Yuri!!! on Ice

Yuri!!! on Ice is a 2016 Japanese sports Twelve-Episode Anime television series about figure skating. The series was produced by MAPPA, directed by Sayo Yamamoto (of Michiko to Hatchin and Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine fame.) and written by Mitsurō Kubo (author of, among others, Moteki and Again!!).

After a crushing loss at the Grand Prix Final and several following competitions caused by a mix of personal tragedy and performance anxiety, 23-year-old Japanese figure skater Yuuri Katsuki becomes rather uncertain on what to do with his life and his career, and decides to temporary retire back to his hometown of Hasetsu in Kyushu until he can figures what to do. However, when a secretly-taped video of him duplicating a rather difficult routine of his longtime idol, famous Russian skater and living legend Victor Nikiforov, is upload to the internet and becomes viral, it begins a chain of events that culminates with Victor himself landing in the town and offering to be Yuuri's coach. This act also attracts the ire and attention of one Yuri Plisetsky, a 15-year-old Russian prodigy that is looking to debut in the Senior Category and was aiming to have Victor as his coach and/or choreographer; it doesn't help that both Yuris had a run-in at the Grand Prix, when the Russian Yuri caught the Japanese one in the middle of a breakdown and told him to just give up already.

Note that despite the name, this series has nothing to do with the Yuri Genre, on ice or off; if anything, it's closer to the Boys Love Genre in themes (albeit not in tropes).


 * Adult Fear:
 * The very premise of the show. What if you are so close to achieving your dream, but wipe out at the prime of your career? Yuuri knows that his body will give out in a matter of months, and he has to decide if he wants to give it one last go, before retiring. He also doesn't know what he will do.
 * Why Yuuri ended up wiping out during the Grand Prix; he got news from home that his beloved dog Viichan, named for Victor, died suddenly. All he can do is cry in the bathroom after the fact while talking with his mother.
 * Makkachin ends up sneaking some buns from the hot springs inn, despite Victor warning him not to steal any human food. He gets badly ill, something that worries Yuuri and Victor. Yuuri orders Victor to fly back to Japan and be there for his dog, flashing back to how he wasn't able to be there for Viichan.
 * Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: A very important plot point in the past. . Yuri is very mortified when he learns about this a year later.
 * Ambiguously Gay: Christophe never confirms if he is gay or bi. He shows clear attraction to both Victor and Yuri, taking Yuri's Eros routine as a challenge to establish his sexuality and comfort on the ice. Victor, however, thinks that Christophe's flamboyance is part of his act.
 * And the Adventure Continues...: How season one ends. Despite Yuri's plan to retire, he decides to skate for one more year, and {{spoiler|officially pursue his relationship with Victor, with maybe a wedding in the future. Victor reenters the competition as a skater rather than as a coach, and Yurio makes peace with Yuri after beating him at the Grand Prix finals and winning gold. The season ends with the trio enjoying each other's company at Victor and Yuri's rink in Russia during the end credits, preparing for the ice next year.]]
 * Baby Got Back: the show definitively delights on showing the backside of its skater characters. In particular, the very infamous short program of Christophe Giacometti, where the camera focuses very intensely on his posterior and has a moment of Chris grabbing its own butt (with bounce effect!).
 * Bi the Way: Yuri sustained a crush on his childhood friend Yuko as a child, and Victor Nikirikov in the present. Everyone accepts this as matter-of-fact when they realize that Victor returns Yuri's feelings.
 * Blind Without'Em: Zigzagged with Yuri. He takes off his glasses to skate, and can do routines flawlessly. You can see that he needs to squint, however, to look at the scores after he's finished his routine.
 * Everyone Has Standards: Yuri's former bully Takeshi will tease him for gaining weight in the off-season, while also saying that Yuri is free to skate at the local rink for as long as he likes and at any hour. When his girls end up posting a vidoe of Yuri's spontaneous imitation of Victor's choreography of "Stay Close to Me" and it goes viral, he dials Yuri first thing and apologizes for what the triplets did.
 * Everything's Better with Sparkles: It's a series about artistic ice skating, so this is expected.
 * Excited Show Title!: With three exclamation marks!
 * Forgotten First Meeting: Yuuri thinks that Victor landed on his home from nowhere and for no real reason because on his perspective his previous interaction was a polite greeting at the last year Grand Prix. {{spoiler|Their real first interaction was after that greeting, when Yuuri drunk himself to oblivion at that event's banquet and gained a Booze-Based Buff that let him become the life of the party, do pole dancing, win a dancing battle against Yurio, and flat out asking Victor to become his coach. But because Yuuri forgot all of this at the next morning, he isn't aware of the impression he left in Victor, and only learns about his drunken antics almost a year later.}}
 * Former Child Star: Downplayed with most of the skaters. They have to start as teens in the junior division to start gaining their clout. Most handle the pressure well; they all have the uncertainty, however, of what happens when they can no longer skate after reaching a certain age. Part of the reason why Victor is suffering burnout is that he was skating competitively when most kids his age are finishing high school, and he's wondering what to do with his life now that he has won the Grand Prix Finals, where to find the passion he had.
 * The Four Loves: Discussed in the plot, mainly with the programs Victor designs for the two Yuris.
 * Victor creates two programs, based in a musical piece titled "On Love" that has two versions, "Eros" and "Agape". "Eros" is a very sensuous piece, choreographed to exploit the skater's sexuality; meanwhile, "Agape" is a more ethereal song, choreographed to bring out an image of innocence. Then, he decides to give the very shy and repressed Yuuri Katsuki the Eros programs, and to the temperamental Yuri Plisetsky the Agape one, on the logic that playing against their obvious type will be extremely interesting to watch.
 * Note that Victor has an (increasingly obvious) secret agenda when he gave Yuuri the Eros program. {{Spoiler|After all, he did see the "Eros" side of Yuuri in the Grand Prix Banquet of the previous year.}}
 * Within the story, Eros is a bit mixed with Storge (as the romantic love and the sexual vibe that goes on Yuuri's skating is being fed by his soulmate-like relationship with Victor), and Agape is a bit fused with Philia (Yuri only gets into the true meaning of "unconditional love" when connects it with the love and support he gets from and feels towards his grandpa).
 * Glomp: Victor's poodle Makkachin makes a cute first impression on Yuri -- and a touching one, given Yuri briefly mistakes him for his dog Viichan-- by leaping on him and showering him with kisses.
 * Graceful Loser: Most of the skaters are fine with losing to their friends and teammates. They're all friends and know each other. Yuri's insecurities are skating against himself and improving his routines.
 * Yurio is a Tsundere example. He sees that Yuri has won their bet on who will master their routine better, and leaves Hasetsu to train with Yakov for the season. Yurio doesn't even bother to argue that Victor should be his coach. Yuri is surprised, saying that Yurio skated very well.
 * Minami tells Yuri that it was a pleasure to lose to him. He says that competing with his hero was enough of an award for that day, and hopes they can skate together on the ice again. Yuri is surprised but happily agrees.
 * One very sweet example is when {{spoiler|J.J. wipes out due to a sudden panic attack on the ice. He is prepared to hang his head in shame after receiving a low score. Then his girlfriend chants his name, something that all his fans take up until it echoes across the rink. He gains the courage to give a pained smile and his signature thumbs-up to not disappoint them and thank them for their support}}.
 * Hidden Depths: It's revealed that Victor speaks fluent Japanese, in addition to his native Russian and English. While training Yuri in Hasetsu, Victor films some promos for the town, to boost tourism.
 * One Steve Limit: Averted with Yuri Katsuki and Yuri Plisetsky. How the fandom and this page deal with it is seen in Spell My Name with an "S" below. In the show, Yuri Plisetsky is given the nickname "Yurio" by Katsuki's sister Mari, after a boy band singer she likes, to differentiate him from her brother; Victor immediately takes to the nickname, to the young skater's mortification.
 * Poor Communication Kills: Part of the reason why Victor and Yuri have many missteps in their relationship evolving from {{spoiler| idol-teacher/athlete-student to mutually equal romantic partners}} is that they don't talk that much about what happened at the previous Grand Prix tournament. Victor assumes that Yuri will remember {{spoiler|the drunken danceoff and invitation to his family's inn, which is why he acts very forward towards Yuri at first and doesn't understand why Yuri is too embarrassed to respond}}.It takes until they are at an informal dinner during the Grand Prix Finals for Victor to learn about this very important detail. Cue a hilarious Spit-Take.
 * Precious Puppy:
 * As a kid, Yuri was inspired by how Victor had a poodle named Makkachin. He adopted a puppy that was also a poodle, naming it Victor. The inciting incident of the show is when Viichan dies while Yuri is competing at the Grand Prix Finals.
 * Makkachin is a sweet dog, despite being at least ten years old. What is his first reaction on meeting Yuri? To leap on him and give him kisses.
 * Same Sex Triplets: the Nishigori Triplets are all girls, only distinguishable by accent color and hairdo.
 * Spell My Name with an "S": because of two main characters having the same given name, "Yuri", when transliterated in roman letters, most people in fandom romanize the name of the Japanese protagonist as "Yuuri" or "Yūri" to differentiate between them. Many fans also prefer to write Victor's name as "Viktor" as the latter is the most common Russian form of the name - the official spelling in promotional material waver between both depending on which side of the pond they are released.
 * Technician Versus Performer: Basically one of the conflicts between the main characters:
 * Yuuri Katsuki is a Performer, who skates with natural artistry (it's pointed that he himself can move as if he was creating music from his body), but due to his performing anxiety he tends to flub jumps and complicated combinations, leading to a situation where his artistic points are the only one who can save his scores after his abysmal technical ones. Most of his training with Victor focuses on him finally ironing out his technical failings and get free of his performance anxiety so he can finally medal above bronze in the international circuit.
 * Yuri Plisetsky is a Technician, whose technical abilities are so good that he steamrolled his competition when he was in the Junior category in such a way he has decided to move to Seniors to get more of a challenge. However, he quickly discovers that, while still a very good skater, his technical proficiency is not enough to carry him in a category where not only everybody is just as good technically as him, but also has artistry on top of that. His character development during the series is about how he finally connects with his artistic side and becoming a worth watching skater instead of a merely very good one.
 * Victor on the ice has both Technician and Performer abilities, bringing performances that are both physically impressive and extremely moving, but his mentality is more in the Performer side, planning his programs on the stated goal of surprise the audience. But after years of constantly looking for new inspiration, he feels that he has lost his creativity and decides to temporarily retire from the ring despite being still very able.
 * The other skaters have this going too; the most extreme examples are Lee Seung-gil, so focused on his technical side that his internal monologue during skating is him counting his points, and Pitchit Chulanont, a natural crowd pleaser whose main motivation isn't becoming a gold medalist but to make ice skating popular on his natal Thailand.
 * Twelve-Episode Anime
 * Unreliable Narrator:
 * Yuri's own self-esteem often blinds him to the reality of the situation when he narrates to the audience. In the debut episode, he calls himself a dime-a-dozen skater, one of many common ones in Japan. We find out he's actually one of the top skaters internationally according to his stats. In fact, no one is disappointed in him for wiping out; crowds line up to shake his hand, and tell him how proud they are of him.
 * During an informal dinner, Yuri mentions that he was so shy about talking with Victor the previous Grand Prix and was too shy to approach him. Cue an epic Spit-Take from {{spoiler|Victor. He and the other skaters ask Yuri if he remembers getting drunk and doing a semi-naked dance off, complete with pole-dancing. Apparently Yurio got roped into the danceoff, and he enjoyed himself despite calling it disgusting later. They all have photos on their phone, much to Yuri's embarrassment. Turns out that danceoff was important for more than one reason; a drunk Yuri ground his body against Victor and invited him to the family hot springs, saying in English, "Be my coach!"}}.
 * J.J. {{spoiler|during his panic attack reveals that he sees the other skaters as a posse. As he falls on the ice, he imagines Yuri as the The Vamp of the group glaring at him. Let us repeat, he sees sweet, anxious Yuri as the seductive honey trap}}.
 * Wham! Episode:
 * The seventh episode. {{spoiler|featuring a Big Damn Kiss between the protagonists and graduating them from Ship Tease to Official Couple.}}
 * Then the tenth episode, who begins as a breather episode before the two-part finale and ends with a revelation that put all the relationships between the characters under a new light, without actually retconning them.

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