The Pure Delight of Yuri!!! on Ice
The show’s thorough worldbuilding and friendship fantasy combine with its love story to create a joyful narrative
The breakout anime of 2016? Unquestionably Yuri on Ice, and it’s not losing any steam in 2017 either. Yuri on Ice (stylized as Yuri!!! On Ice, and abbreviated YOI) dominated Crunchyroll’s Anime Awards 2016, and topped the sales charts in its first week of release, selling more Blu-Ray copies than the next two anime series combined. But unlike other highly successful anime, YOI is not an ongoing epic narrative; it contains no fantastical creatures or giant robots. It’s a single, contained twelve-episode season about… figure skating. And love.
Colloquially, YOI has come to be known as “the gay figure skating anime.” It’s true — there is a gay couple at the heart of YOI’s narrative, and competitive figure skating drives the plot — but YOI simply being gay or about figure skating isn’t what makes it so enjoyable. After all, there’s an entire genre of anime, called yaoi, that deals with gay male relationships; it rarely sees a total breakout hit like this (YOI is unlike most yaoi anyway). While figure skating has passionate followers, they’re not enough to be the key to YOI’s success.
Instead, the anime succeeds at storytelling where other narratives fail. It builds a believable world, populates it with characters who serve as a fantasy friends group, and features a purely fun romance that doesn’t rely on overwrought plot twists for drama. These factors make Yuri on Ice arresting for figure skating aficionados, extremely refreshing to queer media consumers, and enjoyable to just about anyone.
A fleshed-out world
Yuri on Ice focuses on Yuri Katsuki, a washed-up Japanese figure skater. The drama begins when Yuri’s idol, champion skater Victor Nikiforov, comes to his tiny hometown and declares that he’s retired from competition to coach Yuri through the next season’s Grand Prix. Hijinks, competitive figure skating, and a blossoming romance between Yuri and Viktor ensue.
To be any fun for people who aren’t figure skating obsessives, YOI must be thorough in explaining how competitive figure skating works. The animations are accurate, and when Victor and Yuri go on the road for competitions, each new city feels real — recognizably itself, yet not a stereotype.
But visual storytelling alone isn’t what really fleshes out the world of Yuri on Ice. Every single skater who gets time on the ice in YOI has his own motivation, his own backstory, and his own reason for wanting to succeed. Phichit Chulanont is Thai, and wants to be the first Southeast Asian skater to win gold at a Grand Prix Final. Christophe Giacometti of Switzerland is aware that he’s aging and his skating days may be numbered. Jean-Jacques Leroy of Canada is a cocky, flashy skater, until he cracks under pressure. Then, he wants to redeem himself.
Yuri on Ice succeeds at bringing competitive figure skating to life through these characters. They’re why even real-life competitive figure skaters are fans of YOI: their fictional counterparts are all believable and compelling. The fact that every competitor could have been the protagonist, and is certainly the hero of his own story, enriches the world of YOI and makes it feel real.
Attention to friendships
Friendship fantasy is an underrated and unrecognized storytelling force. It’s a huge part of what makes major movies like Pacific Rim and The Force Awakens appeal to fandom: characters meet, they bond, and they support each other in the face of challenges and dangers.
Yuri on Ice manages to tap into this same fantasy. Not all of the skaters in YOI are friends, but a great many of them support each other. And from early on, when Victor encourages Yuri to cheer on a competitor, it’s clear that this is an important part of how the anime approaches competition. Yuri consistently roots for his closest friend in the skating community, Phichit. Victor spends time poolside with friendly rival Christophe. Even Yuri’s rival Yurio makes a friend — Atlin Otabek — for the first time in his life.
Episode 10 finds all of these characters at a table, dining together before the Grand Prix Final. Yuri confesses that before he met Victor, he didn’t understand how important friendship was in competition. They chat and joke. And the next day, they cheer each other on, inspiring each other to be the best possible skaters. It’s an optimistic view of competitive sports, where rivalry narratives dominate, and of the role friendship plays in personal growth.
An idealized (and organic) romance
The way Yuri and Victor’s romance is interwoven with figure skating, in a slow progression, is also refreshing. When gay romance appears in entertainment, it’s usually angsty and fraught: a character doesn’t want to come out, or someone’s homophobic, and those conflicts drive the plot. In stories with a heterosexual romantic subplot, the relationship can often feel shoehorned in (“They fought robots, and then the guy got the girl for no reason other than the guy always gets the girl”).
Yuri on Ice is different. Yuri and Victor’s relationship is deeply intertwined with the plot, not an afterthought. But that doesn’t mean this is a story about how hard it is to be gay in a homophobic world. Though both Victor and Yuri from countries where gay marriage is still illegal, competing in sporting environments that are often homophobic, homophobia doesn’t play a role in their story. The tension in their relationship comes from the figure skating plot and from personality conflicts. For example, the major cliffhanger at the end of one episode was Yuri, driven to despondency over his performance in his short program, telling Victor that he wants to “end it” after the Final is concluded. End what? Their coaching relationship? Their personal relationship? Fans gnashed their teeth about it for a week.
But none of that happened because Viktor and Yuri were feeling pressure from outside sources to break up. Instead, Yuri was letting his insecurities get the better of him (as he does many times). The conflict tied in with the plot and grew organically from the characters’ flaws. In queer romance — in many stories that are not pure romance — that’s rare.
A second season of Yuri on Ice hasn’t been announced yet, but it’s hard to imagine that one won’t be forthcoming. Until it does, there aren’t many properties with a smooth blend of worldbuilding, friendship fantasy, and romance for fans to turn to. Check, Please!, the queer hockey webcomic that raised $400,000 on Kickstarter last year, is the closest thing out there. But perhaps, if other storytellers learn the right lessons from Yuri on Ice, there will be even more delightful plot-and-romance-driven stories on the horizon.
