then-lets-talk-about-me

[then-lets-talk-about-me]

Yuri's Agape, or How Yuri on Ice is the Story of How Yuri Plisetsky Resolves the Crisis He Himself Created (part three)

Parts one and two here!

I was originally going to try to fit this into two parts, but episodes 10 through 12 deserve their own fenced off part of the telling no matter what angle you're taking on the series. And then this part ended up being as long as parts one and two combined.

Cut for length and images and spoilers through the finale:

For most sports anime, episode 10 would be considered a filler episode. There's no skating in it; the characters spend most of it hanging around taking selfies. But Yuri on Ice is not most sports anime. Episode 10 is where Things Got Weird.

It's in episode 10 where we learn, in a very fridge-horror way, that in telling the story almost exclusively from Yuuri's perspective we have been borderline lied to about probably everything to an unknowable degree all along. But it also gives us another headache: of all the characters in this series, why are we suddenly trusting VICTOR to be a faithful and impartial observer? Episode 10 not only switches perspective to Victor, it keeps the perspective a lot tighter than the other episodes tend to. Victor provides a lot more running commentary on the action -- especially over Yuri's story line, for which Victor is not present -- than Yuuri has tended to previously. Victor narrating his own breakfast would probably sound insane, so having him handle this much crucial plot development is probably not a lot better than Yuuri.

Yuri's adventure in Barcelona is so bonkers I almost want to accuse Victor of making it up, but that wouldn't be particularly useful. And of course, if Victor isn't making it up, that means Yuri eventually told him all this later and Victor is now telling us, which is a reading that I think there is evidence of. Just keep in mind that there are a lot of reasons to question Victor's version of events here. Let's start with Otabek.

The story is definitely pulling a fast one with Otabek Altin. Of the six people who make it into the Grand Prix Final, five are people the series has spent some time with: Yuuri and Yuri, Victor's rival/buddy Chris, Yuuri's rival/best friend Phichit, and JJ. You'll notice four of these five form narrative parallels. Well, JJ has a parallel in the sixth finalist.

JJ has been viewing Yuri as a rival since they first competed in Canada, but Yuri completely rejects him as such. JJ is a monster that Yuri wants to destroy. JJ, frankly, is too much for Yuri to handle at this point. And it's through JJ in a glancing encounter that the audience -- and Yuri -- is introduced to Otabek.

Victor treats us to a quick montage of podium shots at competitions Yuuri hasn't been in, thus explaining why the audience hasn't met this guy until now. He won silver and gold in his qualifying events for the GPF; additionally, he shared the podium with Victor at least once in the previous season. He has a brief appearance in the first episode.

You can tell I cheated and capped this from 10 because Victor's name is spelled correctly.

In short, this is a serious potential opponent who has been competing in this bracket for Kazakhstan -- which is as local to Russia as anything can be, if that makes any difference -- for at least a year. There is no reason for Yuri to not know who Otabek is; Otabek should be on his Potential Monster Threat list with JJ. And yet! Yuri does not know who Otabek is to such a degree that it's used as foreshadowing for the reveal about Yuuri's blackout of the GPF banquet last year!

Victor jumps around in his narration a lot, so I’m going to briefly run down Yuri's story line in this episode. Yuri has a terrifying fanclub who call themselves Yuri's Angels that Yuuri, at least according to Victor, for some reason follows on Instagram.

This fanclub is hunting Yuri down as he wanders Barcelona by himself, because Yuri suddenly has no goddamn responsible adults around. He is literally hiding in an alley and trying to figure out how to escape a pack of stalkers. Suddenly, a handsome stranger on a motorcycle presumably rented for this very purpose rides up from nowhere and rescues and/or kidnaps Yuri!

Why, it's Otabek!

Victor

Victor no

This is not cool or romantic, you are implying child endangerment and you should all be arrested. Like I said, take Victor with a grain of salt. He always brings plenty. ohhh burn

Otabek has taken Yuri to this lovely sunset to reveal that they actually met one another at a camp Yakov runs for potential child competitors five years ago. Yuri does not remember this at all, nor should he, really, but man oh man, Otabek remembers him.

Yuri Plisetsky, he says, at the age of ten, had the EYES OF A SOLDIER. Yuri expresses subdued surprise at this. Otabek is struck by Yuri's strength. Yuri has been called strong before -- Yuri knows he's strong -- but comparing him to a soldier is an entirely new context for that strength. JJ essentially called him a girl in the previous episode; he is apparently referred to as a fairy by the media. Yuri demands to know why Otabek brought him to this romantic sunset to begin with. They are competitors! RIVALS!

Otabek asks Yuri if they can be friends, too.

This is what Yuri has been clawing his way toward with Yuuri all season, but because Yuuri's personal motto is "go passive-aggressive or go crawl under a rock and die," Yuri's had no way to establish a foothold with him. Not that Yuri's made it easy for him, either, screaming at him in restrooms and threatening him in elevators and whatnot, but Yuri is a kid who desperately needs someone to reach out and not flinch. Everyone else in his life has been struggling against this; Otabek manages to do it in like ten minutes.

Otabek is also five years younger than Yuuri, so if Yuri is going to look for immediate support among his peers, Otabek is probably a more appropriate choice. Yuri and Otabek's relationship is never worded as particularly romantic, but the visuals in episode 10 frame it that way strongly. Again, consider the source.

On the other hand, this version of events makes perfect sense if it's Victor's best man speech at the wedding (including the "now back to where me and Yuuri were shopping" segues).

Yuri's plotline falls in with Victor's at this point as Yuuri and Victor are pressured into hijacking Yuri and Otebek's date, and they end up just inviting everyone (I don't know whether or not they invited JJ -- he finds them, but Barcelona seems like a small place in this episode). They all go out for dinner and end up in one of the narrative climaxes of the series.

There is so much going on in this scene that's easy to miss what's going on with Yuri, making his argument with Victor the next day feel like a tonal hairpin turn. It is a hard turn, but it doesn't come out of nowhere. Yuri starts the dinner scene in Barcelona angry and just gets angrier as it continues.

He's angry that Victor and Yuuri crashed his good time with his new friend, he's angry they bring everyone else -- Yuri can only handle recontextualizing one person at a time -- he's angry last year's GPF banquet comes up at all (though he's probably not that angry that Yuuri doesn't remember it), and he has to be at least somewhat alarmed that Victor starts showing Otabek pictures of Yuuri pole dancing. Like what kind of a date is this.

Then Chris and Phichit tag-team to sort of misunderstand Victor and Yuuri's rings and start loudly congratulating them on their marriage. Yuri acts like this might actually have been a total left field reveal for him, though he had to know there was something going on considering the circumstances under which he left Victor in Japan. And the fact all these year-old pictures are still on Victor’s phone.

But then Victor doubles down. Presumably out of some sort of revenge for letting Yuuri get away with the most vaguely worded round-about proposal to have ever been accepted, he announces that he actually intends to marry Yuuri after Yuuri wins the Grand Prix gold medal.

This is part of a montage of everyone making 'oh you did not' faces, but Yuri's the only one who looks genuinely pissed off.

As Yuuri's coach, Victor's expected to say he's confident that Yuuri will win in interviews and such, but this is a private party among friendly competitors who have not been engaging in trash talk. Considering the company and his own position among them, it would be... diplomatic for Victor to take more of a may-the-best-man-win approach to the GPF, while being friendly about his confidence in his own skater. He's throwing a gauntlet instead; he's so confident in Yuuri that he's casually staking his own future and personal life on it. And it isn't a joke! Victor never takes this challenge back.

Yuri is Victor's former rinkmate; he's credited as Yuri's choreographer every time Yuri performs Agape. To an already seething teenager, this implied lack of confidence in him is going to come across as a slap in the face. It was only a matter of time before Victor and Yuri had a full-on confrontation, but Victor's too focused on motivating Yuuri to realize to he's just invited the one that occurs the next morning.

I don't believe this is a traditional greeting in Spain.

For all of Victor's agency in the story, he is not typically a confrontational person. He is more likely to just say something cutting and walk away. And while Yuri is confrontational to a significant fault, he's being about as unfocused in this scene regarding the source of his anger as he was with Yuuri in the restroom in the first episode. This argument gets interpreted a lot of different ways because neither of them are really arguing. Yuri is spitting venom -- about Victor, about Victor's career, about Victor's age, about Yuuri. Victor answers with physical intimidation that borders on sexual. Asking "did you want to compete against me?" is tantamount to asking, are you jealous? Do you wish you were the one who meant as much to me as I mean to you?

This has an equally difficult bookend near the very end, but Yuri lashing out at Yuuri in the very beginning is probably a better point of comparison. Yuri behaves like this when his expectations of other people betray him. He walked away from Yuuri when Yuuri acted cowed. Victor isn't going to be cowed by Yuri. Yuri is a child, he is behaving horribly, and Victor isn't impressed. Yuri's body language suggests he's backing down before he manages to goad Victor to the point of grabbing him; it’s is a small triumph in itself, because it's so incredibly out of character for Victor to crack like this. Once Yuri's won that much ground, he can keep talking, and Victor is frozen and fake-smiling until Yuri tells him to let go. And then it's over.

Victor is wearing Yuuri's coat, and when Yuri walks away it's revealed he's wearing the tee shirt he bought in Hasetsu. Before he leaves, Yuri says the beach here reminds him of Japan, and Victor agrees. This clash isn't about Yuuri, but it's steeped in the influence he's had on both of them. Victor's narration suggests here that he believes Yuri has learned something about life and love from Yuuri, which is an odd observation for him to have in the moment. Like his being able to tell the story about Otabek, it makes more sense if his thoughts in this episode are something retrospective. In any case, they end here. The audience is closed off from Victor by other people's impressions of him again for the rest of the story.

Everyone is feeling pretty rough going into the competition. Yuri's JJ problem has not away -- in fact, JJ and his insane jump program is now everyone's problem -- and Yuri doesn't appear to have let off as much steam at Victor as he needed to. He shoots Yuuri a particularly ugly glare during the short program warm up.

Yuuri scores solidly but lower for this round than he usually does, and he spends the rest of the day second guessing Victor's reactions to the other routines and making horrible decisions on other people's behalf without telling them. He isn't quite the hurdle today that Yuri was expecting him to be, but it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway.

For the Agape program, Yuri reveals that since the competition in Moscow, he has somehow ascended to godhood. The narrative explanation comes not from Yuri himself but from his ballet coach, who explains in an interview voice-over that Yuri has realized that the concept of agape isn't something that can be restricted to a single person; it includes everyone in his life. There's a quick set of cuts to his some of his teammates, his coaches, his grandfather, Yuuri, Victor, Yuuko, and Otabek. This is a remarkable revelation for him to have had off-screen and have spelled out by someone else.

Yuri himself gives no narration because he says his mind goes blank here as he's performing. When Victor was first trying to make Yuri understand the program, he expressed confusion over Yuri not knowing what he was supposed to think about to invoke a sense of unconditional love; why would he need to think about anything?

Yuri breaks Victor's world record for the short program score. Yuuri perfected Eros by coming into his own sexuality, and Yuri has finally perfected Agape by realizing how many people in his life love him. Ironically many of those same people are ones he intends to destroy here.

Having done all the damage he can today, Yuri actually seeks out and sits with Yuuri and Victor in the stands to watch the rest of the short programs.

He does it like a jerk and possibly just to flaunt the fact that he's cheering on Otabek, but that is a pretty harmless thing to be a jerk about. Yuuri and Victor are sitting with a couple of other people, but they're clearly the ones he's chosen to huddle with. JJ may have had a point about Yuri only being comfortable supporting his competition when he's safely in the lead, but there isn't anything inherently bad about that, either. Openly gloating about Otabek scoring higher than Yuuri isn't great, but he has no idea what Yuuri is planning. Nobody does! Making an effort to be on friendly terms with Yuuri turns out to be unfortunately eventful for everyone. The day ends with Yuri in first place and Yuuri in fourth.

Yuuri doesn't come to the warm-up the next day, so Yuri doesn't see him or Victor until the free skate. A lot happens in the meantime that he doesn't know about. This is where everything becomes debatable, as Yuuri, Victor, and Yuri's unspoken motivations all crash into each other headlong.

Yuuri's free skate routine, Yuri on Ice, is ostensibly a commentary on his career as a competitive skater, but it's also been recognized as a meta-commentary on the plot of the show. Both are largely the same story anyway, but over the course of the series he's never performed it perfectly, and it’s continued to evolve along his relationship with Victor. He's decided that this Grand Prix Final is the last time he's going to perform it, so it's no shock that here in the last episode he finally nails it. He nails it so completely that he breaks Victor's record for the free skate score. Yuri said that Victor Nikiforov is dead, but he didn't know the knife was going to have two hands on it.

Earlier in the episode, watching JJ's routine, Yuuri comments to himself that there is nothing as compelling as a tale that never ends. And while he's skating, he tells us that he doesn't want his story to end either. But it has to, because he's convinced himself that making Victor stay on as his coach is killing Victor in spirit, and Victor's real place is back on the ice himself. So Yuuri, and Yuri on Ice, and YURI!!! on Ice, will end here.

During the brief time the audience got to see Victor's perspective, however, we learned the opposite was true: Victor was being crushed by the weight of living up to his own reputation. He was having to reinvent himself in the absence of anything or anyone to inspire him so often that there was no real Victor there anymore. But through a crazy chain of events that began with Yuri attacking Yuuri in a restroom in Sochi last year, Victor managed to break out of the endless loop of competitive seasons and reinvent himself for himself. He's found new life in being someone else's strength.

With his decision to retire, Yuuri has condemned Victor to the previous status quo, joining the rest of the chorus of characters we've met begging and ordering Victor to go back. Victor can probably reclaim both the records that Yuri and Yuuri have broken in Barcelona, but there won't be any meaning in it. Yuuri believes he’s doing this for Victor’s own good, but he won't listen to or change his mind for him.

This is the Victor that steps out and demands that Yakov and Yuri listen to him before Yuri goes out for his free skate routine. It can't wait. It has to be now. He tells them he's coming back to Russia.

For all Yuri's anger and resentment the last time he and Victor spoke privately, Yuri doesn't look happy that Victor has finally given in to his demands from eight months ago. Victor was talking about marriage two days ago. Something has obviously happened with Yuuri, and that's the first thing he asks: what does this mean for Yuuri? Is he retiring?

Victor says what Yuuri does now is a decision Yuuri plans to make when the Grand Prix Final is over. There's obviously something he's not saying, and he doesn't say it. Yuri gets this:

Victor instead whispers to him to not to forget why he came here. This is intercut with Otabek’s free skate, which is set to a rock opera version of the second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony 9. It’s not the more obvious Ode to Joy segment, but you don’t use the Ninth Symphony accidentally in an OST consisting entirely of original music otherwise.

This is a plea for the future. Yuuri has rejected it and denied it to Victor -- this is most likely the end in some sense for both of them -- but the future is all Yuri has. This is his first Grand Prix Final as a senior competitor. He wants to be the new Victor Nikiforov. But for all of Victor's accomplishments, for all the trouble he's caused, for all the pain he's specifically put Yuri through this year, this is all Victor has to show for it. No matter what happens now, Yuri has his own future. He only has to step toward it.

Victor cannot plead on behalf of the future to Yuuri. But it's possible that Yuri can.

Yuri on Ice isn't the last program of the Grand Prix Final; Yuri's free skate is. Yuri is going to have the last word.

Yuri does not produce the performance that he does for Yuuri's sake. That is specifically the idea that Victor is urging him to reject. This story has been about love from the start, but it's also repeatedly shown that you can't save other people from themselves. You can help them, you can support them, and you can love them. You can reach out and not flinch. But in the end, they have to make the decision to not reject the future on their own. Yuri's dream from the start was to win the gold medal here in his first year, making history in men's single skating, and that's the dream he's going to chase down right to the bitter end.

And while he does so, he puts a footnote on the meta-narrative. He tells us, the audience, what his feelings actually were all along. He never hated Yuuri. He has admired him passionately, from his most flawed to his very best. He's prepared to face the future without him, but he doesn't want to. Yuri wants Yuuri to come with him.

But in the end, the only person who can make that decision is Yuuri.

Yuri wins the gold medal with a final score that beats Yuuri's by .12 points. He's won. But which of them ended up with the gold isn't what makes up Yuuri's mind to ask Victor to stay. Through the power that sports anime tends to give you, Yuri gets through to Yuuri with his determination to claw forward. You can never just go back to the way things were before; you can only stop where you are or go forward.

We call everything on the ice love, and love wins. But sometimes love will want to murder you with an ice skate.

[then-lets-talk-about-me]

Yuri’s Agape, or Dammit I Guess This Is Going to Be Three Parts Instead of Two (part two)

Part One here!

I did not know I had this much commentary in me on a fictional Russian teenager. I’m sort of side-eyeing myself here. Which isn’t easy to do.

Cut for length and images and spoilers through the finale:

The plot continues. In the months between Yuri leaving Japan and the trio sorta kinda reuniting for the Rostelecom Cup, Victor and Yuuri become romantically involved to some degree. Recall, by this reading, this is still, in a very goofy way, Yuri's fault, but I don't know if Yuri knows that Victor and Yuuri have hooked up before the dinner scene in Barcelona. Some awfully public things happen at the China Cup, but Yuri does say he forgot to watch the free skate, and Victor and Yuuri are not terribly demonstrative in Russia (aside from Yuuri's sassiness around his short program, which has been a part of the Eros routine from the start). It doesn't ultimately matter very much, but let's say Yuri doesn't go out of his way for gay gossip about his rivals and doesn't know the details, because that makes following his state of mind through the back half of the series simpler.

When the Russian team arrives at the airport for the Rostelecom Cup, Yuri ditches them. Yakov says Yuri's family lives in Moscow and wanted to come to pick him up. But Yuri's "family" turns out to be only his grandfather. Yuri's grandfather was mentioned back when Yuri was trying to grasp the concept of agape; the closest he came to understanding it at the time was in considering how his grandfather emotionally supports him. I don't know if it's ever stated what other family he has.

They speak briefly about food before the radio changes the subject. Yuri's grandfather is very important to him, and the show uses food and his cooking as shorthand for how he expresses love for Yuri and how Yuri himself understands love. Yuuri also seeks comfort from food, especially his mother's cooking, so this is something they both understand.  Yuri tells his grandfather about this dish he had in Japan called katsudon and how much he liked it, which is, you know, subconsciously telling.

I don't know where they go, but I hope that Yuri gets to visit his cat. I forgot to mention Yuri's cat before, who is a sweet counterpoint to Yuuri and Victor having dogs.

Later on at the hotel, Victor has been cornered into an interview about his plans for the future when Yuri comes in through the lobby. Victor is asked something that gets Yuri's attention: if Victor thinks Yuuri Katsuki is so exciting, wouldn't he rather face him as a competitor than stand behind him as a coach? Victor doesn't answer.

We learn later that Yuri has a typically shounen attitude about wanting worthy rivals, but he has not at this point realized that he can be friends with his rivals, and he hasn't made this issue with rigid categorization clear to the people it impacts. This is a critical misunderstanding that will need to be addressed if Yuri's character arc is going to end anywhere satisfying. Victor and Yuuri are both individually shown to count rivals among their closest friends, but Yuri does not understand why Victor would leave a question like 'don't you want face Yuuri as a competitor' ambiguously unanswered. Victor likes Yuuri! That's, like, Victor's whole DEAL, isn't it?

Victor is saved from having to actually answer this question (which is about his career, not his relationship with Yuuri, and the whole topic is sort of derailing at a tournament where Victor isn't competing) when he spots Yuri and dashes over for a Distraction Side-Hug. Yuri punches the Starbucks cup out of Victor's hand, so at least everything is normal there.

Yuuri is stressing over the fact that he isn't on particularly friendly terms with any of his competitors here like he was in China. When the elevator he's waiting on arrives and reveals a bunch of crazy white people trying to start a fight with the grumpy Korean over their dinner plans, Yuuri just slinks away and gets into another one. However:

Yuri has managed to escape Victor and, given the choice between the elevator full of crazy people and the elevator with Yuuri, physically stops the door from closing to get in with Yuuri. This is... good? Maybe?

Maybe. This is the first time they've seen each other in months, and it's sort of... comfortably awkward. Yuuri wishes them both luck in the competition and Yuri is like, oh, no, I'm going to smash you to pieces. They'll need a broom when I'm done with you. Like, the little one you use to get shards of glass out from underneath the rug with. And Yuuri is good-natured about this, but of course he starts stressing about how high he has to place to advance from here because that is what Yuuri does when he is not staring at posters of Victor. What's interesting about this is that it foreshadows a tendency for Yuri to gravitate toward Yuuri at the suggestion of a common enemy. The elevator weirdos don't really count strongly as enemies -- none of them advance past this round except the Italian woman, whom our heroes aren't competing with -- but in a funny confused way Yuri's instinct is to form a united front with Yuuri if he's the only option.

So far, though, Yuuri doesn't have much to worry about; he knocks his short program out of the park the next day, and he and Victor play up the Eros theme with particular enthusiasm because you can't arrest people for positive homoerotic portrayal in Pretend Russia, I guess. I hope! Meanwhile, though, Yuri's been told that his grandfather for some reason can't attend the competition today, and this sends him into a weird state of shock. He was depending on the person who is still his sole association with the concept of agape on being there to watch him.

Theoretically, Victor should be someone Yuri could turn to for support, but Victor's gone and put himself squarely in the "rivals" category, so Yuri falls back on the good ol' walk-into-the-room-and-think-MURDER method.

It doesn't really have the intended effect, though, because Victor and Yuuri are weirdos and they APPROVE.

YES, LITHE BLOND FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD. GO FORTH AND MURDER.

It's partly due to the high from Yuuri's performance and score, but Victor and Yuuri both express a great deal of support for Yuri here, and Yuri wants NONE of it. First of all, Victor and Yuuri are still being weirdos.

cannot take you two anywhere

But they do stop being weirdos to cheer Yuri on as he goes out -- Yuuri in Russian and Victor in Japanese -- and it just makes Yuri angrier. Yuri cannot see friendly rivals; you're either a friend or a rival, and eventually we learn that at this point, Yuri does not have any friends. It's not exactly shocking news, but it does account for a lot. He thinks Yuuri and Victor are being condescending, and he's enraged.

Yuri is feeling pretty much negative agape right now, and it hurts his performance. He mostly does fine, but he falls on what's probably the easiest jump in the routine, and he has to consciously talk himself down to get through the rest of it.

A lot of the secondary drama during the Rostelecom Cup concerns the crazy white people (yes, what this show needs now is an Italian sibling-complex subplot, absolutely), and, I don't know, the grumpy Korean continuing to be grumpy? None of the characters introduced here have much to do with anything going forward except JJ, the (I assume French-)Canadian and the show's closest approximation of a villain. Which is to say not a villain at all, but you are definitely not supposed to like him at this point. Minako expressed puzzlement over Yuuri's decision to play with gender performance while figuring out the Eros routine, but JJ is the first character in the show to pull anything close to this:

It's weird how hard this line hits, considering what a stock jock taunt it is. But the show has been so forgiving of flamboyancy in the other characters that seeing someone mock the fifteen-year-old for his lack of masculinity is incredibly jarring. In context, though, JJ probably doesn't intend it to sound so harsh. JJ and Yuri at this point have already competed in Canada, where Yuri came very close to winning gold but ended up coming in second to JJ. JJ is absolutely being an asshole here, but he's likely also trying to engage with Yuri as a friendly rival. But Yuri does not see friendly rivals! Yuri sees people he has to murder with an ice skate while a boy soprano sings in the background.

Anyway, forget JJ. Plot developments way more confusing to Yuri's friend-rival dichotomy are going on. Yuuri receives the phone call from his sister about Victor's dog, and Yuuri and Victor have their argument about whether Victor should leave in the middle of the competition. The Russian team stumbles across them in the middle of this, and Victor asks Yakov if he can coach Yuuri along with the Russian team for the second half. Yakov agrees to this, because... well, hell, it's Victor's dog. He's had that dog since he was like sixteen. Naturally, this arrangement doesn't really work out great for anybody. Yuuri, abruptly abandoned, is still in Yuri's rival category, but now he's also an adopted orphan teammate. He proceeds to sort of hang out with the Russians but doesn't really interact with them.

Meanwhile, Yuri's grandfather has shown up again! What the hell, Yuri's grandfather, did you have the dates wrong? Yuri says he thought his grandfather wasn't feeling well, but if the recipes I've seen floating around for this are any indication then the man was probably literally in the kitchen for an entire day inventing his monster: katsudon pirozhki. This man, after Yuri mentioned this dish one time in the car, looked up katsudon, made katsudon, and put... it... in pirozhki. He is insane and must be stopped, but more importantly, he really loves his little monster of a grandson.

The thematic relevance of the crazy Japanese-Russian fusion cuisine probably speaks for itself. Katsudon is Yuuri's favorite food and gets eaten and talked about a lot while everyone is in Japan at the beginning, and Yuri calls Yuuri 'Katsudon' when he's feeling less of a diva. While this is obviously a callback to Yuuri's weirdness around grasping Eros and a play on the name Katsuki, it's also sort of a gentler form his crueler address of ‘pig.’ It's like calling him Pork Chop instead. I don't know, this show probably doesn't need more linguistic questions lobbed at it. Pirozhki seems to be something Yuri's grandfather makes a lot, and Yuri likes it enough that he has a picture of a dish of it as the home screen on his phone. The katsudon pirozhki is obviously a Yuuri-Yuri themed thing before the story gets around to making it one explicitly. For now, though, Yuri isn't thinking metaphorically; he's just pumped that his grandfather is here and brought awesome food.

Yuri's top concern going into the free skate is JJ, who, due to how figure skating is scored, has a program that's mathematically impossible for Yuri to beat as long as JJ doesn't make any mistakes, which he doesn't tend to do. Yuri does not see JJ as a rival; JJ is an enemy. Yuri feels like JJ stole the gold medal from him in their last competition and he's rearranging the jumps in his free skate program to maximize his own score. This is borderline suicidal, and Yakov says as much, but this is now war.

This is the first time the audience actually gets to see Yuri's free skate routine; it's heavily ballet-influenced, and his costume for it is impressive.

Yuri skates his damn heart out, powered almost entirely by spite toward JJ. Here is the rival/enemy distinction: while Yuri doesn't want to be friendly with his rivals, he doesn't feel real animosity toward them, either. He just feels... well, rivalry. Rivalry is one of the primary anime emotions. But for the sin of having a higher base score for his routine, Yuri genuinely hates JJ. When Yuri finishes a perfect but impossibly rearranged rendition of his routine, he actually collapses on the ice.

He hates JJ so much he is willing to kill himself over it.

Yuuri's free skate doesn't go as well; he is frequently fragile at heart and isn't taking well to Victor's absence. This is something that, for once, Yuri finds easy sympathy for. More or less the same thing happened to him just the previous day with his grandfather. Yuuri isn't fucking up on the scale that he did in the first episode, but he's screwing up his jumps and choreography, and like before, Yuri becomes distressed watching. Instead of yelling abuse this time, though, Yuri does something that would have been unthinkable even a day earlier: he tries to shout to his quasi-teammate in encouragement.

Tries to, because JJ wolf-whistles at him mid-word and shames him out of it. There really isn't any excuse for this. JJ sort of implies that Yuri is being hypocritical in only supporting his competitors once his own score has secured him a spot on the podium, but it's obvious in this moment that Yuri would trade every medal in the world for a knife to put in JJ's face.

Yuuri finishes his routine and actually doesn't score horribly for it, but he’s obviously capable of far better and deeply discouraged. He's left in a dark state of mind and with an idea that begins here and culminates into a crisis in the final episode. That crisis won't impact Yuri directly until then; by the time it does reach him, he's possibly the only person who can do anything about it. But he still has a lot to get through before he'll actually be capable of that.

Even now, though, everything feels pretty wrong, and Yuri seeks Yuuri out on his own. Yuuri didn't make the podium, but he managed to qualify for the GPF by the skin of his teeth due to scoring technicalities, and despite everything Yuri did, JJ still beat him for gold again. Whether Yuuri is at this point a rival or an adopted teammate doesn't matter; Yuri is seeking out that united front again.

I believe this is a traditional greeting in Russia.

Yuri commiserates at length to Yuuri that he isn't allowed to feel worse than he does. While that does sound insanely self-centered, it also kind of makes sense: Yuri never feels worse than when his best somehow isn't good enough, and Yuuri didn't do his best. He mutters some pretext about it being Yuuri's birthday soon -- interesting that he knows that -- and gives him the katsudon pirozhki his grandfather made.

This is a turning point for both of them. Yuri in particular is very close to making a vital breakthrough, but ultimately Yuuri just isn't the person who can see him through it. Yuri needs someone who can look him in the eye and say flat out, this is a gesture of friendship. One of us is offering it and the other is accepting it. We're going to shake hands on it. If you want, we can write up a contract and find a public notary.

But what are the odds of a character like THAT showing up?

Next time! The odds of a character like that showing up! Spain! Stalkers! Plot twists! Russian dramatics! Stupid people threatening to ruin everything! And maybe, just maybe, saving the day.

part three here!

[then-lets-talk-about-me]

Yuri's Agape, or How Yuri on Ice is Possibly the Story of How Yuri Plisetsky Possibly Resolves the Crisis He Himself Possibly Created (part one)

I say "possibly!!!" because, being almost entirely from Yuuri Katsuki's perspective, everything that happens that doesn't involve him is weirdly difficult to confirm within the confines of the show. We see glimpses of Yuri's perspective from time to time, but ultimately the three main characters aren't actually three main characters: they are two romantic leads and a vital outsider. This going to be long (god, this is going to be way too long), and a lot of its points are going to be arguable or impossible to prove. But thematically, "true" or not, it's a reading of the story that I like.

One of the things I wanted most for the show to do in its final episodes was bring Yuri back to the forefront of the plot in a big way, and it absolutely did do that. The question is: to what ends?

Cut for length and images and spoilers through the finale:

Victor's episode 10 plot twist was a bigger and more fun bombshell on the series, but Yuri's episode 12 reveal is subtler, stranger, and possibly more significant. And that's despite the fact that it's barely a twist at all. Victor's got a forgotten night of passion and months of pining up his sleeve, while Yuri just has the most typically fifteen-year-old boy thing in the world: he behaves as though he feels one way when he actually feels another. And really, that much was clear from at least from when Yuuri asks for his help landing one of the quad types in Hasetsu. Yuri has literally no reason to help him, but he does, and he doesn't even argue about it onscreen. His face is essentially unreadable.

Before we get started, let's just say that Yuri's revelation boils down to the same as Victor's: he had strong feelings about Yuuri before the show's story actually started. He doesn't love him (or hate him, for that matter); he admires him as a skater and is looking forward to competing with him, watching him perform intriguingly in the Senior bracket from behind the bars of the Junior bracket. Because let's not even pretend Yuri ever gave a shit about his competition in the Juniors. Even having just won gold at the GPF in episode 1, his attention is fixed firmly on his next season rivals. And his next season rivals are fucking things up for him by having lives of their own.

Yuuri suffers a massive emotional blow just before the GPF in Sochi; this series is very good about showing the impact that the illnesses and deaths of family pets and companion animals actually have on people. He can't really focus on what he's doing, and he crashes and burns in the Finals. This obviously isn't when Yuri first took note of him. So there's an interesting likelihood: Yuri's interest in Yuuri predates Victor's, possibly by as much as a couple of months.

Until literally the last episode, it's been a mystery what Yuri was so angry about at the beginning of the first episode. It still isn't crystal clear, but it makes sense from the perspective of an ambitious child trying to size up adult opponents. Someone you look up to fucked up badly, and you're hurt by association. It's not the same as a fan being let down. Yuri is confused and disappointed about what this means for him, not Yuuri. It's not a point that can be broken down into specifics very well since we're let in on it so late.

After the results are announced and while Victor et al go out to the podium, Yuuri goes into a men's room to make a phone call to his mother. Yuri slinks into the hall from around a corner just as Yuuri goes in but doesn't follow him immediately; he just skulks.

Yuuri makes his phone call. He tries to sound upbeat to his mom, but he ends up sort of hanging up on her -- he definitely cuts the call off weirdly, because he's losing his composure -- and breaks down crying in the stall. In the meantime, Yuri has entered the room. Presumably he has actually waited for Yuuri to finish his call.

What happens next to kind of difficult to analyze, because by the end of the show we know we're looking at a confrontation between a) an illogically hurt fourteen-year-old (Yuri turns fifteen during the first episode's three month time skip) and b) our narrator, who adjusts the lens every chance he has to make himself look like he's earned the contempt Yuri heaps on him here. Additionally, this scene happens so early that the viewer hasn't really gotten a feel for the show tonally yet.

According to Crunchyroll's subs, Yuri all but assaults Yuuri in a public restroom only to say, "Hey. I'm competing in the senior division next year. We don't need two Yuris in the same bracket. Incompetents like you should just retire already. Moron!"

It isn't anime until someone has screamed BAAAKAAA in someone's face, right?

Well, no. This is not normal behavior in the world of this show. It's not even normal behavior for Yuri, the worst-behaved character in this show. Yuuri did nothing to provoke him, and Yuri's supposed complaint -- that they have the same given name? -- doesn't make sense. This kid showed up out of nowhere to dump salt into wounds that aren't any of his business. They weren't even competing against one another.

Yuuri looks far more stunned than he does upset, and he was sobbing forty-five seconds ago. But Yuri's outburst does turn Yuuri toward thinking about how younger skaters are coming up in the ranks constantly and that he himself isn't getting any more talented with age. Whatever Yuri was trying to accomplish, I don't think he accomplished it, but he's definitely contributed to Yuuri's crashing spirits. Whether or not it's a tipping point is impossible to say. But the fact that Yuri is right there when Yuuri is given the choice to say something to Victor -- if only to be polite -- very possibly adds a push to his decision to take his injured pride and turn his back on Victor in silence. And Yuri notices.

Yuri turns away from Yakov to look after Yuuri several moments into this shot of Victor, for no clear reason aside from maybe the Japanese reporter making a bit of a scene. Yuri knows what he did.

What happens next -- the Grand Prix Final's banquet -- complicates the plot of literally the entire series, but it especially confuses the situation between Yuuri and Yuri. And it's really difficult to discuss how, since all the information audience gets pertaining to them is a (possibly untrue) accusation from Yuri and a set of photographs that don't appear to be in chronological order.

Victor notices when the now extremely depressed Yuuri is hauled into the room. Yuri appears to notice, too, though he may just be looking to see what Victor is looking at. Yuri still knows what he did. Yuuri, who does not want to be here, very quickly gets extremely drunk. The only question is which of them threw the proverbial glove. Yuri claims in episode 10 (HOW DID THIS NOT COME UP AGAIN UNTIL LITERALLY A YEAR LATER) that Yuuri challenged him to a dance-off and humiliated him. When he says it, at least in translation, it sounds like he was humiliated by being involved at all, but the photographs tell a slightly different story. I'm going to reiterate that I don't really know what that story is.

These photographs are on Victor's phone. I have no idea why Yuuri would be behaving like this toward Victor, but he definitely shouldn't be taunting fourteen-year-olds with champagne bottles, so okay. Yuuri is definitely being a drunk asshole toward someone who is not even hiding the fact that he's taking pictures, which is exactly what Victor is up to in several shots on Chris's phone.

Note the dork in the background with his phone out. But also note the other dork running out into what I assume Yuuri has declared to be the dance floor. So either Yuuri stumbled over to the Russians and started shit with Yuri and Victor got some pictures while Yuuri was facing him, or Yuuri went from rambling at Victor for whatever reason to dancing on his own and Yuri himself decided this was going to be a dance-off. Either way, Yuuri hands Yuri his ass.

Which Yuri more or less acknowledges. It doesn't matter exactly how this all went down; what matters is that Yuri would now consider this conflict resolved. But an entirely new conflict arises as a direct result of the resolution.

Yuuri, clearly, is nothing but trouble. This is going to be Yuri's position for the rest of the series.

The problem, of course, is that Yuuri got himself so drunk that he does not remember the banquet. The last thing he remembers about these two in Sochi is Yuri screaming at him in a bathroom and Victor offering to take a picture with him. Which means both Russians blow into Hasetsu thinking Yuuri knows them at least somewhat better than he actually does, and both of them are confused by his lack of familiarity with them. And neither of them realize that Yuuri doesn't know what's actually at stake when Yuri furiously insists that Victor come home.

This is where the series has to tread a fine line. Watching the show the first time through, the implied sexual tension inherent to Yuri and Yuuri's competition over Victor appears to largely be a joke. No, lithe blond fifteen-year-old, you do not get to have the sex routine. We're going to give the sex routine to the dorky loser who is at least a legal adult. You can have the routine devoted to love that doesn't make sulky teenage demands. Come on, it'll be fun!

But the implications of episode 10 actually make this rivalry kind of dark. This isn't a joke. Yuri knows Victor is here because he wants Yuuri. He assumes Yuuri knows this as well, but Yuuri is holding out for some reason. Yuri is wedging his foot in the door here and insisting he can compete on the same playing field as the adults, even if that playing field is sex, and Victor is shutting him down. That is just basic adult decency. But every time an adult shows concern on Yuri's behalf, he sees that concern as an obstacle to be overcome or ignored. See Yakov's insistence that Yuri lay off the quads. Also see Victor undermining Yakov on that one, but Victor isn't a monster. There will be other characters in Yuri's future who will encourage him to exploit the youthful aspect of his beauty, but Victor isn't going to be one of them.

This isn't necessarily or entirely Victor looking out for Yuri -- it's probably mostly that Victor is not into Yuri. At all. Full stop. And Yuri most likely is not into Victor, either. But if the events of the banquet happened in the manner suggested, then Yuri is the reason Yuuri had the opportunity to sweep Victor off his feet like that to begin with. This is all very possibly Yuri's fault. And Yuri wouldn't even care if it weren't for the fact that he's about to make his debut in the Seniors and Victor promised to help him, which he is not going to do while chasing tail in goddamn Japan. In short, Yuri is cockblocking Victor on purpose.

At the same time, though, Yuri doesn't actually wish Yuuri any ill; despite what he says in the first episode, he explicitly does not want Yuuri to retire. Victor leaving Japan would most likely mean the end of Yuuri's career. If Yuri's aware of that, then he's decided he has to put himself first, which isn't shocking. I don't think Yuri (or Victor, for that matter) actually has any reason to suspect that, though. This is war for him, and if he has to fight Eros with Agape, then he will. Assholes. But there isn't much, if any, true animosity between Yuri and Yuuri.

The catch is that this is not a fight Yuri can win by way of anything he actually does. Whether or not Victor comes back to Russia depends entirely on Yuuri's willingness to perform Eros. Yuri still puts a lot of effort into Agape, though, and he performs it perfectly even if he fails to embody the concept. Yuuri's performance is flawed, but he does manage to fully embody Eros, and Victor noticeably responds. Yuri leaves before he can be told that his technically superior performance lost. He realizes Victor has only been humoring him.

And it's gutting.

This show never forgets that Yuri is a child. He isn't really Adjusted For Anime Fifteen, he's more like... actually fifteen. He has moments of maturity and goes through a great deal of character growth, and he skates with a nymph-like quality that has room to be discomfiting once he's taught to play it up, but the show itself doesn't encourage viewers to sexually objectify him. When the animation caricatures him, it's always in the direction making him look smaller and rounder. He can have all the natural talent in the world, but he does not possess adult sexuality. In this one thing, he cannot win against Yuuri.

Yuri returns to Russia and leaves the narrative for a while. The show checks in on him occasionally, and we learn that he's doubling down on his ballet training and continuing with the program that Victor put together for him in Japan. That's something worth keeping in mind: Victor doesn't actually break his initial promise to Yuri, which wasn't to coach him but to handle his choreography. He only wrote the short program, not his free skate, but Victor doesn't produce Yuuri's free skate, either (Victor's a big believer in being inhumanly talented and doing everything yourself). Nevertheless, Yuri continues to act bitterly jealous of Victor and Yuuri long past the point where it makes sense for him professionally. The ballet stuff frequently sounds creepy, but Yuri's doing great with it. Yakov is probably right when he says it's a good thing Yuri was removed from Victor's influence when he was. But try telling Yuri that.

Next time! Friends vs. Rivals vs. Enemies: Do You Even Shounen? Comfort food! Crazy white people! Russia! Maybe the cat if I remember this time! Helping save relationships you never approved of! I WAS GOING TO WIN GOLD ANYWAY, B-BAKA

part two here!

[then-lets-talk-about-me]

I was originally just going to make a quick salty post about this passage (from this here article on Yuri on Ice published by The Verge) because there have been few times I’ve wanted to immediately burn the words in a publication more, but… apparently, this is a common misconception by Yuri on Ice watchers.

It seems that this anime is inadvertently giving people a warped view of competitive figure skating. Now, it’s not the show’s fault: Yuri on Ice is beautifully and meticulously researched and most of its inaccuracies are purposeful, serving as plot device. But I get the feeling that the Grand Prix setting, Yūri’s unreliable narration and the existence of Viktor are leading people to severely underestimate the difficulty of the sport and Yūri’s skill.

Let’s get this out of the way:

Katsuki Yūri is an outstanding skater.

Keep reading

[then-lets-talk-about-me]

SPOILER ALERT: KUBO-SENSEI BEING AWESOME!!

[then-lets-talk-about-me]

Yuuri’s Eros

This is a seriously messy collection of thoughts hampered badly by my not being the intended (Japanese) audience, but this is an aspect of Yuuri's anxiety the show pays particular attention to, and I do have thoughts.

I started watching YoI I think right after the release of episode 9 at a friend's behest, and we marathoned the first 6 episodes in one sitting. I remember thinking during the first episode, "If this were written here, the intent would obviously be to establish Yuuri as closeted."

Don’t get mad at me yet! Cutting for length and images and spoilers:

I don't know what being closeted in Japan looks like. I don't know if Japanese gay culture even shares quite the same concept. And of course this was before I saw the creators' declaration that homophobia was not going to factor into the story. So what exactly IS going on with Yuuri in the first four episodes? Because the first episode tells us with no ambiguity what Yuuri's "eros" is, and it's hard to buy he doesn't know it himself.

Victor is wearing the Eros costume the first time Yuuri ever lays eyes on him. That isn't subtle.

When I was watching the series again to show it to my sister, she laughed at the shot of Yuuri's eyes getting huge and said, "Formative experience!" That's exactly what it is. Yuuri was obsessed with ice skating (and, interestingly, ballet before that) long before he's aware of Victor Nikiforov. He's already halfway decent when we see him skating at 11/12 years old and doing jumps with Yuuko. But there's another detail the first few episodes repeat almost obsessively: Yuuri has never dated. Yuuri has never had a significant other of any kind. Yuuri is 23 years old, beautiful, and a professional athlete; he went to college in AMERICA; and he has no experience socializing romantically.

Meanwhile, his preserved teenage-era bedroom is essentially wallpapered with posters of Victor. Occasionally of Victor skating.

(he's got two copies one of those, and it's the weird chair one. Yuuri.)

He was at very cusp of adolescence when he first saw Victor-as-eros, and that obsession never let go.

His anxiety is definitely a factor in all this, too -- his reactions to Victor's direct flirting are more clearly fear of immediate intimacy in general, and he even explains as much later -- but there is almost no way Yuuri is actually unaware that he's sexually fixated on Victor. Maybe calling it "eros" feels extreme to him, but Victor is being extreme to begin with. Victor's RUSSIAN DRAMATICS settings are dialed to 11 at all times.

So yeah, having your sexual fixation ask you what your sexual fixation is is going to be terrifying. But Yuuri doesn't behave like this question is terrifying in particular; he acts stumped. Sex? What? What is sex, I have no idea, go ask someone else.

(pictured: what every boy pins next to his Lamborghini poster!)

Yuuri is by now notoriously an unreliable narrator, but the katsudon substitution is bizarre even accounting for that. As a crazy crutch for someone who has genuinely never experienced sexual longing, it's cute and funny. As a flat-out lack-of-self-awareness denial to two people who know better (I’m getting to that, don't worry), it's... kind of scary??

I was talking about this with my dude and she suggested dissociation: Yuuri is having a hard time equating his decade-plus crush with the guy eating his mother's food. I can’t really think of a better explanation, because Yuuri seems to think he's really hit on something with the katsudon thing.

I really want to know how creeped out Victor and Yuri were after Yuuri took off.

I'm thinking pretty creeped out.

The second layer to all this is that Victor is practically begging Yuuri to say it's you, you're my eros, because Yuuri has become Victor's, and thus we embark on our year-long hilarious misunderstanding that, as delightful as it damn well is, probably should have been cleared up a lot sooner. Why does Yuuri performing Victor's free skate go viral while none of the countless videos of him pole dancing with Chris emerge? Did they all sign a death pact? Possible.

The pole dancing can be sort of unconvincingly explained a couple of ways: Yuuri has trained in at least four different kinds of dance, probably more, and pole dancing is a really good strength exercise. But come on.

This is a man who, on some level, is very aware of his own sexuality and what that sexuality wants.

It's hard to actually say from the show's presentation of it through photographs, but I've seen other people also conclude that Yuuri and Victor are dancing a paso doble here (Victor is additionally taking his life into his hands letting Yuuri pull this move, considering how drunk he is). Paso doble is very closely associated with bullfighting, and the idea, generally, is that the man leads playing the matador while the woman follows playing his cape. And Victor loses his three piece suit for a frame to take off his jacket and do a matador pose, but Yuuri isn't playing the woman's part. Yuuri is playing the bull. And the bull is leading the matador.

So assuming Kubo's comments about lack of discrimination in this world would preclude a character's urge to hide one's homosexuality, then something else is going on in Yuuri's head here. He's hiding his sexuality period, from his friends and from himself. When the filters come off via a near lethal amount of champagne, though, he becomes his own story's irresistible hot mess of a playboy. This is what Yuri thinks he's competing with when he follows Victor to Japan. Hell, it IS what Yuri is competing with. No one ever bothers to tell Yuuri that, but he still wins with an aspect of himself he doesn't seem to believe is actually there. And what he wins is, as Victor would phrase it, his eros.

I have no good conclusion here. It's just another aspect of Yuuri's difficulty relating with the world around him.

[then-lets-talk-about-me]

I’m christening this tumblr with a ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CORRECT OPINION:

Yuri deserved the gold regardless of the second season greenlight

fight me

[then-lets-talk-about-me]

I wanted to jump into twitter discussions regarding the fan reactions to Yuri on Ice now that’s its first season is complete, but a lot of my actual followers do not watch anime or at least do not watch YoI, and I didn’t want them to think I had suddenly been possessed. So I just wrote out a list of things for myself to sort of collect my thoughts.

I looked at that list later and realized it was basically like those lists of possible essay topics they give you on the AP English exam. Do they still do that? I’m old, hi

so I said fuck it and made a secondary tumblr for expressing opinions on a 12 episode sports anime.

HI