Yuri!!! on Ice

Episode 12

Welcome to the first day of a post-Yuri!!! on Ice world. (For now.) It will be hard, but we will overcome, following this show's example of embracing life in the moment, being kind to each other, and never ever giving up. I'll be up front and say that the show ended on a relatively low point. A lot of longstanding problems caught up to Yuri!!! on Ice during the Grand Prix arc, which I'll have to discuss alongside the recap. However, the series sticks the landing overall, resulting in a great show and a wonderful piece of entertainment in the end. It is, above all else, an extraordinarily ambitious work, and I commend it for accomplishing most of what it intended to do.

Following last week's stinger, Yuuri tries to break up with Victor. This is, of course, a terrible idea that makes Victor very sad. Yuuri is a moron, but fortunately, it all works out in the end. Basically, this final episode consists of Victor figuring out a new low-key way of talking Yuuri out of this horrible decision. The solution he lands on requires some action from angry child Yurio, which results in a climax as narratively problematic as Yurio's character has become. While Victor's character arc still largely works despite the lack of concrete information about his backstory, Yurio's arc has suffered enough to feel more muddled and arbitrary by now. Nevertheless, it's Yurio's performance – not Yuuri's – that serves as both the climax of the show and the determining factor for the future of Yuuri and Victor's relationship. While it was a beautifully rendered sequence, it was also very confusing at first. It took me several viewings to figure out what had happened, emotionally speaking.

Here's what I've managed to work out – it's revealed that Yurio always admired Yuuri and only acted like he hated him because he wanted Yuuri to reach his true potential. It didn't seem this way at first because Yurio only knows how to interact with people via negging. So when Victor insinuates to Yurio that Yuuri will retire (and thus leave Victor) if he doesn't find a reason to keep skating after this Grand Prix, Yurio resolves to keep him competing by beating him and taking the gold. Yurio wins by a hair, and it's enough to make Yuuri realize that his career hasn't plateaued in a perfect rendition of his “Yuri!!! on Ice” program. The problem with this is carried over from the previous episode – it's still too vague what Yurio overcame for himself and how exactly he overcame it. While this is still a much better episode than last week, Yurio's story is still the weak point that now bleeds over into the Yuuri stuff because it's so integral to the climax. It's a troubled moment for the show on closer inspection, but it ultimately lands on its feet simply by ending the show how it should end dammit, with Victor and Yuuri staying together and Yurio as their pseudo-adopted third-wheel child.

This finale proved to be the point where Yuri!!! on Ice couldn't entirely triumph over its challenging narrative structure. It was an ambitious decision to show all six short and free programs during every competition, but for the first two arcs, the show rose to the challenge admirably. Its primary device of using the side skaters and their stories as a sort of Greek chorus for the main narrative worked great, while leaving some time to dawdle down side paths. For this last arc, however, we really needed more direct focus on the leads alone, so the other players (no matter how charming) mostly served as distractions. It doesn't help that their material became more hit-or-miss at this point. While JJ's Grand Prix story – inadequate foreshadowing aside – was uniformly strong, Otabek never grew beyond his role of “Yurio's new friend,” and Chris's story ended on a weird low note. Phichit is a precious angel and I support his dream to create Thailand's first Hamsters on Ice extravaganza, but he didn't add much to the drama of the main couple's potential breakup. It also didn't help that, barring Otabek, all of the skating sequences were repeat performances by this point. Yuri!!! on Ice chose to try and mimic the experience of watching actual ice skating with this unusual competition format, but for this final stretch, it felt more like a handicap than an additional source of exhilaration.

All that being said, Yuri!!! on Ice still ended well enough to leave me satisfied. It landed the really crucial parts, meaning Yuuri's overall character arc and relationship with Victor. If the two of them had broken up over this, the world would have been my table, and I would have flipped it. It wouldn't have made any sense. I still think that this eleventh-hour breakup threat wasn't handled extremely well. While the rationale behind it makes sense (Yuuri's self-worth issues coupled with the pressure of taking ice skating's dearest darling away from the sport), the balance was off in execution, and I entered this finale feeling emotionally primed for a different sort of conflict than expected.

My impression is that while Yuri!!! on Ice contained all the raw material for the story it wanted to tell, it wasn't always arranged in the right way for all the emotional beats to segue clearly into one another, resulting in a final conflict that feels both well-established and like it came out of nowhere. I was preparing for a challenge from Victor, when the climax ended up resting entirely on Yuuri's issues, which were then resolved by Yurio. While I've come down hard on it at the very end, I'd still say Yuri!!! on Ice's writing pulled some virtuoso moves throughout its run. The first three episodes are pretty much perfectly written for the old “three episode rule,” and episodes seven and ten came to fantastic climaxes. Narratively, Yuri!!! on Ice isn't a flawless ride, but the highs far outweigh the bumps in the road.

The show's bravery also can't be overstated. Anime that are forthrightly about queer experiences without leaning on hoary old yaoi/yuri genre tropes are already rare, but a show doing that for a more mainstream audience on this scale is downright unprecedented. For the sake of comparison, 2016 was a surprisingly crowded year when it came to TV anime about gay dudes, and the other two big examples – Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu and Battery – were both far more coded about their subject material and aimed at more niche audiences. Yuri!!! on Ice, meanwhile, has its two leads kiss on international television (an act which, ironically, they could not themselves depict on television) and sees them get engaged a few episodes later. It doesn't get more unambiguously romantic than that.

To further emphasize how crazy this is, same-sex couples can't get legally married in either Japan or Russia; in Viktor's native land, it's borderline criminal to be gay. He could not be out with safety in his home country, much less as an international celebrity. Ice skating itself has a long history of homophobia, and much of what Yuri!!! on Ice depicts – like some of the most flamboyant costumes and two men pair skating to a love song at an official event – do not happen. There's an argument to be made that Yuri!!! on Ice makes light of its subject material by not depicting any of the obstacles that Yuuri and Viktor's love would face in real life, but I think that there's also value in its utopian image of the world. It contributes to the infectious joy that's made this show so popular, and it could also make more people ask why this can't happen in reality.

I think this gets at the reason why Yuri!!! on Ice was this much of a massive success – it's an exceptionally kind, joyous, and accessible work of entertainment. Writer Mitsurou Kubo has gone on the record as saying that she intended for every skater to feel like the protagonist of their own show, and that definitely comes through. Even quite minor characters, like Minami, are immediately lovable, and they've attracted a following in spite of their limited role. Even when the show uses its side players to explore serious interpersonal situations where the skater is at fault – as with Georgi, Michele, and JJ – it does so with a sympathetic touch that somehow doesn't undercut the strong lessons that it needs to impart. The closest thing to an antagonist and the character who receives the harshest treatment – the egotist JJ – is still greeted with an immense outpouring of love when he eats his requisite slice of humble pie. This show loves all of its characters so much that the audience can't help but fall in love with them too.

Although its final arc is easily a low point for the show as a whole, Yuri!!! on Ice still concludes as the defining anime community experience of the season, if not the year. I'd recommend it to pretty much anyone who possesses a shred of joy in their heart. Regardless of its queerness, Yuuri and Victor's relationship stands as a wonderful depiction of the emotional ebbs and flows of falling in love. It's also worth mentioning that this is a straightforwardly sexy show, without most of the uncomfortable baggage that accompanies shows that explicitly aim to titillate.

All in all, Yuri!!! on Ice is an incredibly ambitious show with a great deal to say about art, love, and life as a whole. It practices what it preaches in its celebration of flawed performances that are nevertheless exhilarating for the effort, emotion, and sheer love that goes into them. By being a rumination on the value of imperfection itself, Yuri!!! on Ice also turns its technical issues into assets. It also ended up embodying its themes in another way; there's going to be more! That's right, Yuri!!! on Ice ends with the promise of a sequel, which actually ties in well with the show's exploration of art and storytelling. At the Grand Prix, Yuuri did perfect his “Yuri!!! on Ice” program, which was intended to be a capstone for his career as a whole. However, life inevitably goes on past that point, and the people around him resist Yuuri's attempt to “conclude” his own narrative. He was the only one insisting that he had to retire, the only one claiming that his story was over, as a final crutch for his insecurities. In the end, Yuuri's friends help him transcend this so that he can allow himself to be happy.

I'm not sure what the next installment of Yuri!!! on Ice will be about, but I'm happy to get more of this world, more of these characters, and more of these humbly profound ruminations on life and artistry. Yuri!!! on Ice wasn't always on its A-game, but it was always a joy, and that's more than enough for me.

Grade: A-

Yuri!!! on Ice is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.