Spoilers
Plot: It's a Sports/Romantic Comedy about a young man named Yuri Katsuki. He's a 23 year old professional figure skater who thinks he sucks, and is therefore contemplating retiring. However, his idol Victor Nikiforov, a 27 year old enigmatic goofball and five time world champion, shows up out of nowhere and offers to coach him. He's up against severe anxiety, other well trained skaters, and Yuri (Yurio) Plisetsky a 15 year old skating prodigy. You've seen this story before, but as the cliché goes it's not the destination but the journey. Also an adult cast and no high school setting?! What have I done to deserve this bounty?
Characters:
Pros-Yuri is our protagonist and main (unreliable) narrator. He's very relatable and adorably innocent. His anxiety was frustrating but realistic. The struggle with it was a constant battle the entire series. It's the biggest enemy in the show, and his journey is to manage that and become the great skater that's hidden within him.
Cons-Yuri is to codependent on Victor. It got to the point that I was asking does he even like skating or does he only like it because Victor does?
Pros-Victor is the deuteragonist, Yuri's coach, and love interest. He has a silly personality. We get nuggets of seriousness, but his default is to be a child in a man's body. It's impossible to dislike him.
Cons- As far as overall depth goes we get crumbs but no real meat. Victor is just not a fully realized character. His sole purpose is to seduce the pork cutlet bowl out of Yuri's pants. If other people didn't see and interact with him I would be convinced he was a figment of Yuri's imagination.
Pros-Yurio rounds out the mains as the tritagonist. He's the next Victor of the skating world. He can be funny, and I like watching him skate.
Cons- His personality is violent and angry. His disgusting behavior is either ignored or played for laughs.
Pros- The side characters were likable in their own right.
Cons-They took away screen time from Yuri and Victor. I just didn't care about them. Yet, I had to watch long, boring, and repetitive skating sequences.
Romance: Pros-Shh, don't tell anyone but our main couple they're
.two guys. Let's be real this is the strongest reason this show was watched. Their romance was charming, tender, heartwarming and funny. I rooted for them to get their happy ending. Their story was a nice template.
Cons-The overall execution of the romance is timidly done. There's unnecessary censorship and important moments being played for laughs etc. The moments that happened in view were executed teasingly or were severely mired in skater rhetoric. There's no frank discussion on their feelings toward each other. Their relationship exists in a weird bubble. No one explicitly acknowledges its existence. Not even them. Victor and Yuri's romantic and professional relationship is treated like they're one and the same, and the writers seem afraid to detangle the two. They won't fully commit to this utopia. The pair should be able to do these default couple things without the twilight zoning of their relationship. A utopia doesn't mean push things under the rug. It's fine that the negatives about their relationship don't exist in this world. However, why are the positives being hidden, denied or ignored? Their romance is being executed like a vague, childish fan-fiction. The biggest outrage is it doesn't have to be. There's no network/media suppression despite thoughts to the contrary. The odd censorship is creator- inflicted. Why?
Animation:
Pros- The more adult looking art style worked well for the show. I also liked most of the character designs. Also when the show didn't look like it was a having a budget crisis it could be very pretty and smooth looking. Characters would look really well drawn, and the choreography for the skating wouldn't look like a bunch of choppy arms and legs flailing about like a deformed baby walrus.
Cons- I sometimes asked myself where the budget was going. There were a good helping of off model shots for the characters and skating routines and also frame rate issues. Basically too much general ineptness plagued this series. The graphical abilities of the overall show were very inconsistent both on and off the ice.
Diversity: It's an international stage and yet everyone is white. Yuri and his his 'Japanese' family, friends, and peers all look white as well. Every anime has this problem. There's a word for it, but I'll leave it to myself.
Music: The skating and background pieces are nice. Standouts would be Yuri on Ice and Agape. On Ice is Yuri's character in music form, and it's a very beautiful, regal piece. Agape is lyrical innocence. History Maker is the opening, and it goes well with the theme of the show, but I personally didn't like it. You Only Live Once is the ending theme. It has a catchy electronic beat to it.
Comedy: The show is very comedic in nature, and it fit the overall sunny tone, but I do wish it was a bit more serious than what was presented.
Voice Work: I watched Funimation's dub. They did some brilliant work here. The cast all had very good voices that fit them. I adored Yuri's voice. It was perfect. He carried the show. Yurio's Russian accented voice fit him to a tee. Victor also has a Russian accent, and it was this pleasing mixture of sensual and silly.
Ending: There was a lot of deus ex machina, character regressions, pacing issues, and miscommunication melodrama etc. Basically the last two episodes (12 especially) felt like they were narratively disconnected from the episodes that came before it. Instead of making a strong series finale they decided to milkage bait a second season.
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