Yuri!!! on Ice

Episode 8

Following last episode's climactic confirmation that Yuri!!! on Ice is in fact a love story, some may be disappointed that the show shifts focus away from the central couple this week, to its long absent (but hardly forgotten) deuteragonist, the Blonde Brat Yurio. That's right – following his absence for most of the Cup of China, Yurio is back!

While we don't get insight into the main relationship's private developments following The Kiss, based on their public interactions I'd say that Victor and Yuuri are in Full Couple Mode. They now engage in shameless PDA, blissfully blasé about everything else. That includes Yurio's brattiness, which is now on overdrive due to his miserable training regimen, emotional isolation, and some unfortunate disappointments in his personal life. He even gets to take up the mantle of POV character from Yuuri, which both allows the show to develop Yuuri and Victor's relationship obliquely and provide more insight into Yurio's own struggles. While the specifics are still vague, it's becoming more clear that Yurio suffers from some sort of familial dysfunction. He's ecstatic when his grandfather comes to pick him up for a visitation day in Moscow. However, his grandfather later fails to show up to his Short Program, leaving Yurio despondent. Something is up here, although we have yet to receive the specifics. Worse yet, Yurio's Short Program was inspired by his grandfather, so he was relying on his presence to achieve the necessary emotional state. While he manages to score well, he's destabilized by his turbulent anger – the opposite of the program's needed serenity.

I feel for Yurio. Nobody treats him like what he is – a wounded child. His actual family isn't there for him, Yakov and Lilia aren't helping with their bitterly divorced surrogate parents routine, and even Victor has basically abandoned him. Yurio has every right to be angry in this situation, which makes it even more tragic that he buys into it when people tell him that he should be calm and accepting. (His mentors only mean this artistically, but in this show, artistic expression is also a metaphor for personal emotions.) I feel like Yurio's journey will involve him channeling his anger into his skating. It'd be a form of rebellion against what Yakov and Lilia want – to sculpt him into their ideal, passive art object – so Yurio can finally begin using his skating as a form of personal expression. Along the way, he'll also need to find some real familial figures – probably Yuko and Yuuri. (Although I do hope that Victor apologizes for leaving him hanging like that.) This episode shows that Yurio's rivalry with Yuuri is one-sided, so there's an opportunity for a relationship there, if only Yurio would reach out. However, I can't blame Yurio for not knowing how. His upbringing has only encouraged him to close up. Poor kid. You can tell that he still has more hell to go through on the way to his happy ending.

Beyond some promising character work for Yurio, this episode is the Russia tournament's equivalent to the first Cup of China episode and consequently shares a lot of its problems. Introducing four new skaters – most with their own mini-arcs – almost overwhelms it. However, considering how well Yuri!!! on Ice met this narrative challenge last time, I'm doubt that it'll flub the landing here. This is just a setup episode that lacks the emotional climax that we got last week, but we'll probably receive another at the end of this arc.

Now on to the skaters themselves. First up is Seung-gil Lee, a Korean skater who's going for something similar to Yuuri's focus on sex appeal. The difference between the two is that Seung-gil's demeanor is entirely calculated, and he doesn't even try to hide his ruthlessly utilitarian approach to skating. While he does quite well for himself, this ultimately may hurt him, since he lacks the passionate je ne sais quoi embodied by skaters like Yuuri and JJ. In other words, they may not give you direct points for making kissy faces at the judges, but it certainly doesn't hurt when accompanying a strong performance. Seung-gil lacks that kissy-face factor.

The second new skater, Michele Crispino, is this arc's Georgi Popovich equivalent in that he's mostly here to teach us a lesson about dudes having weird attitudes toward women. While Georgi's skating was based around his entitled feelings over his ex-girlfriend, Michele's feelings revolve around his sister, Sala. That's right, he's a sis-con, although he'd deny putting it in such scandalously physical terms. He just loves his sister more than anything else in the world, needs her there for all of his skating performances, refuses to let other men get close to her, and imagines himself as her knight in shining armor. Nothing strange about that. What he doesn't notice is that Sala has begun to chafe under his possessiveness. According to her monologue during his free skate, she knows that his undue attachment to her handicaps them both. She also seems eager to hang out with men who aren't her immediate relatives, perhaps in a romantic context. This arc's fourth skater, Emil Nekola, is less his own character than a complication in Michele's ideal relationship with Sala. Emil seems like a nice guy, and based on how he interacts with the siblings, he and Sala would probably be dating if Michele weren't threatening him with a beatdown every five minutes. I expect Michele to crash and burn if Sala fails to show up for him next episode. This would also serve as a foil to Yuuri, who is now being tested in a similar way.

Before that, however, there's Jean-Jacques Leroy, aka JJ. He's our new Chris. They have the same exuberance, shamelessness, and popularity with female fans. The difference between them is their style – while Chris aims for a sort of “slutty sexpot” vibe, JJ goes for “insane egoist who you can't help but love because, golly, he just loves himself so much.” He calls himself “King JJ” and skates to music composed for him on the subject of his regal-ness. He has a signature pose, complete with hand signals that spell out “JJ.” Basically, no one's slick like JJ, no one's quick like JJ, no one sexily cradles those skates like JJ. (Why yes, he is voiced by Mamoru Miyano. He's also based on a real skater who sexily cradled his own skates, Michal Březina.) And it seems to work! JJ won bronze at last year's Grand Prix, behind just Chris and Victor. He's an easy candidate for advancement to this year's Grand Prix. The one issue I have with him is that unlike Chris, or even the rest of the skaters introduced his episode, JJ lacks an immediately apparent story arc to justify subsequent appearances in this already crowded show. His raging egotism might be a problem, but it's made out to be so charming that I don't think the show is framing it as a problem that needs correcting. We'll see, however – there's one more new skater to be introduced at the Grand Prix, Kazakhstan's Otabek Altin. My guess for the final lineup is currently Yuuri, Yurio, Chris, Phichit, Otabek, and JJ.

Following Yuri!!! on Ice's excellent exploration of Yuuri over the past three episodes, I look forward to seeing how it treats its deuteragonist and his vastly different issues. Next week, it looks like our two Yuris will be forced to spend time together while Victor's gone (Maccachin! No!), which will likely lead to a new understanding between them, or at the very least a tantrum on Yurio's part. Maccachin will almost certainly be okay – it's just a convenient way to get Victor out of the picture for a while, plus you're not allowed to kill the dog halfway through a show like this – let's see if Yuuri's performance, which rides high on the sexual tension between him and his coach, can withstand Victor's absence.

Grade: B+

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

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