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Before There Was Heated Rivalry, There Was Yuri!!! On Ice

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Before There Was Heated Rivalry, There Was Yuri!!! On Ice

When the finale of Yuri!!! On Ice (hereafter YOI) dropped on December 21, 2016, demand for watching and discussing the episode was so high that Crunchyroll and Tumblr crashed. The moment was the culmination of a 12-week period on the internet that started with cautious excitement for YOI’s October premiere—mostly from within the online anime community and sparked by a few promotional trailers—and snowballed from there. In a time before the Thai BL drama boom, or the release of English-language romances like Heartstopper and Heated Rivalry, YOI broke anime containment by depicting a world in which queer characters were not just featured, but were allowed joy, low-stakes intimacy, and a happy ending. Ten years later, it’s still special.

Yuri!!! On Ice begins when protagonist Yuri Katsuki (Toshiyuki Toyonaga) is at his lowest. A 23-year-old competitive ice skater struggling with anxiety and depression, he has just returned home to coastal Japan following a humiliating season. Yuri is seriously considering quitting the sport altogether when his idol and fellow competitor, Russia’s Victor Nikiforov (Junichi Suwabe), shows up at Yuri’s family onsen and volunteers to be his new coach. As the 12-episode season progresses, Yuri builds confidence in himself as a skater and a human, falling in love with Victor along the way.

Many of YOI’s initial watchers were intrigued by the figure skating subject, which felt unique as a subject in sports anime—or live-action TV drama, for that matter. “I love figure skating, so when I saw the news that a new sports anime about figure skating was coming, I was excited,” a 34-year-old European fan named Toblerone tells me of first watching YOI in 2016.


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