Yuri on Ice - Anime Review

Let's look back at 2016. Besides Re: Zero, there's one more anime that people just won't stop talking about on the internet. Yes, you guessed that right! It's "Yuri!! on Ice". Its misleading title fool every anime fan out there. Everybody thought that "Oh my god, girls on girls doing it on ice??", but apparently, it was Yaoi on ice! #originaljoke 

It's a phenomenal anime of 2016! Even the real figure skating athlete watched this anime too! Personally, I'm not into sports anime, I'll watch sports anime if it's as good as Slam Dunk or Ping Pong The Animation. So I was afraid that I wouldn't enjoy this anime, since I thought it was a sports fujobait anime just like "Free!" couple years ago. But man, I was wrong. 

So today I'm going to talk about Yuri on Ice! How was the anime? Let's just jump into the review!

Story

Yuri Katsuki is a figure skating athlete from Japan, he went back to Japan after 5 years of international competition. He ranked at the last place on his previous international tournament. He feels like a failure when he got back home. And then he remembers why did he become a figure skater at the first place. He saw Viktor Nikiforov's performance back then when he was a kid. A globally well known figure skating genius. One day, he tries to copy a figure skating program by Viktor, and then someone records it and upload it into the internet. And people are amazed by Yuri's ice skating performance. Every figure skater in the world also amazed by him. And then Viktor saw Yuri's performance. 

Later on, Viktor decides to come to Japan and train Yuri Katsuki so he can win the international figure skating competition. Will Yuri be able to win that competition?

My thoughts on the series

1. I am quite skeptical about this series at first, but surprisingly, I'm enjoying the hell out of it! Story wise, there's nothing ground breaking or new. But what makes me entertained with this series is seeing how someone develop from zero to hero. It has genuinely fun and hilarious scenes! 
2. This anime is obviously a sports anime with obvious shounen ai element in it. For me (as a normal hetero man ^_^;), it's still a good show if you ignored the shounen ai elements in it. and fortunately, it's not shown often. For you fujoshi out there, you will be pleased with this anime. If you are a normal hetero man and wondering "how gay it is?" it's twice as gay as Kaworu Nagisa and Shinji Ikari on Neon Genesis Evangelion. ^__^;
3. Speaking of shounen ai, the fanservice (or manservice should I say, right, ladies? ^_^;) in this anime is not the main dish of this series. I must say the this show has like 10% of fanservice in the whole 12 episodes. So it's not distracting at all. Because mainly the anime shows about the figure skating program. 
4. And now we're talking about the main dish! The ice skating animation! My god, it's so stunningly beautiful! It's so detail and smooth, It really is describing how graceful and elegant they are when performing the figure skate program. Even though, later on the quality suffers. But that is understandable since animating figure skating is hard. And in 1 episode they almost have 5-6 figure skating program to be animated! I also noticed that there are a lot of repeated and also recycled background and key animations (that includes the figure skating program but that is to be expected since they are performing the same program over and over again). But again, that's still acceptable. Because they have to finish the series weekly. Just imagine how hard would it be for the animator to keep up with that pace. And hopefully that "quarity" would be fixed later on in BD. I must give props to Mappa studio! Great job!
5. Personally, I didn't know anything about how figure skating competition works, and this anime did a great job of explaining the rule and how scoring system works. I appreciate that. 
6. I think this series should have been at least 22/24 episodes long for a better pacing. Because the formula is almost similar to Hajime no Ippo anime, (training, build up to the competition, competition, after match, and then train again and rinse and repeat). But the main difference is Hajime no Ippo is a long running series compared to Yuri on Ice. The story feels a little bit too rushed and too condensed. And in the later episodes, somewhat it's a bit underwhelming even though the previous episodes have a great build up to it. 
7. Okay let's talk about the characters! The characters are enjoyable to watch and feels like a real human that we can totally relate to. I really like how relatable Yuri Katsuki is when he tries to get back up from his failure. He feels depressed, broken, and sad. But when he overcomes it, it's really paying off! But, I prefer Yuri Plisetsky character arc. He's an ambitious person and he thinks that he is the best of all figure skater. But later on he learns that there's someone better out there in the world and he grows even better! He is a rival character to Yuri Katsuki and they are the exact opposite. Yuri Plisetsky's character arc somehow reminds me of Bakugo's character arc from My Hero Academia, which I personally liked too
8. Another thing that I really enjoyed from this anime series is the soundtrack. I think this anime has the best soundtrack in 2016. I really love every BGM in this anime especially the figure skating program songs. "Yuri on Ice" is my favorite track of all. But all of them are really good! Even if you are not into anime, I think you should at least listen to this soundtrack. 

This anime is great but it has its issues (besides the plot that I mentioned in point 6) for example, some of the characters are underdeveloped. They suddenly appears but we don't know anything about them. So it's hard to root for them. Unlike Ping Pong The Animation that really excels on their characters development. Every character have their own clear motivation to win that ping pong match. While in Yuri on Ice, we barely see all of their motivations. But JJ have a great characterization even though he only have like 2-3 episodes of screentime But they didn't do that to Otabek who shares the same screentime as JJ. And this may sounds like a bias, but normally I'd hate character like JJ since he is a narcissistic and obnoxious bastard, but since he is voiced by Mamoru Miyano, his character just works and epic! XD

Another thing that really bothers me is, at the first episode there's Yuuko, Yuri's childhood friend, and it's heavily hinted/implied that Yuri has some romantic feelings for her. I know it's just me being nitpicky, but her character was just vanished after Yuri went back for international championship. I think that could have been explored better.

So here comes the final verdict, should you watch Yuri on Ice? If you are a sports anime fan, you should watch it! And if you are a fan of "Animation" in general, you should totally watch it, you will see a beautifully animated skating scenes. It's a great anime but it has its flaws. Despite of the obvious shounen ai theme in this anime, this anime is really entertaining to watch. If you are "I don't want to watch this anime because it's gay" kind of person, well. you are missing out one of the great anime that comes out on 2016. And personally speaking, I enjoyed watching this series more than Re: Zero. 

Okay guys, so those are my thoughts on Yuri on Ice, I hope you will find this review useful. This is Reikichi, signing out! XD