That title is misleading!

But, it looks cute.

malna wrote:

I've seen some of my online acquaintances have been watching YOI so I thought about giving it a try but as soon as I saw the characters' pictures, my enthusiasm went down a notch. I mean, sure, they are pretty. But I prefer my gay men manly. It's just a preference that I have. *shrugs*

Not to pick on you, but outside of porn, I don't hugely get that as a main draw to a series. Is it just with anime and just with gay men, or is that a large factor for you in general? If you don't mind me asking.

Just realized that they missed a golden opportunity by not calling it Yuri Acting On Ice so that it could be abbreviated as YAOI.

I have been wanting an ice skating anime FOR YEARS. I would always tell my friend "ice skating anime when??" I was starting to lose hope of ever getting one, but then finally Yuri on Ice made its entrance and it was FANTASTIC. Better than I could have ever dreamed of getting!   I'm loving it a lot so far, needless to say.

It's a bit surreal to see everyone on my twitter timeline posting pics of Plushenko now. He's always been my favorite ice skater and I followed a few fan twitters, but now anime fans I followed (mainly for Free!) are posting stuff about him lol.

I think it is genuinely good so far. It's funny, good animation and has that sports-anime feel.

It doesn't feel like it's gay-baiting either, looks like they're going for a straight (haha) up romance. Which is nice for a change. I mean, he very plainly asked a woman to teach him how to dance in a more feminine, seductive way and thinks 'I know who I'm dancing for' right towards Viktor so yeah, hard to straightsplain your way out of that.

It looks like others have seen the Hanyu Yuzuru/Yuri on Ice connection:

I never expected to love this show so much. It's gorgeous, and I love the attention to body language and realistic movement, both on and off the ice. I also fiercely identify with Yuri K. in...a myriad of ways. It's painful to wait a week between episodes, and if it gets a home video release I will buy it without hesitation. So. good.

OnlyInThisLight wrote:

Still, not convinced it ISN'T gaybaiting right now.

For me it's kind of a toss up. I'm surprisingly...optimistic though?

OnlyInThisLight wrote:

Also can we talk about all these female characters?  Childhood friends, teachers, a loving mother, omg. Look at them.

I adore this aspect, and I think the director being a woman has a lot to do with it!  I also appreciated that there was no cliche childhood friend/crush relationship drama.

Ooooh my god oooh my gooood. I love this show.

HonorableShadow wrote:

[THEY KISSED!!]

[
NO THAT WAS OBVIOUSLY A HUG VICTOR AND YURI ARE ARE MERELY CLOSE FRIENDS, RATHER LIKE BROTHERS]

HonorableShadow wrote:

YamPuff wrote:

HonorableShadow wrote:

[THEY KISSED!!]

[
NO THAT WAS OBVIOUSLY A HUG VICTOR AND YURI ARE ARE MERELY CLOSE FRIENDS, RATHER LIKE BROTHERS]

Ah yes, just like brothers.  Isn't it nice to have such good friends?

In a meta sense I actually kind of like how they 'covered' that up, just to show how far people will go to say 'they're just friends'.

I can't believe they exchanged rings! I hope the wedding is next. 

Also, this makes me happy (tweeted by the creator):

Spoilers for the finale ahead!!

So, the show ends with no real, concrete, plainly and proudly stated confirmation that Yuuri and Viktor are in love with eachother, romantically.


What a fucking surprise.

It's as Kita said.  This show was highly polished gay-baiting intelligent enough to focus on one main pairing rather than a harem (such as Free!), but it was still just that.  Gay baiting. Hints, innuendos, little shit like that is for straight fangirls to squee over and make memes out of.  It's not representation and LGBTQ people deserve better than being turned into fanservice.

I'm sorry.  I did love this show and it's characters and Yuri and Victor's clearly thinly veiled queer romance.  I'll be re-watching, even!  But I am damn tired of veils, and damn tired of fans acting as if these teasing scraps of representation are good enough.

I can't even be on tumblr right now.  The confirmation bias is blinding.

They didn't get married.  They make a point of Yuuri backtracking on that statement and frame Victor's promise as sarcasm.  And, of course, as soon as it was said I knew it meant Yuri wouldn't win gold.  Harder to write themselves out of that one.  And like.  Who even wanted to see a fucking 8 month relationship between two people who hadn't met previously wind up in marriage on the 8th month?  We did.  Because that's how desperate we were for confirmation, any confirmation, even if it was moronic and the kind of thing indicative of really shallow, bad and often doomed relationships. 

They didn't kiss.  We didn't see it.  No one said anything about it. No calls from mom asking if Yuri and Viktor were dating. No instagram posts from the skating otaku.  No confessions of love or attraction were stated.

Just.  Fuck.  What the hell is so hard about giving us any of that?  Every moment of genuine, romantic queerness that wasn't being played for ecchi humour between these two was almost immediately back tracked over or provided just enough plausible deniability that what we were seeing wasn't gay.

Even Yuuri's little speech on his love for Viktor was FULL OF IT.   It was abstract, it was MORE than just simple romantic love (how insulting.  that it's homosexual love being treated as the shallow love we must rise above in our media in order to understand, truer, deeper love), it was friendship, it was blah blah.  It's all just a really long way of saying no-homo.

Just give me a minute. 

I'll be back to loving this show in a bit and re-watching the dual skate but right now.  No.  I am mad.

Last edited by OnlyInThisLight (12-21-2016 10:46:55 PM)