Anime at Odds with Itself

An important aspect of anime, or any fictional entertainment medium for that matter, is to be able to allow the viewer to maintain their suspension of disbelief.  Suspension of disbelief is a viewer's ability look past otherwise unreasonable or unrealistic aspects of a story and accept them as part of the story's universe.  When suspension of disbelief is broken, the viewer finds themselves doubting the validity of that particular plot point or the story as a whole in severe cases. The amount a story can get away with depends, of course, on the tone and type of story being told.  In the abstract adventures of Flip Flappers  a meteor could slam into and destroy the earth at any given moment and it would be completely within the realm of what one could expect from the show.  If the same thing happened in the somber Kuzu no Honkai that delves into the the intricacies and complex nature of high school hook-up cultures then the viewer would be hard pressed to reconcile their feelings for the jarring event.  This would be an extreme breach of the suspension of disbelief but right now I want to talk about a show that does this to a lesser an extent.  That show is Yuri on Ice.

Yuri on Ice, as the name may suggest, is about professional men's figure skating.  Let me get this out of the way first, though.  The skating itself in Yuri on Ice is phenomenal.  Still frames do not do it justice.  Studio Mappa accomplished the seemingly impossible task fluidly animating these beautiful choreographies while relying on minimal to no CGI.  The attention to detail that is shown is downright astounding and while I am no expert on figure skating I would argue the skating featured in Yuri on Ice is comparable with that of real life professionals.  The skating is undeniably the greatest strength of Yuri on Ice, but strangely it also is its greatest weakness.

Because the skating is shown off in such an ultra-realistic manner I expect the show outside the skating to be presented in somewhat of a similar fashion, especially when it comes to the homosexual relationship between protagonist, Yuri Katsuki, and his Russian coach and figure skating idol, Victor Nikiforov.  The romance that buds between the two had moments of genuine warmth and sincerity but also had other moments, like the first encounter scene below, that seemed to have been included simply to appease the fantasies of high school girls who may be watching.  Quite frankly, such cliche scenes have no place in the series that takes its primary subject matter so seriously, the skating and the gay.

The inconsistencies extend to Yuri himself as well.  The story opens up with Yuri placing last in a competition called the Grand Prix Final after a series of unfortunate events caused him to lose focus during his performance.  Yuri then had what could only be described as a catastrophic meltdown and came to the verge of quitting figure skating all together.  He was depicted as someone who was very weak of heart.  As someone who knows nothing of figure skating competitions, as I'm sure the vast majority of this show's audience is, this led me to believe the Grand Prix Final to be a moderately important event that even someone lacking in confidence like Yuri could qualify for.  Yet after a few episodes you learn the Grand Prix Final is actually one of the biggest skating events in the world with rigorous qualifying conditions, being the top skater in one's respective country being first and foremost.  It is not a competition that a seemingly weak minded individual like Yuri could qualify for.  It would be one thing if the show gave glimpses of Yuri in the past showing the confidence and resolve necessary to make it to this exalted competition, but there was none of that.  Furthermore, Yuri does not demonstrate any such ability during his time with Victor that could prove to us that he could do the same thing without Victor's guidance.

(The Grand Prix Final is a real event in case you were curious.  This year's will take place in, ironically, Nagoya, Japan on December 7th.)

There are other things I want to nitpick as well such as Yuri's parents not knowing at all how figure skating competitions are scored or much about figure skating in general for that matter.  They are normal caring parents, so you'd think they would take an interest in their son's professional skating career.  There's also the fact that every single character from around the world is somehow fluent in Japanese.  It'd be more believable if it was English and I understand that getting voice actors that can speak in the languages of the 10+ countries represented is too much for a humble anime studio.  But again, when the skating is so painstakingly realistic these little flaws pile up and pull me out of the experience as a whole

Yuri on Ice is a good anime.  What it does right, it does extremely well and for the most part the plot moves along nicely and regular character interactions outside the primary pair are a joy to behold.  Those strengths simply emphasize its what would otherwise be small flaws, though.  In many other shows these flaws would not have bothered me nearly as much but in Yuri on Ice they served to consistently pull me out of my suspension of disbelief.  By the end I couldn't help but wanting more from anime's first serious foray into the field of competitive figure skating.