rionaleonhart | So Many Butts.

Crossposts: http://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/419650.html

Entry tags:

So Many Butts.

I'm now up to episode ten, and, okay, Yuri!!! on ICE is possibly the cutest thing I've ever watched. If you're on the lookout for something cheerful, endearing and homoerotic, I recommend it enthusiastically. (Unless there's a massive tonal shift in the final two episodes, I suppose, but a) that's unlikely, and b) if that did happen, the first ten episodes would still be magical and beautiful.) It's available on Crunchyroll here!

Bless the tenth episode. I was thinking 'hey, you can't tell us there was a drunken dance-off and not show us!', and then along came the closing credits. I love how incredibly serious Yurio's expressions are during the dance-off. Of course they are. Bless you, Yurio.

Yurio's expressions are also wonderful whenever JJ is anywhere in the vicinity. I love his outraged glare.

Other things I love:

- Yurio starting to shout encouragement to Yuri and then cutting himself off.
- Yurio running away in alarm when he thinks Yuri is going to hug him.
- Yurio making incredibly grumpy overtures of friendship towards Yuri. (Yurio going 'UGH, THAT GUY' but slowly, reluctantly warming up to that guy is my favourite thing. I like to imagine he's reading this post and going WHAT, NO, I'M NOT WARMING UP TO ANYONE, FUCK YOU.)
- Yurio's fashion sense revolving around cats. I was already highly amused by his taste for tiger and lion T-shirts, but it took me a while to realise all the leopard print also fit in with the 'big cats' theme!
- Victor having absolutely no concept of personal space.
- Phichit being enthusiastic and supportive when he thinks Yuri and Victor are married. (And Victor going 'ha, no, of course we're not married, we're engaged.')
- my housemates shouting 'ARE YOU SERIOUS?????' in incredulous delight at the screen whenever something gay happens, i.e. constantly.

Early in the series, one of my housemates mentioned that some people argue online that Yuri and Victor are ENTIRELY HETEROSEXUAL, NO EROS THERE. This is pretty hilarious in itself, but it became particularly hilarious after their kiss and Yurio's furious reaction. In the universe of Yuri!!! on ICE, social media no doubt blew up with the news of that kiss, and I can imagine Yurio was the one angrily typing THERE WAS NOTHING BEHIND IT, IT WAS A FRIENDLY KISS, THEY'RE JUST FRIENDS, THEY'RE BARELY FRIENDS, THEY'RE JUST TOLERATING EACH OTHER, SCREW YOU ALL.

Has someone written fanfiction about this? This show really seems to cry out for fic about the characters' ill-advised adventures on social media.

...wow, there are over ten thousand works on AO3 for Yuri!!! on ICE. The last thing I wrote for (Oxenfree) had about sixty, so I'm sort of reeling from this. Ten thousand! How is that even possible? This show only came out four months ago!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Okay, the drunken dance-off is making me want to watch it for that alone. (Although I won't be able to stream anything until July.)

There's a Yurio now? Was the Yuri-labeling system for this show too straightforward for your tastes?

The drunken dance-off was actually conveyed in the form of a series of still images, so it might be possible to experience it without streaming! I've had a brief poke around, but I haven't found somewhere that's posted all the pictures together. They must be collected somewhere, surely. I'll have a more in-depth look when I've watched the final two episodes and no longer have to worry about being spoiled.

Yurio is grumpy teenage Russian Yuri! Some people in the show call him Yurio to distinguish him from Japanese Yuri. Yurio himself is... not terribly happy about this. Sorry, Yurio. You're still my favourite Yuri. I just wanted a method of differentiation that was less confusing than Yuuri versus Yuri.

Ooh, I hope there are pictures!

That makes more sense than the Yuuri thing. It's like a logical canon nickname that you can hear!

I'VE FOUND THE PICTURES AND THEY MAKE ME SO HAPPY. (Linking to the mobile version of the post, as the desktop version has autoplaying background music, but the mobile version should work fine even if you're using a computer.) Some of these pictures are slightly NSFW, I should mention.

In order of joining in with the dancing: black-haired guy is Japanese Yuri, determined blond guy in the blue suit is Russian Yuri, blond guy who's definitely not in a blue suit is a Swiss skater I can't remember the name of (Christoph?), silver-haired guy is Victor.

...are those out of order, or did Yuri do a reverse striptease and put his clothes on while dancing? That seems like it would be more challenging than a regular striptease.

Regardless, these Yuris are entertaining. And the not-actually-Yuris are pretty good, too.

That's the order they were shown in! I'm sad now that we didn't get to see him do a reverse striptease.

I'm pretty sure that trying to put trousers on while drunk and dancing vigorously would result in multiple rounds of falling over.

Yaaay, episode ten! I had to go back and rewatch everything after finishing that one, because WHAT.

Yuri!!! on ICE: where even the plot twists are adorable.

It's so cute, I'll never know how I lived without it.

I'm so glad you opted to keep watching it! I don't tend to watch a whole lot of anime these days, but there is just something endlessly charming about YOI. I think I might almost have been convinced by the opening credits, honestly, but then everything else happened and it just won me over so utterly. It really is such a cute and cheerful show c:!

That being said, I would love to wax lyrical about my favourite character, but I think you need to watch just one more episode before I can really go into that. Is Yurio your favourite? THAT IS A FAIR CHOICE IF SO.

(Also hello! I'm sorry for always popping up after months long absences from commenting. I do not mean to be so sporadic!)

Hello again! It's excellent to see you, although it's been so long that I'd slipped back into thinking of you as your Livejournal username, so there was a moment of '? who's this again?' before I checked your profile and saw your e-mail address. (I also saw the 'I've decided to try and update this journal a lot more regularly' in your entry from March of last year, and I apologise for laughing.)

I would love to hear you wax lyrical about your favourite character! It might be a few days before I can finish the series, but I demand lyricism after that.

Yurio is indeed my favourite. I don't know how he managed to win me over so thoroughly, but I suspect he had my heart from the moment he snapped up that tiger shirt. What a ridiculous kid.

PLEASE DON'T LAUGH AT MY SHAME, I even purchased myself icons as if that would somehow compel to update regularly. "See self," I said, "Now that you've spent actual real money on this you'll HAVE to update!" and then. nothing. zilch. a complete washout.

I would love to promise right now that I will make a better showing henceforth, but I have learned not to trust such wild optimistic statements from myself. That being said, you have inspired me to change my display name so it actually has 'gargant' somewhere in it. That is probably for the best.

ANYWAY THOUGH, I, too, couldn't help but love Yurio after that scene with the tiger shirt. As far as keeping a low profile goes, it's hard to imagine doing a much worse job than that. Bless his heart.

And for my favourite character, I am reluctant to say too much! But I will tell you that my second favourite is Christophe. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I think it's intrinsically tied to my presumption(/headcanon I guess?) that he and Victor had a fling and have been best friends ever since. BUT YEAH, I will return! In a post-episode 11 world. I hope you enjoy the finale!!

Well, if you have things to say about Yuri!!! on ICE, you could make an entry and I'd check it out once I've caught up! But I'm also happy to come back here and nudge you and go 'hey, hey, so who's your favourite character' if you'd prefer to talk about it in comments.

As far as keeping a low profile goes, it's hard to imagine doing a much worse job than that. Bless his heart.

I keep rereading this and smiling fondly. Yurio's just the worst at everything (apart from, you know, skating) and I love it.

I think it's intrinsically tied to my presumption(/headcanon I guess?) that he and Victor had a fling and have been best friends ever since.

This is definitely, definitely the case.

Hello! I have now finished watching Yuri on Ice and I would like to hear about your favourite character. (Is... is it JJ?)

OKAY, so I did say that I would come back and do this thing, so I can only apologise in advance that this is probably more deeply rooted in personal feelings than it truly is in the events of YOI. But yes, yes, my favourite is JJ. And when I talk about why it's going to sound like I'm mostly talking about someone else, but hopefully you will understand...!

So.

I watched YOI with my partner who moved to the UK in 2012. She is... Canadian! So you might already be able to get at least a sense of where this is going. When JJ had his debut she was just so thrilled to actually have any sort of Canadian representation in this show about ice sports. As long as I've known her she's been passionate about winter sports—it makes her very angry that British people generally say the Olympics happen every four years and only sometimes remember that the Winter Games even exist. BUT I DIGRESS.

Her actual first first reaction to JJ was "oh no he's Quebecois" but she really quickly got over that in favour of the fact that he was a confident, happy, unapologetic Canadian delight. And he really is. Even from the beginning we both loved his vivaciousness, his charisma, his showmanship, but also just how ridiculous he is. There is definitely that patriotic aspect that's important for her and therefore subsequently me, but it goes a lot further than that as well.

Since you watched the show after it had finished airing, you wouldn't have seen much of the prevailing mood of the fandom as each episode was released. Prior to episode eleven, JJ was not popular. He did have some fans, of course, but the general mood around him wasn't a very positive one. WHICH IS CRAZY, BECAUSE HAVE YOU SEEN HIM? But I suppose the general consensus was that he was an unpleasant sort of arrogant, and the fact he clashed with Yurio didn't help his case.

I don't want to go quite so far as to say something like "THE ANTI-JJ CLIMATE" because that sounds so ridiculously extreme, but I think the general atmosphere surrounding him in fan space did cause me to double down on how much I liked him. I was just so flabbergasted that such a ridiculously positive self-affirming character could attract such dislike...! Comfortably in advance of episode eleven our house had proudly declared for King JJ.

Embarrassingly enough, I absolutely bawled at JJ's performance in episode eleven. And I do objectively understand that it's mostly because of the things I'd personally put into the show/his character rather than anything else. But there was something so affirming in that scene, and so much that spoke so well to his character—the way his fans rallied behind him absolutely tore me up, but in the best possible way, and it was such a brilliant reminder that he's only nineteen and really just... he just wasn't the antagonist some people seemed to want to take him for. He was just another skater, and another young person, doing the best he could and fighting his own personal fight.

.... and i love him ;_; so much ;_; help ;_;

Theme of King JJ has become a bit of an anthem in our house. My partner now has it on a tank top to wear when she needs it. I guess it probably best reflects what I always most liked about him—it's arrogant and ridiculous if you want to read it that way, but it's also immensely self-affirming and inspiring if you want to take that from it. It's a song for picking yourself up and being the best person you can be. It's a song for knowing that person is someone worth being. That's what JJ is for me.

THIS IS LITERALLY THE MOST EMBARRASSING MESS I'VE EVER WRITTEN, HAHAHA, but I've written far too much too delete it now. I think this emotional drivel is probably the best representation of my convoluted feelings, so. I'm afraid this is what you get. I'm so sorry. ty for listening

NO I WROTE SO MUCH AND I DIDN'T EVEN PROOFREAD IT, I'M SO SORRY

This is an incredibly charming comment! (I've just made the most embarrassing entry I've ever written, if that's any consolation.)

Our household's first reaction to JJ was 'ahahaha, what an arsehole' - we didn't dislike him in a 'I wish this character would go away' sense, but we thought he was being set up as a love-to-hate-him antagonist. And then he fluffed his short programme, and by the end of it all three of us were cooing over him and going 'no, JJ, it's going to be okay!' (I actually may have got a bit tearful.) And then his free skate was fantastic to watch; he was still wobbly at the beginning, but he clawed it back and put in a great performance with everyone supporting him!

It wasn't at all what I expected from the character (he seemed like he was going to be Katsuki's main rival and then put himself out of the running immediately!), but it was so much better. Bless you, JJ. You're the king.

Completely OT, are you getting my DW messages?

I am! I'm very sorry; for some reason I'm much more reliable at replying to comments than I am at replying to private messages (possibly because I look at my journal every day, so I'll go 'oh, yeah, I made that entry and I owe some responses!', whereas I don't have the same constant reminder that my DW inbox exists). I don't know anything about skincare, unfortunately, but that packaging is adorable!

Isn't it?

( http://www.catalogmagazine.com/tonymoly-x-pokemon-skincare-range-3676 if anyone's curious. )

Episode teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnn. I will never tire of getting reactions about this episode. I've watched so many reaction videos on YouTube just to get to see people freak out about episode ten. Obviously with the rings but there's so much other good stuff too! Yurio making his first friend!

Yurio's outraged looks are the best. :D

The drunken dance-off photographs are possibly my favourite part of the entire series, although they have to contend with every one of Yurio's incredible outraged looks. What a delightful show.

Edited 2019-07-09 08:13 (UTC)

They're wonderful. I just get so much joy out of the series every time I watch it. :D

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So Many Butts.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

i'm sorry this is really long and awkward

Re: i'm sorry this is really long and awkward

Re: i'm sorry this is really long and awkward

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject