Yuri on Ice

Plot

After a crushing defeat in the Grand Prix Final and other competition losses, 23-year-old Japanese figure skater Yuri Katsuki develops mixed feelings about skating and puts his career on hold; he attends college in Detroit before returning to his hometown of Hasetsu in Kyushu. Yuri visits his childhood friend, Yuko, at an ice rink (Ice Castle Hasetsu) and perfectly mimics an advanced skating routine performed by his idol: Russian figure skating champion Victor Nikiforov. When secretly-recorded footage of Yuri's performance is uploaded to the Internet, it catches Victor's attention, and he travels to Kyushu with an offer to coach Yuri and revive his figure-skating career. Later, it is revealed that Victor was already familiar with Yuri, having met him before at a banquet where Yuri got drunk and asked Victor to be his coach.

After learning when about Victor's career decision, Yuri Plisetsky, a rising 15-year-old Russian prodigy skater, travels to Hasetsu to make Victor keep a promise made prior to the beginning of the series. Victor had promised he would choreograph a routine specifically for Yuri P. if he won the Junior World Championships, which Yuri P. presumably did. Victor, having forgotten about his promise to Yuri P., makes the two Yuris compete against each other to decide who he will coach. Yuri K. ends up winning, and thus Victor becomes Yuri K.'s coach. Yuri P. returns to Russia, and both Yuris vow to win the Grand Prix championship.

Both Yuris qualify to represent their countries in the Grand Prix series, and then later qualify for the Grand Prix Final in Barcelona. Over the course of the Grand Prix, Yuri K. and Victor become increasingly close, with Yuri K. buying them both gold rings in Barcelona which leads to remarks by Victor about them being "engaged." On the eve the final, Yuri K. plans to quit skating so that Victor can return to the sport and tells Victor, but Victor tearfully rejects the idea, and they agree to choose their paths after the tournament has finished. The tournament ends with Yuri P. winning the gold medal and Yuri K. winning silver. As a result, Yuri K. decides to continue skating and moves to St. Petersburg so that he can continue training alongside Yuri P. and Victor.

Production

Yuri Katsuki's hometown of Hasetsu, Kyushu is based on Karatsu, Saga. In December 2016, Saga Prefecture's Sagaprise project announced plans to use Yuri On Ice to promote tourism in the area. According to Akinori Kawakami, president of the Association to Connect Hasetsu and Karatsu, 20 to 30 people visit Karatsu every day on anime pilgrimages. On February 22, 2017, the Nikkan Sports newspaper featured a collaborative illustration depicting Yuri K., Yuri P. and Victor supporting Sagan Tosu football club, which is based in Saga Prefecture.

According to a Sakura Blog study, Yuri on Ice used more key animators than any other anime series during the fall 2016 season: an average of 48.5 key animators per episode, five more than Flip Flappers (which had the second-highest number of key animators). In the early episodes of the series, each character was handled by a different key animator, meaning that skating style of the characters differed from each other. In the skating scenes, the sound effects were changed to match each venue, according to the building's capacity and crowd size. The skating sounds for each sequence were recorded separately. No stock sounds were used for the sequences because each part sounds different, and no footage of professional skaters was used because the music in the programmes normally muffles the sounds. Thus the sounds used were recorded and performed by series choreographer Miyamoto, and each skating sequence is unique to the program.

Broadcast and distribution

Yuri on Ice aired on TV Asahi from October 6 to December 22, 2016. The anime was produced by MAPPA, directed by Sayo Yamamoto and written by Mitsurō Kubo, with character design by Tadashi Hiramatsu, music by Taro Umebayashi and Taku Matsushiba and figure-skating choreography by Kenji Miyamoto. The episodes were made available for streaming by Crunchyroll, and Funimation began streaming an English dub. on October 24, 2016, at 10:00 p.m. ET.

Yuri on Ice will have six Blu-ray and DVD sets released in Japan. The first set, containing the first two episodes, was released on December 30, 2016. Each set will include bonus content such as booklets, production audio commentary and costume-design and choreography videos.

The anime's opening song was "History Maker" by Dean Fujioka, and its closing song was "You Only Live Once" by Wataru Hatano. A compilation CD entitled Oh! SkaTra!!! Yuri!!! on ICE (Oh! スケトラ!!!　ユーリ!!! on ICE), with the anime's 24 original songs, was released on December 21, 2016. The insert song "Yuri On Ice" was included in Piano Solo Chū Jōkyū Figure Skate Meikyoku-shū ~Hyōyō ni Hibiku Melody~ 2016-2017, a piano book released on January 21, 2017 with music used by figure skaters (including Mao Asada and Yuzuru Hanyu). It was the only anime song in the music book release.

Critical reception

The series received positive reviews from critics, primarily over the relationship between Yuri K. and Victor. Other characters were also praised, with James Beckett of Anime News Network calling Yuri P. one of 2016's best anime characters. According to a Charapedia poll, Victor was 2016's fourth-most-attractive anime character; Yuri K. finished 12th and Yuri P. 19th in the poll. Critics have praised the character of Yuri K. for being a realistic depiction of someone suffering from anxiety and as "a textbook example of an unreliable narrator". The anime was praised for its racially-diverse cast, with reaction to its animation quality mixed. In Anime News Network's "Best and Worst Anime of Fall 2016", five out of nine reviewers called Yuri on Ice the season's best show. However, it was criticized for not explaining the technical aspects of figure skating, uneven animation quality, and a repetitive plot.

Yuri on Ice was well-received by figure skaters, including Johnny Weir, Evgenia Medvedeva, Denis Ten, Evgeni Plushenko and Masato Kimura, and included cameo appearances by skaters Stéphane Lambiel and Nobunari Oda. The closing scene of the tenth episode, when Yuri K. drunkenly pole dances, was commended by professional pole dancers for its accuracy.

The anime refers to, and has been referenced in, other animated series. In the South Park episode "The End of Serialization as We Know It", Ike Broflovski's browser history indicates that he searched for the show. The twelfth episode of Yuri On Ice includes a flashback in which a young J.J. Leroy is dressed to resemble South Park's Eric Cartman.

Popularity

The anime has attracted a large online following. According to the Kadokawa Ascii Research Laboratories content and information trend-analytics company, Yuri On Ice was the most-tweeted anime of the season (collecting 1,440,596 tweets). It had over a million tweets more than its closest rival, the volleyball-based anime Haikyū!! (which had 348,109 tweets). In China, the social media website Sina Weibo recorded 130,000 posts of the Yuri on Ice hashtag, collecting 2 billion views.

Yuri on Ice has been a big hit for Crunchyroll. On the day the first-season finale aired, Crunchyroll delayed its stream for 20 minutes for undisclosed reasons. Yuri On Ice was listed as the top 2016 anime on Crunchyroll for Poland, the Czech Republic, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Malawi, Botswana, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, and Singapore; the most popular 2016 anime series for all countries via Crunchyroll was Re:Zero. Yuri On Ice was one of the three most watched anime on Crunchyroll, the others being JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable and the third season of Sailor Moon Crystal, and was also named the series "Most likely to be watched within an hour of release".

A poll of 306,568 viewers by the video-hosting service Nico Nico Douga found that Yuri On Ice was the fourth-most-popular TV anime series of the year and the most popular series overall with women, who made up 34 percent of those polled. At the Tokyo Anime Award Festival, an online poll was conducted to construct a list of top 100 anime (10 films and 90 TV anime series) for the year, in which Yuri on Ice topped the TV list with 64,774 out of 480,004 votes. It would later win the festival's Anime Fan Award from a second fan polling based off the 100 nominees.

In a "mega poll" of 19,560 readers for Best Anime of 2016 by Anime News Network, Yuri on Ice finished first with 7,400 votes (37.8 percent of the total). A top-100 poll of users of the Japanese website 2chan named Yuri On Ice the tenth-best anime of 2016. A poll by mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo of 4,800 users named Yuri On Ice "Most Favourite TV Anime of 2016" and the "Most Moe" series, while another poll by the same company revealed the tenth episode was the eighth most popular "Swimsuit" episode of anime as chosen by women. A poll of 941 voters on the Japanese anime news aggregator AnimeAnime named Yuri On Ice the best anime of the fall 2016 season. Receiving 20 percent of the female vote, it was the eighth-most-popular show among men. An Akiba Souken poll named the series the most satisfactory anime of fall 2016. A poll by Animage magazine of the top 100 anime characters of 2016 ranked Victor first, Yuri K. second and Yuri P. sixth. In a Anime News Network poll asking people which male anime characters they would most like to give Valentine's Day chocolates to, Victor came top and Yuri K. came second.

In 2017, there are over 20 dedicated Yuri on Ice dōjinshi events planned in Japan. An all-night screening of the series and a talk show with writer Mitsurou Kubo and voice actors Toshiyuki Toyonaga, Junichi Suwabe, and Kouki Uchiyama (the voices of Yuri K., Victor and Yuri P., respectively) was held on February 11 at the TOHO cinema in Roppongi Hills, and was relayed live to 47 cinemas in Japan. A screening of the first three episodes is planned by the Tokyo Anime Award Festival on March 11, 2017 at Cinema Sunshine in Ikebukuro, Tokyo.

Sales

The first Blu-Ray edition of Yuri On Ice topped the Oricon Animation Blu-Ray disc ranking for two weeks, and was number two in the Oricon general Blu-Ray disc ranking, behind SMAP's Clip! SMAP! Complete Singles. The first DVD edition topped the Oricon DVD Animation ranking, above limited and standard editions of One Piece Film: Gold, and was number two in the Oricon general DVD ranking. The second Blu-Ray and DVD sets also topped the Oricon charts for two weeks. The third Blu-Ray and DVD collections also topped of the Oricon charts, with the DVD topping the chart for two weeks and Blu-Ray for one week. The fourth Blu-Ray and DVD collections currently top the Oricon Blu-Ray and DVD charts.

The anime's opening song, "History Maker" by Dean Fujioka, reached number 43 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart. It was named the best opening theme by four of eight Anime News Network critics, and received the Best Opening award at the 2016 The Anime Awards. The ending song, "You Only Live Once" by Wataru Hatano, peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 and received the Best Ending award at the 2016 The Anime Awards. The Oh! SkaTra!!! Yuri!!! on ICE soundtrack was number three on Oricon's CD chart in its first week of sales, and topped Oricon's digital-album chart.

Awards

In Crunchyroll's inaugural The Anime Awards, which are based on an online popular vote, Yuri On Ice received awards in all of its seven nomination categories: Best Boy (Yuri K.), Best Animation, Most Heartwarming Scene ("The Kiss", episode seven), Best Couple (Yuri K. and Victor), Best Opening, Best Closing, and Anime of the Year. Although some Crunchyroll users complained that the show won awards it did not deserve, notably the award for Best Animation, and accused fans of Yuri On Ice of rigging the vote, others defended the awards, writing that there was no conclusive evidence to prove this, while Crunchyroll stated on Twitter that they had used strong anti-cheating methods. Kun Gao, the general manager and founder of Crunchyroll, wrote "We are thrilled that Yuri!!! on Ice has both captivated passionate anime fans and introduced new viewers to anime, and we are privileged to have had the opportunity to distribute this amazing property to its many viewers outside Japan".

At the Tokyo Anime Award Festival in 2017, Yuri On Ice won the Tokyo Anime Award in the Animation of the Year: Television Category and the fan-polled Anime Fan Award. Character designer Tadashi Hiramatsu won the award for Best Animator.

Praise

Yuri On Ice was praised for including a same-sex romantic relationship between Yuri K. and Victor. Among moments highlighted by critics are an apparent kiss in the seventh episode, an exchange of gold rings (indicating a marriage or engagement) in the tenth episode and Victor's tears when Yuri suggests ending their partnership in the twelfth episode. The kiss won the 2016 The Anime Awards for Most Heartwarming Scene. The exchange of rings between Yuri K. and Victor in the tenth episode is considered the first time such a relationship has been depicted in anime. Gabriella Ekens wrote for Anime News Network, "Yuri on Ice, in depicting a sincere and uncomplicated engagement between two dudes, is unprecedented in anime. There hasn't even been a for real gay marriage in Japan, so this show is depicting something that isn't legally possible in its country of origin". For Anime UK News, Ian Wolf called the exchange of rings "the best scene in the series". According to Wolf, the anime is an example of the Odagiri effect.

Yuri on Ice has highlighted homophobia in figure skating and other areas; the seventh episode features a flashback in which a younger Victor performs in a costume based on those worn by openly-gay figure skater Johnny Weir, who was subject to homophobic comments throughout his career. Weir said in an interview with The Geekiary, "I think all positive imagery of LGBT themes in sport are good. Unfortunately, the majority of people that rule the skating world are conservative and more business minded. I think many of them, while they may love and appreciate the art and the sport, are more interested in the business side of things or power trips. I don't know if Yuri on Ice will be able to change the perception of gay athletes to a 60 year old businessman, but I am of the school of thought that every little bit helps". The series finale features a scene in which Yuri K. and Victor skate together, which has not yet occurred in actual competition. Critics have noted that the series depicts two characters from countries with problems concerning LGBT rights.

Yuri on Ice differs from other anime covering same-sex relationships, such as yaoi and yuri. Carli Velocci of Geek.com wrote, "Their relationship exists somewhere beyond any sexuality, meaning it doesn't fall into the same traps that a lot of yuri and yaoi relationships do ... While this isn't the first anime with a same-sex couple at the forefront, it's one of the first to present a story that isn't strictly sexual and is mutual. Yuri and Victor complement each other, but both also admit that they've grown as people because of the presence of the other. The equality in their relationship is revolutionary, even if it wasn't the first to depict one. You can assign the "seme" or "uke" label to Victor and Yuri, but when it comes to their psychological bond, it's more equal ... Yuri and Victor aren't just another gay anime couple. They're almost real."

A review in Otaku USA has argued that the skaters take on an androgynous appearance when they are performing, saying: "While on ice in the series proper, the main performers often take on an androgynous appearance to feed the show's substance. Yuri's evolution in terms of confidence and capabilities is at the core of the plot, but the heart lies in Yuri's exploration of his feminine side via emotional expression. ... Gender roles are further addressed via Viktor's [sic] lines of encouragement to Yuri that, at least as translated, imply both skating direction and romantic suggestion."

Criticism

The relationship has also been criticized as unrealistic, with Yuri K. and Victor not receiving the homophobic abuse they would experience in real life. Others have said that some viewers refused to acknowledge the relationship because the homosexuality was not explicit. Although the "kiss" is obscured by Victor's arm, it is implicit. Cecilia D'Anastasio of Kotaku wondered why the "kiss" was blocked when other anime, such as Shin Sekai Yori, had depicted gay kisses. Some critics, such as Amelia Cook of Anime Feminist, attacked the lack of acknowledgement of the relationship without solid proof: "Victor's arm obscuring where his lips meet Yuri's cannot possibly be an artistic decision; either we see them kiss or there was no kiss. Disagree? Prove it. Never mind that obscuring a kiss is completely consistent with the show's storytelling style so far, leaving deliberate information gaps and inviting viewers to read between the lines. Pics or it didn't happen."

Ian Wolf of Anime UK News (who is pansexual) said that he did not need to see proof because of his upbringing: "I'm 99.999% sure the kiss did occur, but that 0.001% is horribly getting to me. I don't want to go by what everyone else sees – I want to see what is actually going on, and share in the reaction of the characters at the same time as them". By the twelfth episode, he said that the scene in which Victor cries was the proof he wanted: "For all this time, I was hoping to see something happy to indicate their love, but in the end, it was something that was sad. The idea that your relationship might end, the possible heartbreak, is for me the final indicator. If the kiss is the initial spark, and the rings the visible sign of love, then the tears are proof that you don't want it to end. I have been saying all the time that what I wanted was text rather than subtext – but in end, I think the subtext did actually pay off."

Love on Ice controversy

In January 2017 the Hallmark Channel announced the release of a TV movie, Love on Ice, about the relationship between a female figure skater in a career slump and her new male coach. It was seen by some fans of Yuri On Ice as plagiarism due to plot similarities, and Hallmark was accused of trying to "straightwash" the relationship between Yuri K. and Victor. Fans of Yuri On Ice responded to Love on Ice by posting a Change.org petition demanding an explanation of the similarities between the two stories and hijacking Love on Ice's IMDb page to contain the plot summary of Yuri On Ice. The similarity between the stories is apparently coincidental, since Love on Ice began filming in early November 2016 (about a month after Yuri On Ice began broadcasting).

According to Hallmark, no one involved in the making of Love on Ice had heard of Yuri On Ice. Mitsurō Kubo posted on Twitter that she believed the similarities to be a coincidence, and the creator of the Change.org petition acknowledged that Love on Ice was not plagiarism.