-haired friend, who for some reason has a chakra signature that reminds me of members of the Senju and Uzumaki, plus with something else vaguely bloodliney that I haven't seen before. Probably foreshadowing for something."

Sakura blinked. "I'm part of the Uzumaki and Senju clans?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Could be close, could be distant. Uzumaki's an offshoot of Senju and I've only ever felt three confirmed Uzumaki, plus I've got nothing to compare that third, totally-something-that'll-come-up-later bloodline to, so that could also be something. Heck, it's so much of a jumble I wouldn't be surprised if you're from a third line descended from Otsutsuki Ashura that I somehow don't know about."

"A what?" Sakura asked.

I hummed. "The only thing about that that you really need to worry about is that you more likely than not have a longer lifespan and life energy than your average person. And if you wanna be a ninja, I suggest looking at medical ninjutsu. Tsunade the medical genius got to be so good from a combination of her advantage in yang release granted by having a Senju and an Uzumaki as grandparents and her skill with chakra control." I pointed at Tenten. "That's Tenten. Speak to her if you're curious. She really likes Tsunade."

Sakura blinked. "Thank you."

"It's cool," I said. "I'm gonna play now. You in?"

kukukuku~

"Hey, you!" a voice that I'm pretty sure was Sakura's mom said. I confirmed with a bit of chakra-sensing.

I turned around to see her. "Hello, Haruno-san."

She flinched. "How did you know my name?"

"I may not look it, but I'm skilled with chakra-sensing," I explained. "You share a... peculiarity in your chakra with your daughter." So my theory about that third thing in Sakura's chakra having to do with Ashura was probably shot, considering the fact that her mom had it and not the Uzumaki and Senju stuff.

"Right, well I don't like you telling my daughter to talk to talk to that Naruto boy."

I gave her a faux-confused stare. "What's wrong with him?"

As I expected, she blanched. "Well... he's..."

I decided to push a bit further. "Give me one good reason for all the abuse he's had at the hands of the village. One thing he's done that would change my mind. Burden of proof." After some more of her grasping for a good reason, I continued with a glare. "I know about the Kyuubi, by the way, and that's not a good reason." I made sure nobody was around before elaborating. "He's not the fuzzball, and if it weren't for him neither of us would be alive. Nor would your daughter, your husband, or just about anyone you've ever known and loved. Why then?"

"I... I-"

I snorted. "Save it. You're not gonna rationalize your way out of that moral quandary." I pulled out the used Inner Demon Calming Seal tag, then replaced the used-up sealing formula with a fresh one with my chakra alone. "If it really bothers you that your kid's friends with the jinchuriki, this thing can be used to suppress Fluffy's chakra, at least as long as... it... is still at least partially in Naruto." Calling Kurama it felt dirty. That's probably a good thing. "It's practically the best thing you can have when dealing with an out-of-control jin...chu..." I trailed off as it finally hit me just what I made.

"Fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-" I internally screamed.

She blinked. "It's okay. I don't need this. You're right."

"-uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-" I put the seal back away and said, "Yeah that's probably for the best... Hang on, I need to make a call real quick." I closed my eyes and reached out with my telepathy to Sarutobi's office.

"I already took care of it," Hiruzen told me immediately upon picking up. He was getting real nonchalant about having someone randomly use telepathy on him...

"-uuuuuuuu... huh?"

"Do you think I didn't realize how Akatsuki could use your seal?" he asked. "Rest assured, I informed the Kazekage of the gravity of it and why he should be careful with who he gives that information to. I also managed to put a genjutsu on it that should hopefully use Sasori's jutsu to induce memory loss. Theoretically, anyway. I'm not the best at genjutsu and I haven't seen Sasori's jutsu."

"Thanks," I mentally sighed. "I really dropped the ball there, huh?"

He mentally chuckled. "To be fair, you are still a child. You might still want to check in on Sasori."

"Will do. Bye." I opened my eyes back up. "Right, where were we?" I asked before realizing she was gone. "Meh, I'm sure everything's fine now."

kukukuku~

I sighed and licked my lips as I looked at the two balls of "sage" chakra in my hands. One was blue and one was red, but I was a little disappointed with the conversion time of both, even after multiple days of practice. Almost five minutes for a small amount of blue chakra and a little over twice that for an equal amount of red. I wasn't going to be able to use that in combat anytime soon...

Though I suppose it was better than my first time of about an hour for blue.

"I guess it still works for what I need it for," I sighed, then shrugged as I considered the blue chakra. With Kurama's and my calculations, it was doubtful that I'd need any more than a small amount of blue sage chakra, so I just traded a bit of chakra between my hands and reabsorbed the mostly blue chakra. It wasn't much of a boost and therefore carried none of the actual risks of sage mode, but I definitely felt a buzz from it that felt pretty nice. After that, I pulled out the little bug cage thing I got for the other component I needed for the jutsu I'd thought of.

That other thing being the bugs that I had. Well, any animal would do, but I wanted to start small and with something that I would hopefully not feel guilt over killing. Of course, that meant that I barely had any material to work with, just a couple of flies that I'd managed to convince Hinata to catch while I was meditating. I looked at them for a few minutes, took a few deep breaths, and said, "Sorry, little guys." I channeled the demonic sage chakra into the bugs, pouring all of the chakra evenly into them. The flies took on a look similar to a stage two chakra cloak but without the tail before beginning to compress and converge on each other.

The idea was to use the mutative properties of natural energy overload to change them into something I could use. Theoretically, I could have used less demon sage chakra than complete saturation, but I decided that with how easy it was to saturate the flies, I would just do that and observe as best I could to see if I could glean the proper form for that and not have to go through trial and error. After about a minute, they had fully compressed and fused together into a small red crystal with a light glow. I sighed when I saw that it was pebble-sized, about a centimeter in diameter. Sure, I wasn't expecting to pull an adequately-sized crystal out of a few flies, but I was hoping for a little more... I ran my fingers through my hair and picked up the pebble. "I guess it's fine for now..." I muttered, then reached down my shirt to stick it on my sternum, hidden away. A seal blossomed on my skin, collecting the very minute amount of demon sage chakra that the stone was generating. Until I had a bigger one, that was the best use for it I could think of.

kukukuku~

Imagine that one French narrator voice from Spongebob saying "One month later."

"So that's probably a good structure for the seal, right?" I asked, swinging my legs in the air. I was honestly surprised that the blood hadn't rushed to my head yet; I was sitting upside-down on the couch. Something something tree-walking, probably.

Ai shrugged. "Probably."

"Yeah, Shukaku's a slippery bastard, but that should about do it," Kurama agreed, curled up on another seat.

"Seal team meeting adjourned?" I asked, then got nods from the both of them. "Adjourned. Now that we're done, I remembered something I wanted to ask you, Ai."

"Shoot, kid."

I smirked and picked up a cookie from the plate on the table (using chakra threads, obviously). I took a bite from it, then after I swallowed said, "Your wife makes amazing cookies."

She blushed lightly. "Okay first, you skipped over the question. Second, she's only my girlfriend. We're not even engaged yet." I gave her a flat look and raised an eyebrow, causing her blush to deepen to the proper Uzumaki shade of red. "I'm still looking for a ring..." she muttered.

I nodded. "Good, you two feel like an old married couple already. Now, what do you know about the Adamantine Sealing Chains?"

Ai sighed deeply. "I still can't figure it out, even after I asked Kushina for advice a few years ago," she grumbled. "I'm still not entirely sure it's a Kekkei Genkai and not a Hijutsu..."

"Technically it's both," Kurama said. "If I recall correctly, it's technically a Hijutsu that uses the special chakra of the Uzumaki. You should be able to figure it out eventually if you know enough of how to use it, though."

Ai frowned. "How did you... Right... Hey, if you know so much about it from Kushina, do you have any tips to using it?"

Kurama shrugged. "I didn't really pay too much attention to it because I couldn't think of any way I could possibly use it to break out of the seal, and that was really all I was thinking of at the time... I know that you should be able to do it more easily if you manage it at least once, but I can't help you with that."

"I have an idea," I offered.

Kurama sighed, got up, and said, "Why do I feel like I'm not going to like this?"

"If it's part Kekkei Genkai, then you might find it easier to do it if you have more power behind you instead of harder."

"The math checks out, but I still don't like where this is going," Kurama complained. The red gem I'd made, now completed, dropped from under my shirt and into my hand. It had that one gem shape, sort of like a kunai but without the handle, though it was about half the scale of a kunai. "FUCK. NO." Kurama looked at me with with what probably should have been abject terror if he had the ability to make expressions. "Kouki, no!"

"Kouki yes," I countered flatly.

"Fuck this," Kurama said, then ran for the opened door. He stopped at the doorway, said "Kurama is out. Peace," and noped off as fast as his little legs could carry him.

"Should I be concerned by Kurama's reaction to that?" Ai asked.

I shrugged. "Unless you have objections to temporarily gaining phenomenal cosmic power, not particularly. I'll use my eyes to make sure I give you about as much as you can take without adverse effects, maybe a bit less. Kurama's just a wuss."

She nodded. "Cool. So what is that?"

"Demon gem." I originally called it a demon sage core, but that's a mouthful so I shortened it to demon gem. "A special stone of my own invention that generates red chakra and fuses it with natural energy on its own."

She gave me a huge grin. "Sounds fun."

I activated my eyes long enough to check how it would go down. Turns out it was a good idea, worked well enough, but unless we had more, then Ai'd really have to try to finesse it to get the chains out, and that's boring. "Unfortunately, though, it's probably gonna take like a month to do that, even with a head start. You've got a lot of chakra capacity."

"Dammit."

[missmeikakuna]

(GL/Yuri) Shoujo Heroine... and Friends Chapter 9

It’s date time for Sahana and Toyomi, and date (?) time for Masami and Kunie. Please comment your thoughts and like this chapter if you, well, like it.

Rated: T

Fandom: Original story

Relationship type: F/F with some F/M

Description:

Sahana is friendly, innocent and optimistic, making her the perfect shoujo anime heroine… except she’s not the main character of this story.

When school prince Toyomi asks her out, she starts hanging out with him and leaves her friends behind. Prim and proper Masami and tomboyish slob Kunie don’t seem to have much in common outside of their friendship with Sahana, but they try to make the best out of a lonely situation.

So why is the god of love and marriage watching them, red string of fate at the ready? CONTENT WARNING: Some homophobic language and bullying.

Chapter 9: That was so cool!

Sahana narrowed her eyes at the tickets in Toyomi’s hands, one eyebrow up. ‘Wrestling?’ She lifted her head, her eyes wide with apology. ‘You did mention liking that sort of thing. What date is it on?’

Toyomi gave her the date and time. ‘Would you like to come with me? I promise it’ll be fun.’ Sahana answered with an excited hug and the invisible trumpets surrounding Toyomi played a victorious tune.

‘You’re going to have to teach me everything about wrestling, starting with why you like it.’

Toyomi scratched his chin. ‘I think it’s because it’s a lot like theatre. A lot goes into making a wrestling show. You’re basically staging a bunch of action scenes except they’re live rather than in a movie, so you have to find ways to make it look and sound like a character hurt another without actually hurting them. It’s really clever what they do and the wrestlers are usually a lot of fun.’

‘Well, I guess I have something to look forward to, then.’ Sahana spotted Masami and Kunie walking to the Home Ec room and ran towards them. ‘Hey, guys!’

Kunie responded, ‘Oh, I was going to see a play this Saturday and was wondering if-’

‘I’m sorry, I can’t. Toyomi’s taking me out to wrestling. It should be fun watching a bunch of sweaty men pin each other down.’ When Kunie laughed, Sahana put on a shocked face. ‘What’s so funny?’

Toyomi finally caught up to Sahana. Between pants, he said. ‘You… don’t… need… to run… everywhere…’

Sahana bowed her apology but smirked. ‘Maybe you should get better at running.’

Kunie’s jaw dropped. An insult? Who was the Sahana that stood before her?

Sahana realised her error and chuckled awkwardly. She grabbed Toyomi by the arm and whisked him somewhere, anywhere, else.

Masami and Kunie turned to each other. ‘Mind if I go to the play with you?’ Masami asked. ‘What play is it?’

‘Well, it’s a Takarazuka musical. So yeah, it might be more suited to you than Sahana. I just haven’t hung out with her in a while so I thought it might… I’d be glad to go with you.’

Saturday night lifted its curtains and soon The two pairs were at their respective events. Let us begin with Sahana and Toyomi.

The term ‘verbal assault’ took on new meaning as Sahana stepped into the sizeable room with her hand in Toyomi’s. Her ears were hit by cheers and heckles from wrestling fans. The hype pulsed throughout her body.

She copied Toyomi’s chants and clapped along with the crowd. The first match was between Benny Beta, an American man, and Kouki Boushi, a Japanese man.

Toyomi clutched at his chest and looked like he was about to cry. Sahana put her hand on his shoulder and he smiled. He leaned in and whispered in her ear, inadvertently tickling it.

‘These two used to be a tag team but became enemies when one of them joined an evil gang. They spent so many games getting closer and closer only for that one event to shatter everything. It’s such a shame. Hopefully after this game they can go back to being friends or lovers or whatever they are.’ He turned his head until it was facing the ring. ‘Ooh, it’s starting!’

The first thing that stood out to Sahana was the booming of the wooden floor as the wrestlers fell onto it following a hit. It resounded through her core and made each attack from the wrestlers feel impactful. She could barely hear the dialogue above the crowd, but the wrestler’s moves seemed to tell a story all on their own. She remembered what Toyomi said about the wrestlers potentially being lovers and noticed a degree of sexual tension between them. She knew next to nothing about these two characters and yet all she wanted was for them to get along again.

As if the gods granted her wish, the two ended the match with a big hug, with the heel returning to the side of the face. Toyomi cheered them on.

They had to wait a while for the next match and the cheering gradually died down, giving Sahana and Toyomi an opportunity to talk.

‘So, what did you think of your first match?’ Toyomi asked.

‘That was so cool! I didn’t realise how complex the storylines were, plus the acrobatics were really impressive.’

‘Yeah, Kouki Boushi’s pretty light on his feet.’

After all the matches ended, the couple went to a nearby restaurant. They talked about wrestling while waiting for their orders but once they got their food Toyomi steered the conversation in a different direction.

‘Hey, uh, I’ve noticed something about the way you speak to your friends. You make a dirty joke and then act like you don’t know what you said. Is that an in-joke between you three?’

Sahana’s shoulder’s rose. She stood still for a moment before scratching her cheek and looking away.

‘You caught me.’ She brought her shoulders down even lower than they were before. ‘I don’t know. I guess I’m playing a game to see how long it takes them to realise I’m not the pure innocent maiden they think I am. It’s weird, I know.’ She slurped some noodles before twirling her chopsticks around the bowl without picking anything up. ‘I kind of want them to figure it out, but at the same time I kind of… don’t? What if I go too far and they think I’m some sort of pervy weirdo? But I still do it, trying to be as subtle as I can. At least if they don’t know they can just think I’m unintentionally funny.’

‘Do you think your friends are the type to judge you for something like that?’

Sahana stopped moving her chopsticks. ‘Probably not.’

‘I wouldn’t worry too much about what people think about you. I mean, it seems like half the school thinks I’m gay for some reason.’

‘Well, you were on the verge of tears over the reunion of two male wrestlers who may or may not be lovers.’

‘Fair point.’

Sahana leaned forward, her eyes half-closed. ‘You don’t need to prove anything to anyone, but if you, for whatever reason, want to prove your interest in me, my lips are here.’

‘Is this the real you? I like it.’

Toyomi’s lips were soft enough to tickle Sahana’s. She giggled at the sensation and took in the smell of ramen from his hot breath. Her heart alternated between shocks of joy and warm contentment. She felt as if she had moved into a new house and immediately settled into it. Toyomi’s gentle touch was now her home.

Now, how were Masami and Kunie doing? Before the show started, they chatted about theatre and, for the first few minutes of the musical, struggled to keep quiet. The glares from the people sitting around them eventually sewed their mouths shut.

Plus, they had pretty and talented women to watch. The grand movements and powerful voices of the performers captured Masami and Kunie’s very souls. At one point, Masami turned to Kunie and could vaguely see a blush on her cheeks whenever the stage lights got brighter.

She followed Kunie’s eye line and saw that she was staring not at the woman wearing a suit and singing in a deep voice but at the soft-faced woman in a dress. The feminine woman wasn’t singing at the time.

Something bugged Masami about that woman. It wasn’t like she had any reason to. Her singing was fine and she played the role well. What was it about her that ever so slightly heated up the blood in her veins?

Masami’s blood cooled down when intermission began and Kunie rapidly fired off all the reasons she was enjoying the performance.

‘And the costumes are gorgeous too! I think you’d look good in the outfit Mieko Chage wore in the last scene.’

Masami’s cheeks matched Kunie’s from earlier. ‘Wasn’t that a wedding dress?’ At this point, I had my red string in my hands. However, her thoughts went elsewhere. In her mind, she explained away her blush as the result of the embarrassment she would naturally feel from someone making such a suggestion.

‘I’d hope you’d look good in a wedding dress. You will invite me to your future wedding, right? I’d hate for my friend to look bad on her special day.’

‘Who on earth would I marry?’

Kunie shrugged her shoulders. ‘Maybe no one. Or maybe I was right about us being late bloomers. You could find someone. Just make sure he treats you right, okay? And for the love of all that is good, please don’t use tongue when the groom is told to kiss you.’

Another guffaw from Masami. As the two laughed, they got closer and closer until Masami’s head rested underneath Kunie’s chin. While calming her own laughter, she could hear Kunie’s heartbeat and felt like she was in front of the fireplace on a cold winter’s day.

After a few moments of them slowing their breaths, Masami removed her head from Kunie’s chest and stood up, holding out her hand.

‘Want to get some ice cream or a drink before intermission ends?’

Kunie grabbed her hand and let her pull her up. ‘Think we can get to the front of the line before then?’

Masami shrugged, giggling and taking her to the candy bar’s long line. Only then did she realise she was still holding Kunie’s hand and let go. Her hand felt colder by itself. Only a bit, though.

[toraonice]

Yuri on Ice BD audio commentary translation - Volume 2

Translation of the audio commentary of the BD/DVD vol.2! By Mitsurou Kubo and Kouki Uchiyama, voice actor of Yuri Plisetsky. Unlike the commentary of vol.1, that contained lots of things already appeared in countless interviews, this one has some VERY interesting information that I’m sure everyone wants to know. For example, we finally get to know more about Yurio’s family... There really is a lot of stuff regarding Yurio!

The commentary is only for episode 3. Episode 4 has no commentary. In a way it’s still not a full translation because I didn’t really translate every single line, but I think I translated/summarized basically everything they talked about. Therefore, it’s also really long... As in vol.1, since the format is different from normal interview translations, you can find my comments too (mostly in brackets).

Since it’s long you can find it under the cut. Enjoy!

-Kubo and Uchiyama actually never really talked before now, because even though they were together at the YOI preview screening Uchiyama went home right after because he was tired. He says that it’s not like he’s weak, but he can’t function when he’s sleepy (he can’t fight sleep basically). Both he and Kubo do not really do any type of sports, and Kubo says she quit softball after 1 week in her first year of middle school. Regarding sport, Kubo says that she has always watched it though, and she has also drawn shonen manga in her career. She says that she likes to observe sport but she doesn’t feel like she wants to participate, though if she were a guy she guesses maybe she would want to participate too.

-Kubo mentions Toyonaga asking her how she felt about him now, so she talks a little about the audition with Uchiyama. Before the actual audition each seiyuu actually sent a tape, and she says she was impressed by the way Uchiyama said the name of his agency Gekidan Himawari and his own name and she already wanted to cast him as Yurio after that. Uchiyama laughs and says it was probably because he sounded unsociable, and he also reveals that he actually recorded that at home with his iPhone so the sound isn’t great in the first place. Apparently, not all agencies record the tapes in studios with proper microphones, lol.

-The above audition talk was actually interrupted once during the scene where Yuuri and Yurio watch Victor skate Eros and Yuuri says the infamous line “he’s so eros I feel like I might get pregnant”. Kubo comments that the line gave rise to criticism, but that “this line was important for the balance within the story” (=“balance” as in “equilibrium”) so that’s why it’s there. (She doesn’t say anything else, therefore I can’t give an exact interpretation of what she means… I have a few ideas but it would be too long to elaborate on that here.)

-Regarding the scene where Victor tells Yuuri that the world still hasn’t seen his real eros (if I say “the scene where he has his face 3mm away from Yuuri’s” you might remember it better). Uchiyama comments “they’re so close (LOL)” and Kubo says that in the YOI LINE stamps (which unfortunately as far as I know are still not available for purchase from overseas) they used that scene for the stamp with the text “tell me, how is the progress?”. She says she hopes that company workers will feel more excited when they ask someone about the progress, lol. (In Japan asking about the progress of someone’s work, “shinchoku” in Japanese, is almost a template line and sometimes when combined with certain pictures may even become a meme or go viral. It is also used a lot by mangaka and doujinshi authors to refer about the progress of what they are drawing, mostly when it’s not progressing.)

-Regarding Yurio. Actually Yurio is the first character that they conceived thoroughly, even before Yuuri. And they came up with the nickname “Yurio” before of his real name. They looked for a Russian name for which they could use the nickname “Yurio”, and that’s how they decided to call him “Yuri”, but Kubo and director Yamamoto have been calling him Yurio from the start. In the series the name Yuri comes first and he only starts to be called Yurio from episode 2, so there were fans who were actually upset and felt sorry for him because his real name Yuri was “stolen” (as in that in the series other characters aren’t calling him with his real name). Kubo says that she’s a bit sorry that some people are feeling like that but that she’s also very happy that Yurio managed to become such a fascinating and loved character that viewers will feel upset for.

-Uchiyama asked Kubo who created the story exactly. She replies that she and director Yamamoto created it together, but that the first one who had a clear vision of it was Yamamoto. Then they had to flesh it out in detail and create all the characters in a way that they would feel realistic, which was a lot of work. For Kubo it’s the first time that something she draws is turned into an anime, so before YOI she had never drawn something thinking that the characters would speak the lines out loud. After watching the anime dubbed with Uchiyama’s voice she was glad that they had chosen him for the role of Yurio.

-Regarding Yurio training at the temple. They actually don’t say much, but Kubo laughs commenting that it’s “abuse” and Uchiyama says that they recorded a lot of different patterns for that scene. From that, the talk shifts to the recording.

-Kubo asks Uchiyama what kind of conversations they had with the sound director Shimizu. Uchiyama says that actually he has known him since Uchiyama was in his last year of elementary school (he also used to be a child actor, in fact his first important role as a seiyuu was Roxas of Kingdom Hearts II when he was still 15 years old) and that he’s a passionate person. When giving instructions to voice actors he’s not the type that will speak in detail like “say this line this way”, but he talks more about the spiritual/mental side of characters, like “this character is this kind of person”, therefore their conversations can get pretty long. Kubo comments that it must be difficult to act out the role of a character for an original anime, without any previous work to use as a reference like in adaptations of already existing manga, also because seiyuu were just given the script without much detail about how the scenes were created. Kubo also comments that she was very impressed by the voices of the crowd (usually the voices of the crowd are created on the spot by the seiyuu who are participating in the recording that day), because they had to think about lines that spectators would actually say without anything written in the script.

-Regarding the manga storyboard (called “name” in Japanese). Uchiyama says that it was really interesting and asks Kubo whether they have any plans to publish it, but she says that they don’t, because it wasn’t something created to be published (I hope they change their mind on that one day, I’m willing to pay some good money to read it, lol). Uchiyama believes that it was good enough to show it to people, and that in a way he’s very happy and feels lucky because he had the chance to read it. Kubo says that she mostly just drew what she wanted to draw, and asks him whether the storyboard helped him shape his role. He replies that it helped him a lot, and that even though of course he’s playing Yurio because it’s his job, the storyboard stimulated his motivation a lot because he liked seeing how the character came alive with his voice.

-Regarding the relationship between Yuuri and Yurio. The waterfall scene is what triggered this topic. Kubo mentions that from the waterfall scene you can see the bond between Yuuri and Yurio developing. She says that one of the things that made her happy to have chosen Uchiyama for Yurio’s role is that he is able to express Yurio’s slightly twisted personality in a natural way, without making it look like he might have some sort of dark past. She also thinks that the anime is done better than her storyboard and you can clearly see that Yuuri and Yurio develop a kind of friendship, like they are rivals but they also start getting along. They are not that kind of rivals that are hostile with each other. Uchiyama says that, looking at the scene during the Grand Prix (the tournament in Russia) where Yurio sees Yuuri screw up his program, almost cheers on him and is stopped by JJ, he realized that Yurio does want to win against Yuuri, but also feels that it’s pointless to win if Yuuri is not using 100% of his skills. Yurio wants them to compete against each other at the best of their ability, clash at 120% of their strength and then he wants to win by going still one step ahead of that. Uchiyama comments that seen from the eyes of an amateur it’s like a “clash of gods” and that he was impressed by Yurio’s mentality. Kubo also says that in figure skating athletes do not really fight 1 vs 1 but it’s more like everyone is trying to give their best performance. Apparently having someone who is very skilled close to you is one of the most motivating things and rivals are also a way to motivate oneself to get better, to give one’s best. Rivals are more like “fellow competitors”, so most skaters tend to get along well with each other. That’s why she thought it would be nice to have Yuuri and Yurio develop that kind of relationship too, and she thinks that in the anime, with the voices and all, it shows much better than in her storyboard.

-Regarding announcer Morooka in Onsen on ICE. They comment that Katou, the person voicing Morooka, is so good that you would never think he’s a normal person working for a company (not a voice actor). They laugh saying that the part with him looks like “Get Sports” (a sport documentary program of TV Asahi), and Kubo says that actually she wanted to include a Get Sports parody where they make a special feature on Yuuri and interview him but it didn’t fit in the episode and so they gave up. She went as far as to take screencaps of the program to make the TV screen look similar, however the storyboard was already huge and they really had to cut any second or line that was not indispensable. Basically there is nothing pointless in the episodes. Actually, in the storyboard Yurio’s mother dashes to Japan from Russia to see the match (Onsen on ICE), but there wasn’t enough time to add this part in the anime.

-They have a parenthesis regarding Yuuko’s nosebleed. They comment that it’s amusing, and Kubo says that they originally wanted to use it in the LINE stamps too, but since the regulation forbids stamps that contain any kind of violence it couldn’t go through because she’s bleeding, lol.

-Back to the topic of Yurio’s mother. Kubo has pictured Yurio’s mother as a former Russian idol (EDIT: She says “like xxx, with sauvage” where xxx is a name that starts with “Ta” and the rest is bleeped out, but she probably refers to t.A.T.u.! Thank you @nemesisfall for the input!! “Sauvage” is a hairstyle, permed hair with loose curls, that was also popular in Japan especially in the 80s), who retired from show business early, gave birth to a child at a young age, and the child skates, but there isn’t any clear mention of the father in the story. Yurio was mostly raised by his grandpa in Moscow, however to improve his skating skills he moved to St. Petersburg to train under Yakov at the sport club there. She says that she likes this kind of character who loves his grandpa. Unfortunately since it didn’t fit (because there wasn’t enough time) in the anime the part with Yurio’s mother was cut from Onsen on ICE and so she wasn’t mentioned afterwards either. But Kubo was sure that he could become stronger even without inserting the part about his mother. Uchiyama comments that he would like to see more about all the characters’ background. (To sum things up: no details about Yurio’s father so it’s not sure whether his mother raised him alone or not, but since apparently he spent a lot of time with his grandpa there is a chance that either his mother or both his parents worked the whole time and couldn’t spend time with him, though it’s not like his mother hates him or he was abused, and there is also a high chance that he’s an only child)

-Uchiyama asks Kubo about the schedule of a mangaka. She says that it mostly depends on whether she has assistants coming over or not. When the assistants are coming there is an exact schedule, like they come over 3-4 days a week at 10:00 in the morning, work there for 10-12 hours and then leave. During the other days she works on the “name” (storyboard/draft) of the manga and she might take some time to rest. For YOI she created all the storyboard alone (it’s not like it was cleaned and inked like for a manga that is published on a magazine so she didn’t have assistants coming over), and sometimes she had slumps and felt bad because the production staff was working super hard on the anime and she wasn’t doing anything. She said that it was like being confined in her house, she almost never went out and she happened to spend over one week without talking to anyone, but since she appears in a TV program (not YOI related) about once a month there was this day where she had to speak a lot after days of not speaking at all. She says she was really happy when she could go drink together with the voice actors after the TV Asahi event (I assume it’s the preview screening of the anime that was held before it actually aired, and it’s when Uchiyama went home right after the event, so I think “the voice actors” are Toyonaga and Suwabe). She also says that she never drinks alcohol when she’s working.

-Kubo says she was amused by Murase (seiyuu of Kenjirou Minami) and Uchiyama’s talk in “Yuri on Radio”, where they said that they went drinking together and Murase did the voice of a nasty woman. Uchiyama explains that when they go drink together late at night Murase tends to have a very high-pitched voice and can perfectly play women, so he randomly asked him to play the role of a nasty deceitful woman just for the laughs. And Uchiyama played a guy who is deceived by the woman. (By the way, according to a recording report from Otomedia Plus, in episode 10, when they were recording the voices of the crowd, Murase was put together with the female seiyuu, so actually there’s a woman in the crowd voiced by him, lol)

-Regarding figure skating programs. When Yuuri is skating Eros Kubo comments that it’s a program that will be shown many times but every time it’s shown in a different way. Uchiyama asks whether it’s interesting to watch how the same program by the same athlete evolves in the course of various matches, like in the GP series, and Kubo confirms that it’s extremely interesting. She says that it may also look completely different depending on what athletes are participating in a tournament and their skating order, like the same musical can look totally different with a different cast of actors. It also changes depending on the skater’s conditions and it evolves with time. Usually, if an athlete skates the program too well in their first match, people even get worried because they wonder whether they will be able to keep up the pace until the end. But this “human side” of figure skating is something that makes her want to cheer on the athletes.

-Regarding Yurio and his relationship with other characters. The time Yurio spent in Hasetsu is a very important memory to him, that will keep on giving him support. Kubo asks Uchiyama whether he liked playing Yurio, and he says that he really enjoyed playing him. He also says that he had read all of Kubo’s manga “Moteki” and the first time he saw a picture of Yurio he reminded him of a female character from Moteki (he doesn’t mention who). During the scene where Yurio leaves the rink to go back to Russia after Yuuri wins Onsen on ICE, Uchiyama comments that you see him talk with Yuuko here and then in later episodes they can be seen exchaging messages with their smartphones. Kubo says that the scene looks like he’s going back alone, but actually Yuuko drove him to Fukuoka airport with her car. Regarding how he was able to buy a plane ticket, she says “please do not think too much about that”, lol. Uchiyama laughs and comments that maybe Yuuko helped him buy it. They also say that Yurio has many interesting female characters around him, like Lilia and Mila. Uchiyama is amused by the fact that Popovich appears in the background a few times in the scenes where Yurio and Mila are shown, and says that it’s nice to rewatch the series because after knowing all the characters you can spot them when they appeared in the early part of the show and were still unknown. Same goes for the ending footage, that you might see in a different light after getting to know the characters.

-Regarding the last exchange that they have during the ending, I will report it exactly as it was because it’s hard to summarize, lol. Kubo: Ahh, and to think it’s ending in December… Uchiyama: I can’t believe it either. K: Cos you know, I really really want to write at least the story in St. Petersburg (LOL). U: So basically your head is still full of Yuri on Ice stories that you want to write, right? K: The director and I very much think so, but I don’t know what will happen. I mean, it’s so hard to create an anime, isn’t it? U: Sure it is. K: At worst we might just do it in the form of street theater (LOL). (She says “kamishibai”, it’s a traditional Japanese performance where a person narrates a story while showing it with a series of pictures, like a narrated slide show) U: Street theater (LOL). K: We can tour the country (LOL). It’s not even like a live reading play (LOL). U: Street theater (LOL). K: Like, “once upon a time, in St. Petersburg, there was Yurio…”. We can do it, I’m sure (LOL). U: You know, I genuinely want to see all those stories, as a viewer. K: But seriously, now the show has such a good reputation overseas. And in Japan too. U: I hear that lots of real skaters are watching it too.

And then the ending is over and they don’t have any time left, so they just do the final greetings. I would REALLY like to see whatever story they want to write, any form is fine, but of course I do hope they can do a second season of the anime… The sales of the BDs/DVDs (which are basically what can influence the future of an anime the most) have been going great so far, therefore I believe there is hope.

[chemicalmagecraft]

I Would Totally Kick Jiraiya’s Butt Chapter 7

I groaned and yawned as I woke up with a fuzzy head. I started rubbing my eyes as I sat up a bit.

Then I went back down and almost fell asleep. I didn't actually fall asleep, however, because of a knock on my door. "In a minute," I managed to get out, then rolled off the bed. I eventually managed to get up and open the door to the sight of a woman of the main branch family, if I remembered right. "Sleepy," I blearily muttered as an excuse. I probably had bedhead, which added to the image.

She chuckled. "So this is why you don't let anyone in your room in the morning hours," she said jokingly.

I grunted, licked my lips, then said, "I must look like a little death, huh?" I snapped my fingers at my vanity and my brush and comb flew over thanks to the wind attribute in Kurama's chakra, then started un-messing my hair. She just stared at me incredulously. "So what do yo- ah!" I was interrupted by the brush trying to force through a particularly bad knot. They stopped long enough for me to sort out the knot, then continued. "I told you two to stop if that happens," I chided. I gave the woman whose name I couldn't remember at the moment a small, polite smile and explained, "A jutsu that I made that animates things. I unfortunately don't have enough enough chakra to use anything practical in a fight yet, but I can use it for laziness." I shrugged. "Sure, I have to charge them up every so often or they'll die, but they're pretty nice. So what do you need from me?"

"...Hiashi-sama asked me to give you this, and not to look inside it," she said as she handed me a messenger bag. I grunted a "thanks" and opened it to see a couple of scrolls, a large book, and a file. "If I might ask, what exactly is in that?"

"Top-secret fuinjutsu stuff," I muttered as I opened the file to see medical records and a picture of a small boy with red hair and shadows around his eyes. "If anyone asks, you never saw this. Talk to Father if you really want to know, but just know it comes from Hokage-sama." I put the file back and took the book out. I raised my eyebrows when I realized that it looked like a primer on the theory of poison. "Thanks... uh..." I thought for a moment. "Sorry, I should know this, I'm still a little asleep... Yuri-san?"

"It's actually Yuriko, Kouki-kun," she politely corrected. "My mothers had a laugh at that one..." I thought about asking about that, then decided that that'd be prying a bit and just gave a small, flat, "Ha." She smiled and said, "I'm going to go now. Good luck with your project."

I sat down at my desk after she left and pulled out all of the scrolls and the file. I sorted through the scrolls, putting the jutsu scrolls back in the bag. When I was done I looked through the final scroll, which was about Gaara's seal. I frowned and ran my fingers through my hair when I was done. "This doesn't make any sense..." I muttered. "Either I'm missing something or Gaara really shouldn't be having as many problems as he has... Maybe it's something to do with Shukaku in particular?" 

I opened the file on Gaara back up to see what I could gleam from that. "Nothing too useful, it turns out..." I sighed. I might have been able to do something with the stuff about his chakra and the symptoms that they knew for sure were from Shukaku, but I'd probably need to consult Kurama first, and he was... actually it was really surprising, but he was playing with Hinata, so I couldn't talk to him. Then I noticed a small sealing tag included with the papers. I picked it up and immediately recognized it as a used Inner Demon Calming Seal. A sticky note on it said that the Kazekage had Gaara use one for practice so I'd have a baseline, which was really good on his part. Would have to tell him he done good.

I took it, pulled out a blank scroll, put the tag on the scroll, and made a half ram seal. Words flowed out of the seal and onto the scroll, forming the statistics on Gaara. I nodded. It looked like the scan function was working perfectly, and the data I got from it was pretty good. I already had the beginnings of an idea just from that, though I decided I should probably consult Kurama before actually trying to work on it as a precaution. 

When I was done, I made a half dragon seal and pulled the tag from the scroll. The words peeled off with the scroll, and as I flipped the tag around and put it down, the words reconstituted into a sort of spherical barrier that allowed a ball of red chakra to emerge from the seal without dispersing into the air. I frowned as I saw the size of it. "The regulator's off..." The idea was that the seal would take only a little bit extra of Shukaku's chakra from what it was using to suppress Shukaku for me to play with, but there was a lot more than what I was expecting. "Or maybe it's just that Shukaku wasn't trying to break free or fighting at all," I realized with a shrug. "Meh." I made another half ram seal with my left hand and an empty sealing circle formed on it. I shoved my hand into the containment barrier and the red chakra flowed into the seal, forming a slash in the middle, the kanji for one.

kukukuku~

I knocked on the door. Thankfully, the seal on my hand had disappeared after it settled down like Naruto's. That would've been hard to hide if it hadn't... Because I could feel that nobody was around, I revealed the seal for a bit to inspect it while I waited for someone to open the door. When I felt Tenko about to open the door, I let it fade again and shoved my hands into my pockets. "Hey, Uzumaki-san," I said with a small smile.

"Kouki-kun," she greeted back. "Are you here to see Naruto-kun?" I nodded and she let me inside. The house was nice. It wasn't nearly as big as the Hyūga compound, for obvious reasons, but it was pretty big for a family of four. Probably because of the prestige of the Uzumaki clan, even if said clan was only the four members.

"How's he settling in?" I asked.

"Kouki!" Naruto shouted as he waved enthusiastically at me, then went back to climbing on Ai.

"Hey, kid," Ai greeted as Naruto managed to get to and start pushing on her face. "A little help, honey? Please?" Tenko giggled and picked Naruto up off of Ai, earning a peck on the cheek as thanks. "Thanks, sweetie."

I chuckled. "So he's settling in nice, then?" I inferred, then beckoned for Naruto. "C'mere, Naruto. I wanna tell you something."

Tenko put him down, but he frowned and didn't come to me. "Why do you have that weird feeling that all the mean people have, Kouki-kun?" he asked me.

I internally sighed and, not for the first time, was glad that my general lack of major emoting most of the time kept my annoyance from really showing. Naruto had noted feeling the malice of others recently, which was from my giving Kurama his yin power back. Still, though, it shouldn't have been strong enough to passively sense what little malice I could generate towards him... I extended my (unfortunately still weak passively) malice sense towards him, or rather his seal, and felt a sort of smug malice coming from Kurama, which made more sense. I sent him a little message of "you suck" and told Naruto, "I dunno, but are you gonna ignore my advice?" He shrugged and walked over to me, allowing me to give him a light chop to the head. On the plus side, I was conditioning him to equate malice directed at him with pain, hopefully.

"Hey!" he complained.

"Don't throw away Gudō Dama, stupid," I chided.

"I don't even know what that is!"

"Powerful but finicky jutsu that you might get in the future if events line up, and in my visions you stupidly hamstrung your ability to use two fifths of it like an hour after getting it by throwing two of them into a Chibaku Tensei in another space-time. Don't do that for real."

"What happened to not punishing people for things they haven't done yet?"

I shrugged. "That was for having the potential stupid to throw away Gudō Dama. You don't even want to know what I'll do if I learn you do it without a good enough reason." Then, I heard the frantic footsteps of a young girl and turned around to see Tenten staring at me with an elated expression. "'Sup," I said.

"Naruto-kun said that you have healing powers!" Tenten said.

"Yeah, but not the kind just anyone can use, if that's what you're asking." Her face fell. "But if it's healing jutsu you want to learn, then you should know that you have a bit of an advantage with yang release, which you need for medical release."

"Yes!" she shouted and threw her hands in the air. "I wanna be like Tsunade, she's this really cool kunoichi who's a really good healer!"

Ai pouted. "I'm a cool kunoichi too... And I have weapons... It's because I'm only a special jōnin, isn't it?"

I nodded. "Tsunade's got some bad habits that I'm pretty sure your moms would like very much if you never pick up," they both agreed emphatically, "and you don't need to be a medic to be cool, but if you really, really wanna know how to heal people, then..." I took my hand out of my pocket, and a leaf appeared on it. "The other half of the equation is chakra control, so get cracking." I used a chakra thread to put it in her hands. "Well, there's knowledge needed too, but the biggest parts are yang release and chakra control."

"How did you do that?" Ai asked me, amazed.

I pulled down my sleeve, revealing a wristband with a storage seal on it. Really, why don't more people do that? It's awesome and useful. "I made a waterproof storage seal wristband with variable output, which is a lot more practical than you'd think if you do it right, by the way," I explained.

Ai gave me an eager look that made me feel like stars should have appeared in her eyes, and said, "Teach me your ways, master."

"Hey, I don't actually know how this leaf helps me with chakra control," Tenten complained.

"Naruto," I ordered. He took my meaning immediately and went over to help his new sister with her leaf. I turned back to Ai and said, "Right, so the first thing you need to know is that you can put seals on fabric surprisingly easily..."

kukukuku~

My eyes closed and my body absolutely still as I sat cross-legged under the shade of the tree, I pondered what Kurama and I had talked about in regards to Gaara's seal. "If I use it like that, the side-effects would actually be beneficial," I thought to myself as I formulated the beginnings of a plan. My thoughts shifted, however, when I finally managed to begin to feel the ebb and flow of the energy of the world around me after what felt like an hour of meditation. Without my eye's secondary powers, I doubted that I would've been able to stop fidgeting for that long... Thankfully, the fact that I wasn't using toad oil to feel the natural energy meant that I didn't immediately start drawing on it, because at my chakra level, that would've probably been bad. Without even opening my eyes, which I wasn't even sure I could do without breaking my tenuous natural energy sensing, I focused on the blue chakra in my hand. 

My idea was to combine the natural energy outside of my body until I felt I could do proper sage mode so as to circumvent the danger of using sage chakra. Kurama laughed that idea off at first when I'd told him, saying that there was no way I'd be able to add the natural energy to already-completed chakra until I'd actually managed to get the feel of sage chakra. I then told him that one of my failed attempts at yin-yang release involved me somehow managing to split my chakra back into its constituent parts and then recombining them outside of my body, which made him shut up. I thought back to when I managed to do it, then tried to recreate the feat. As is my curse, actually trying to do it somehow made it exponentially more difficult, though I just barely managed to puzzle it out. After that, I started working on recombining it, but with some extra natural energy. I almost got it... almost... almost...

"Hey, you!" I lost it. I sighed, looked over the two chakra signatures that approached me, one of which had a suspiciously familiar signature to it that I honestly shouldn't have been too shocked about given who was writing the story, and opened my eyes to see a blonde girl about my age in front of me with a shy-looking pink-haired girl behind her.

"I-Ino-chan, you don't have to..." Oh, right. Sakura was really shy when she was a little kid.

I licked my lips. "Nah, it's okay. I was almost done anyway... Whaddya want?"

"Why were you talking to that one kid earlier," Ino asked. She was referring to how Naruto was talking to me while I was meditating a bit earlier before going to play ninja with Tenten, Hinata, and Neji. "Our parents keep telling us not to talk to him."

I gave her my "I'm silently judging you" glare and said, "If anyone ever spent so much as two seconds getting to know Naruto they'd know he isn't a demon that has become quite jaded with most of humanity on account of their exploitative ways," eliciting a "What?" from both of them. "If either of your parents have problems not judging an innocent boy for events that happened literally on the day of his birth, then they can take it up with the Hokage." An idea came to me and I smirked. "Naruto's actually really friendly, you might like him. If you two want, I can probably get you in their game." I looked at Sakura and gave her a small, wry smile. "Plus, I think the two of you might be family."

Ino sighed. "Why does everyone think that everyone with blonde hair is a Yamanaka?" she asked. "Not everyone with the same hair color are clan members!"

"I already knew that, Yamanaka Ino, heiress of the Yamanaka clan." I internally laughed at her face. "I believe there are some redhead Yamanaka, so explain that. Plus zero members of the current Uzumaki clan, despite three of them having chakra that suggests they inherited at least part of the bloodline, have the traditional Uzumaki red hair. No, I meant your pink-haired friend, who for some reason has a chakra signature that reminds me of members of the Senju and Uzumaki, plus with something else vaguely bloodliney that I haven't seen before. Probably foreshadowing for something."

Sakura blinked. "I'm part of the Uzumaki and Senju clans?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Could be close, could be distant. Uzumaki's an offshoot of Senju and I've only ever felt three confirmed Uzumaki, plus I've got nothing to compare that third, totally-something-that'll-come-up-later bloodline to, so that could also be something. Heck, it's so much of a jumble I wouldn't be surprised if you're from a third line descended from Ōtsutsuki Ashura that I somehow don't know about."

"A what?" Sakura asked.

I hummed. "The only thing about that that you really need to worry about is that you more likely than not have a longer lifespan and life energy than your average person. And if you wanna be a ninja, I suggest looking at medical ninjutsu. Tsunade the medical genius got to be so good from a combination of her advantage in yang release granted by having a Senju and an Uzumaki as grandparents and her skill with chakra control." I pointed at Tenten. "That's Tenten. Speak to her if you're curious. She really likes Tsunade."

Sakura blinked. "Thank you."

"It's cool," I said. "I'm gonna play now. You in?"

kukukuku~

"Hey, you!" a voice that I'm pretty sure was Sakura's mom said. I confirmed with a bit of chakra-sensing.

I turned around to see her. "Hello, Haruno-san."

She fliched. "How did you know my name?"

"I may not look it, but I'm skilled with chakra-sensing," I explained. "You share a... peculiarity in your chakra with your daughter." So my theory about that third thing in Sakura's chakra having to do with Ashura was probably shot, considering the fact that her mom had it and not the Uzumaki and Senju stuff.

"Right, well I don't like you telling my daughter to talk to talk to that Naruto boy."

I gave her a faux-confused stare. "What's wrong with him?"

As I expected, she blanched. "Well... he's..."

I decided to push a bit further. "Give me one good reason for all the abuse he's had at the hands of the village. One thing he's done that would change my mind. Burden of proof." After some more of her grasping for a good reason, I continued with a glare. "I know about the Kyūbi, by the way, and that's not a good reason." I made sure nobody was around before elaborating. "He's not the fuzzball, and if it weren't for him neither of us would be alive. Nor would your daughter, your husband, or just about anyone you've ever known and loved. Why then?"

"I... I-"

I snorted. "Save it. You're not gonna rationalize your way out of that moral quandary." I pulled out the used Inner Demon Calming Seal tag, then replaced the used-up sealing formula with a fresh one. "If it really bothers you that your kid's friends with the jinchuriki, this thing can be used to suppress Fuzzy's chakra, at least as long as... it... is still at least partially in Naruto." Calling Kurama it felt dirty. That's probably a good thing. "It's practically the best thing you can have when dealing with an out-of-control jin...chu..." I trailed off as it finally hit me just what I made. "Fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-" I internally screamed.

She blinked. "It's okay. I don't need this. You're right."

"-uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-" I put the seal back away and said, "Yeah that's probably for the best... Hang on, I need to make a call real quick." I closed my eyes and reached out with my telepathy to Sarutobi's office.

"I already took care of it," Hiruzen told me immediately upon picking up. He was getting real nonchalant about having someone randomly use telepathy on him...

"-uuuuuuuu... huh?"

"Do you think I didn't realize how Akatsuki could use your seal?" he asked. "Rest assured, I informed the Kazekage of the gravity of it and why he should be careful with who he gives that information to. I also managed to put a genjutsu on it that should hopefully use Sasori's jutsu to induce memory loss. Theoretically, anyway. I'm not the best at genjutsu and I haven't seen Sasori's jutsu."

"Thanks," I mentally sighed. "I really dropped the ball there, huh?"

He mentally chuckled. "To be fair, you are still a child. You might still want to check in on Sasori."

"Will do. Bye." I opened my eyes back up. "Right, where were we?" I asked before realizing she was gone. "Meh, I'm sure everything's fine now."

kukukuku~

I sighed and licked my lips as I looked at the two balls of "sage" chakra in my hands. One was blue and one was red, but I was a little disappointed with the conversion time of both, even after multiple full days of practice. Almost five minutes for a small amount of blue chakra and a little over twice that for an equal amount of red. I wasn't going to be able to use that in combat anytime soon... Though I suppose it was better than my first time of about an hour for blue. "I guess it still works for what I need it for," I sighed, then shrugged as I considered the blue chakra. With Kurama's and my calculations, it was doubtful that I'd need any more than a small amount of blue sage chakra, so I just traded a bit of chakra between my hands and reabsorbed the mostly blue chakra. It wasn't much of a boost, but I definitely felt a buzz from it that felt pretty nice. 

After that, I pulled out the little bug cage thing I got for the other component I needed for the jutsu I'd thought of. That other thing being the bugs that I had. Well, any animal would do, but I wanted to start small and with something that I would hopefully not feel guilt over killing. Of course, that meant that I barely had any material to work with, just a couple of flies that I'd managed to convince Hinata to catch while I was meditating. I looked at them for a few minutes, took a few deep breaths, and said, "Sorry, little guys." I channeled the demonic sage chakra into the bugs, pouring all of the chakra evenly into them. The flies took on a look similar to a stage two chakra cloak but without the tail before beginning to compress and converge on each other.

The idea was to use the mutative properties of natural energy overload to change them into something I could use. Theoretically, I could have used less demon sage chakra than complete saturation, but I decided that with how easy it was to saturate the flies, I would just do that and observe closely to see if I could glean the proper form for that and not have to go through trial and error. After about a minute, they had fully compressed and fused together into a small red crystal with a light glow. I sighed when I saw that it was pebble-sized, about a centimeter in diameter. Sure, I wasn't expecting to pull an adequately-sized crystal out of a few flies, but I was hoping for a little more... I ran my fingers through my hair and picked up the pebble. "I guess it's fine for now..." I muttered, then reached down my shirt to stick it on my sternum, hidden away. A seal blossomed on my skin, collecting the very minute amount of demon sage chakra that the stone was generating. Until I had a bigger one, that was the best use for it I could think of.

kukukuku~

Imagine that one French narrator voice from Sponebob saying "One month later."

"So that's probably a good structure for the seal, right?" I asked, swinging my legs in the air. I was honestly surprised that the blood hadn't rushed to my head yet; I was sitting upside-down on the couch. Something something tree-walking, probably.

Ai shrugged. "Probably."

"Yeah, Shukaku's a slippery bastard, but that should about do it," Kurama agreed, curled up on another seat.

"Seal team meeting adjourned?" I asked, then got nods from the both of them. "Adjourned. Now that we're done, I remembered something I wanted to ask you, Ai."

"Shoot, kid."

I smirked and picked up a cookie from the plate on the table (using chakra threads, obviously). I took a bite from it, then after I swallowed said, "Your wife makes amazing cookies."

She blushed lightly. "Okay first, you skipped over the question. Second, she's only my girlfriend. We're not even engaged yet." I gave her a flat look and raised an eyebrow, causing her blush to deepen to the proper Uzumaki shade of red. "I'm still looking for a ring..." she muttered.

I looked up/down at her and interlaced my hands. "Good, you two feel like an old married couple already. Now, what do you know about the Adamantine Sealing Chains?"

Ai sighed deeply. "I still can't figure it out, even after I asked Kushina for advice years ago," she grumbled. "I'm still not entirely sure it's a Kekkei Genkai and not a Hijutsu..."

"Technically it's both," Kurama said. "If I recall correctly, it's technically a Hijutsu that uses the special chakra of the Uzumaki. You should be able to figure it out if you know enough of how to use it, though."

Ai frowned. "How did you... Right... Hey, if you know so much about it from Kushina, do you have any tips to using it?"

Kurama shrugged. "I didn't really pay too much attention to it because I couldn't think of any way I could possibly use it to break out of the seal, and that was really all I was thinking of at the time... I know that you should be able to do it more easily if you manage it at least once, but I can't help you with that."

"I have an idea," I offered.

Kurama sighed, got up, and said, "Why do I feel like I'm not going to like this?"

"If it's part Kekkei Genkai, then you might find it easier to do it if you have more power behind you instead of harder."

"The math checks out, but I still don't like where this is going," Kurama complained. The red gem I'd made, now completed, dropped from under my shirt and into my hand. It had that one gem shape, sort of like a kunai but without the handle, though it was about half the scale of a kunai. "FUCK. NO." Kurama looked at me with with what probably should have been abject terror if he had the ability to make expressions. "Kouki, no!"

"Kouki yes," I countered flatly.

"Fuck this," Kurama said, then ran for the opened door. He stopped at the doorway, said "Kurama is out. Peace," and noped off as fast as his little legs could carry him.

"Should I be concerned by Kurama's reaction to that?" Ai asked.

I shrugged. "Unless you have objections to temporarily gaining phenomenal cosmic power, not particularly. I'll use my eyes to make sure I give you about as much as you can take without adverse effects, maybe a bit less. Kurama's just a wuss."

She nodded. "Cool. So what is that?"

"Demon Sage Core. A special stone of my own invention that generates red chakra and fuses it with natural energy on its own."

She gave me a huge grin. "Sounds fun."

I activated my eyes long enough to check how it would go down. Turns out it was a good idea, worked well enough, but unless we had more, then Ai'd really have to try to finesse it to get the chains out. "Unfortunately, though, it's probably gonna take like a month to do that, even with a head start. You've got a lot of chakra capacity."

"Dammit."

kukukuku~

A/N: Yeah I was actually really salty when I realized that NARUTO THREW AWAY TWO OF HIS AWESOME JUTSU BALLS WHY!?

[toraonice]

Yuri on Ice BD booklet translation (with Kenji Miyamoto interview) - Volume 2

Finally a new translation… This is a full translation of the booklet contained in the BD/DVD vol.2. This time I also decided to translate the captions under the pictures in the “TOPIC” sections because some of them actually have important information (like the one about the 3 sisters). Since it would be weird to only translate some based on what they say, I just translated them all and added them to the translation of the vol.1 booklet as well (you can find that here). If you check it you will understand why I hadn’t thought of translating them in the first place…

Like vol.1, the booklet has 3 parts: 1) Character introduction for Yurio and (short ones) for most characters living in Hasetsu like Yuuri and Nishigoori’s families. By the way, regarding Makkachin’s voice actor listed as “?”, I read in a recording report on Otomedia Plus that (at least in one of the scenes) Suwabe offered to voice him, lol. (I’m writing Makkachin as “he” but actually the gender is not officially confirmed yet) 2) “Topics”, in other words random curiosities. This time this section has some interesting information, especially if you are not too familiar with figure skating. (It also clears up why Yuuri and Victor are always alone in the rink and why they necessarily need to practice very early in the morning) 3) Interview with the choreographer Kenji Miyamoto. It explains more in detail some of the things that were mentioned in the commentary to the choreography footage of vol.1. The parts in round brackets are exactly like they are in the original text, it’s not something I added.

Hopefully I will be able to translate the audio commentary and choreography footage (which I still haven’t even had time to watch of course) too by the end of Sunday…

***If you wish to share this translation please do it by reblogging or posting a link to it*** 
***Re-translating into other languages is ok but please mention that this post is the source***

A beautiful monster that continues to grow

Yuri Plisetsky voiced by Kouki Uchiyama

Russian Height: 163 cm Date of birth: March 1st Blood type: B

Past record: 2 times consecutive winner of the Junior Grand Prix Final 2 times consecutive winner of the Junior World Championships

Introduction He debuts in the senior class at the age of 15 after repeatedly winning the Junior Grand Prix Final and Junior World Championships. Now a pupil of the noted scouter of young talents Yakov, he is Russia’s new hope. During his junior years he already mastered quadruple jumps, but his coach prohibited him from using them in matches. With his sharp jumps, he is in the focus of attention as everyone is curious to see how far he will be able to go in his first year as a senior. His talent was noticed when he was still little and he left his family in Moscow to train under coach Yakov in St. Petersburg. On the ice he is as beautiful as a fairy, but off the ice he is quite mischievous and is known for the striking aesthetic sense of the outfits he wears in the selfies posted on his SNS. He’s also famous for his devoted fan group Yuri’s angels, who cheer on him wearing cat ears. His favorite food is his grandpa’s pirozhki. Katsuki Family

Mari Katsuki voiced by Kyouko Sakai Yuuri’s older sister who works at “Yutopia Katsuki”. She likes idols and has a thing for blond boys. She named Yuri “Yurio” when he came to Hasetsu.

Toshiya Katsuki voiced by Souryuu Konno Yuuri’s father. He owns “Yutopia Katsuki”, the only day onsen in Hasetsu. He is not very familiar with figure skating and actually likes soccer.

Hiroko Katsuki voiced by Kei Hayami Yuuri’s mother. She runs “Yutopia Katsuki” with her husband. She knows Minako-sensei from when they were students, and Hiroko is the younger one. Nishigoori Family

Takeshi Nishigoori voiced by Jun Fukuyama Yuuri’s childhood friend and former rinkmate. He works at “Ice Castle Hasetsu”, is Yuuri’s good supporter and helps him with his basic training.

Yuuko Nishigoori voiced by Mariya Ise She is Nishigoori’s wife, works at “Ice Castle Hasetsu” and Yuuri has always admired her. She is Victor’s fan and doesn’t only care for Yuuri but for Yurio as well.

Axel, Lutz, Loop Nishigoori voiced by Akiko Yashima The 3 twins of the Nishigoori family, also known as the “3 skating otaku sisters”. They skillfully use their parents’ smartphones to post on the SNS and they organized “Onsen on ICE”. Their potential is bottomless. Minako Okukawa voiced by Yuka Komatsu Former ballet dancer who currently teaches a ballet class in Hasetsu, she is Yuuri’s strict but affectionate teacher. She travels around the world to support Yuuri and as a personal hobby.

Makkachin voiced by ? Victor’s pet dog, a standard poodle. He came to Hasetsu together with Victor. He is quiet and friendly to people, but is a bit greedy when it comes to food.

YURI!!!’s TOPIC

TOPIC 1: Skate Otaku Sisters The triplets of the Nishigoori family. Since they can do anything people tend to forget that they’re still 6 years old kindergartners. Axel, Lutz and Loop can be distinguished by their hairstyle and personal color. The reason they are called “skating otaku” sisters is that they use their parents’ smartphones and PC to check information about skaters on the social media and enjoy watching real time live streamings of international tournaments. By watching their behavioral pattern you will be able to understand how skating otaku all around the world live. Their parents work at an ice rink, but it’s not clear whether the 3 sisters can skate too.

*Each of them has an assigned task: taking movies, pictures or uploading *Their carefree action strongly influenced the story *A perfect spin. Maybe they can skate…? *They are even good at drawing, but they use crayons *Axel has pigtails and her color is purple. Lutz has a bun and her color is light blue. Loop has a ponytail and her color is pink.

TOPIC 2: Off ice training Of course, figure skating is mostly practiced on the ice. However, there are also many kinds of training that must be done off the ice, like fitness training, stretching exercises, core training and so on. Beside running and stretching, many skaters also incorporate ballet lessons into their basic training. In addition, some of them take lessons or hear the opinion from dancers and performers of various genres, to improve their expressiveness and understanding of the program. Sometimes they might even go stand under waterfalls to train their mental strength… maybe. There are no restrictions on the types of training, as long as they can improve their skating skills and expression.

*It’s a tough sport that requires lots of basic training *It’s important to have a trainer that supports you *Stretching exercises at any time *Russia is the home of ballet *Training your mental strength might be the hardest

TOPIC 3: Music Choosing music is important to create a program. Cases where music is created from scratch, like for Yuuri’s FS, are actually rare, and most skaters choose existing songs and have them edited so that their length is according to regulations (in case of the men’s senior class it’s approx. 2:40 min. for the short program and 4:30 min. for the free). Usually songs are edited by either the choreographer, music professionals or skaters themselves. Most of the times they use the original title of the song, but in cases of original songs such as “Yuri on ICE” or when the skater wants to deliver a certain message they use a different title for the program.

*It’s important that the song gives you an image *Sometimes they choose from what are called “standard songs” *The CD is an important object that they must hand out at tournaments

TOPIC 4: Choreography Program choreographies are commonly created by coaches or professional choreographers, but there are also skaters who create them on their own like Victor, and some who order them from professionals unrelated to the skating world, like for Yurio’s FS. When a choreography is created by a dancer or someone who doesn’t skate, usually the steps and exact footwork will be thought by the coach. Most professional choreographers aren’t always by the skater’s side, therefore skaters practice the choreography on their own and then have the choreographer come over a few times during the season to adjust it. Yuuri is really lucky to have a coach & choreographer teaching him on a one-to-one basis every day.

*Victor was already creating his own choreographies when he was competing *Yurio’s choreographer is a legendary prima ballerina *A choreographer that skates together with you is very precious

TOPIC 5: Ice rink Every skater has a home rink that they use as their base, but rink conditions are very different depending on the country. In Japan, except for the rinks owned by a few universities, most rinks are open to the public, therefore if athletes want to reserve a rink for personal training they need to book it outside of normal opening hours. Yuuri and Victor also look like they’re comfortably training alone in a large rink, but actually that’s usually in the early morning or late at night**. In some countries with better conditions there are many rinks and some of them even have different training hours depending on the level of skaters, therefore some Japanese skaters choose to have their home rink abroad. Yuuri must be really grateful to Nishigoori. [**translator’s note: for your reference, most normal rinks in the Tokyo/Kanto area are open to the public from 10:00 to 18:00]

*The Detroit rink Yuuri used to belong to *Yurio’s home rink in St. Petersburg *The Thai rink is downtown

Figure skating choreography Kenji Miyamoto interview

I said that if I was going to do it I would do everything myself, and choreographed about 20 songs.

The first time I was asked about the choreographies was in the summer of 2015. The first meeting was around October or November. My first thought was that it sounded like fun. There were countless possibilities, and I thought that we might get more people interested in figure skating, therefore I was really looking forward to it. At that time I didn’t think about the difficulties, and replied that I definitely wanted to do it. When I received the first request there were lots of songs and I was told that since it was hard schedule-wise they might have to ask someone else, but I said that if I was going to do it I would do everything myself, and adjusted the schedule.

-Choreographies were created at night, over a short period of time-

If I were working with a skater normally it would take about 3 days to create a program. We talked about the fact that it would have been difficult to create programs for dozens of songs right away, but since I was going to just skate them myself (instead of teaching them to a skater) I guessed it would have been faster. In the end I created choreographies for about 20 songs. I left 2 weeks of my schedule free from any other job. Every day I’d sleep during the day and we’d start from 23:00, after the rink’s business hours, until about 5:00-6:00 in the morning. It was still early spring, but everyone was freezing and every time we’d come out of the rink all clad in down jackets. We must have looked like some suspicious gang (LOL).

-Programs were conceived based on the songs and a little information-

On the day I had to choreograph a song I received information from director Yamamoto and Kubo-sensei, like what kind of person the skater is, where he’s from, what kind of songs he likes, the way he usually lives and so on, and I would get into his role and create the choreography. I only received 2-3 songs in advance, and the rest all came basically the day before choreographing. The songs were mostly original so it took longer to work on them, it was really a tight schedule. In some cases they said “today we were going to choreograph 2 songs, but 1 isn’t ready yet”, so on that day we only did 1 song and the next day we choreographed 3. If I were working with a skater it (3 songs in 1 day) would be absolutely impossible (LOL). All songs were difficult to choreograph. I was told that the programs need to be used in tournaments and skaters must be able to get levels for them, so even though the songs were edited slightly shorter than what you would normally use in a match, they include all necessary elements (required in a competitive program such as jumps, spins etc.). A program that was easy to picture is the protagonist Yuuri-kun’s. Also, Victor-san. About Victor-san I was told that “he is an absolute champion with a stately presence, a skater that no one can surpass”, so I created “Hanarezu ni Soba ni Ite” as a majestic and excellent performance. I made him raise his head in a way the line of his throat would look beautiful, like a white stone statue. It’s not something I was told by Kubo-sensei and the others, I came up with that idea myself. A program that was hard to imagine was maybe the FS of Thailand’s Phichit-kun. The reason is simply that I’m not familiar with Thai folk songs, so I had to look up pictures and movies and it took some time. Just at that time I couldn’t lift my left shoulder anymore and had my trainer come over and tape it, I guess that was really when I had the hardest time. I had to do movements for many different skaters, some of which are not movements I normally do myself, that’s why I ended up injuring my shoulder a little.

-Trying different camera angles and clothes-

There were 4-5 fixed cameras on the side of the rink, and Kanako Odagaki-sensei skated after me with another one. The sense of speed feels different when looking through a camera compared to looking normally though, so whenever I sped up I would end up going too far from the camera. In the beginning it was difficult because I kept leaving too much distance between us, but we got better with each time and in the end we were able to basically move in synchrony. For every program I told the director and the staff what the skating course would be in advance, and depending on the choreography we discussed on what would be the best way to film it, for example if it was better to film it from the center of the circle or from the outside, and I discussed with Kubo-sensei as well. Even for the clothes, in the beginning I was skating with a pitch black outfit, but I was told that it was hard to distinguish left and right and so I wrapped tape on one side. Also, since all athletes skate with costumes, I tried to wear clothes like large blouses so that the staff could see how they flutter in the wind when you skate. I always used to set my hair, but I also skated without setting it so that they could see how it moves when you turn around, how you sweat and so on. (We didn’t only film each program once,) I repeated every program a few times. However, doing everything again from the start to the end was difficult, also because my body wouldn’t last. (When I felt that it was difficult) there were times when I asked them to film as best as they could because I was only going to skate the full program once. If it still wasn’t enough, I skated just the parts they needed to see again the next day. (As it also happens when I create choreographies for real skaters) sometimes I would realize that I needed to shorten the skating part, or that even though the sequence was very difficult there was still a chance that they could land a jump. The rink was small, so jumps were done differently than normal ones, and I thought it could be fun to change the curve too.

-People who started skating after watching Yuri-

To be honest, I thought that once it became animation it would look very different from the actual thing, but in fact it was almost the same. Of course flat pictures are not the same as tridimensional reality, but it got really close to the essence of skating. I was surprised at how realistically they recreated muscles and other details. The staff is seriously amazing. Some shots were different than what I had created, because when the director, Kubo-sensei and the staff watched it they thought that another form would look better and so they changed it. It was interesting to see how different people see things in different ways. But they really did a wonderful job, because when I watched the programs they were indeed beautiful. I see a lot of response now that the series has started airing. (The other day when I went to a tournament) a foreign coach grabbed his pupil just before they were going to skate and told them “you know, Kenji did all the choreographies for Yuri!” (LOL). I replied “you don’t have to tell them now” though. It’s great that it’s having so much response, and I’m very happy about it. I was asked to do choreographies for those songs, and there was even a boy who said he started skating after watching “Yuri on Ice”, that really made me happy. Looking back, I’m glad that I said I would do everything myself.

Kenji Miyamoto / Born in 1978 in Hyogo. Ice dance winner of the Japan Figure Skating Championships in 2001-02. After retiring from competition he became one of the leading choreographers in Japan, creating programs for skaters of all ages, from children to world champions, both Japanese and foreign.