First Impression--Yuri!!! On ICE
When I heard that there was going to be a figure skating anime, I was quite apprehensive. The reason? I used to watch competitive figure skating on TV. Simply put, I was cursed by knowing too much! What I mean is I could tell if they cut corners on the animation, especially in the physics behind the movements. Some (not all) sports anime suffer from the problem of forgetting that physics are real. I mean, most if the skating in anime I’ve seen in the past wasn’t physically possible. And I think about shows such as Haikyu!! (What is with all these exclamation points? Seriously! It seems like every sports anime has exclamation points.) While the show was entertaining, the physics was not there.
But my fears were baseless! As soon as the theme (History Maker) began to play, I knew that they had at least done some homework.
The Opening: What can you even say about the opening? It was done masterfully. I think that the choice of “History Maker” was a good one, as it set the tone of the show: light-hearted, yet striving to greatness. The animation opens with some technical aspects often found in figure skating, and I was amazed at the detail and style put into it. The camera angles are something that I want to talk about specifically. When figure skating is filmed, the problem that you run into is that no cameras can be in the actual ice rink, leaving the view to be wide and sweeping. The easiest thing would be to have the anime do the same. However, we are treated to various angles not found in television for these events. Not only that, but the animators maintain the physical mechanics of movement! I also thought that it was interesting that it was only the dance aspects and not the jumps that were focused on for the opening. I greatly respect that, as it is often forgotten that rhythm and style can be just as hard as jumps. The only complaint that I have is that the pronunciation gets a little lost in translation (as usual for Japanese), but the song was still strong and solid.
Plot: As far as I can tell, the main plot advances (or doesn’t advance) as Yuri Katsuki’s figure skating career advances. I was excited to realize that you would see figure skating from more than the three protagonist, but also concerned that they would be cookie-cutter performances, simply animated to fill time. However that is not the case, as for the most part each skater I have seen so far has had a unique style.
Characters: The biggest fear I have when an anime has international implication is the fear of stereotyping other countries. Among various types of media, anime and manga seem to be one of the worst offenders of negatively stereotyping its characters. While I was impressed at the mature handling of the international characters, I was less impressed with the characters themselves.
It seems clear that your two main protagonist are based off of real figure skaters: American Olympic skater Johnny Weir and Japanese Olympic skater Yuzuru Hanyu. From similarities in background and personality traits to nearly identical costumes it seems like Yuri and Victor are based off of the real-life Olympians. Feel free to read up on these skaters and tell me if you agree. (https://www.inverse.com/article/24660-yuri-on-ice-figure-skating-johnny-weir )
That being said, for basically being a fan fiction, Yuri!!! on ICE is (thus far) good and fairly original.
When I heard that there was going to be a figure skating anime, I was quite apprehensive. The reason? I used to watch competitive figure skating on TV. Simply put, I was cursed by knowing too much! What I mean is I could tell if they cut corners on the animation, especially in the physics behind the movements. Some (not all) sports anime suffer from the problem of forgetting that physics are real. I mean, most if the skating in anime I’ve seen in the past wasn’t physically possible. And I think about shows such as Haikyu!! (What is with all these exclamation points? Seriously! It seems like every sports anime has exclamation points.) While the show was entertaining, the physics was not there.
But my fears were baseless! As soon as the theme (History Maker) began to play, I knew that they had at least done some homework.
The Opening: What can you even say about the opening? It was done masterfully. I think that the choice of “History Maker” was a good one, as it set the tone of the show: light-hearted, yet striving to greatness. The animation opens with some technical aspects often found in figure skating, and I was amazed at the detail and style put into it. The camera angles are something that I want to talk about specifically. When figure skating is filmed, the problem that you run into is that no cameras can be in the actual ice rink, leaving the view to be wide and sweeping. The easiest thing would be to have the anime do the same. However, we are treated to various angles not found in television for these events. Not only that, but the animators maintain the physical mechanics of movement! I also thought that it was interesting that it was only the dance aspects and not the jumps that were focused on for the opening. I greatly respect that, as it is often forgotten that rhythm and style can be just as hard as jumps. The only complaint that I have is that the pronunciation gets a little lost in translation (as usual for Japanese), but the song was still strong and solid.
Plot: As far as I can tell, the main plot advances (or doesn’t advance) as Yuri Katsuki’s figure skating career advances. I was excited to realize that you would see figure skating from more than the three protagonist, but also concerned that they would be cookie-cutter performances, simply animated to fill time. However that is not the case, as for the most part each skater I have seen so far has had a unique style.
Characters: The biggest fear I have when an anime has international implication is the fear of stereotyping other countries. Among various types of media, anime and manga seem to be one of the worst offenders of negatively stereotyping its characters. While I was impressed at the mature handling of the international characters, I was less impressed with the characters themselves.
It seems clear that your two main protagonist are based off of real figure skaters: American Olympic skater Johnny Weir and Japanese Olympic skater Yuzuru Hanyu. From similarities in background and personality traits to nearly identical costumes it seems like Yuri and Victor are based off of the real-life Olympians. Feel free to read up on these skaters and tell me if you agree. (https://www.inverse.com/article/24660-yuri-on-ice-figure-skating-johnny-weir )
That being said, for basically being a fan fiction, Yuri!!! on ICE is (thus far) good and fairly original.
