laceblade: Chibi Tomoyo blushing with eyes downcast, hands clutching face (CCS: Tomoyo overcome)
laceblade ([personal profile] laceblade) wrote2017-01-07 11:54 am

[January posting meme] Yuri!!! on Ice

I'd added this to my Crunchyroll queue within a few days of the first episode airing. The Anime News Network reviews were good, and enough of my anime friends liked it that it seemed worthwhile.

Was not expecting it to turn into the next thing that fandom, the monolith, latched on to. I'm usually not in the same places as mainstream fandom, I think. Like, I watch the MCU movies/TV shows casually, but I'm not into fic, don't really care much about the characters, etc. It was WEIRD to watch how many non-anime fandom friends got into this show! Weird in a fun way, mostly. I loved reading people's reactions on twitter, the fanart that still comes up on twitter, etc. I'm now following a number of actual ice skaters thanks to guidance from [twitter.com profile] dimensionwitch.
My favorite on this show was Plisetsky, hands-down.

Part of me feels cynical that it's a show focused almost entirely on dudes that swept main fandom, and not something like, Yuri Kuma Arashi. I understand why people like it - I like it, too! - it's just that usually I'm poking around in anime and manga because I can find stories that actually focus on women, so it's disappointing that ~the show that transcended media lines~ was so dude-heavy.

I've added Fujioka's HISTORYMAKER to my iPod, and it's now in my regular rotation. I loved both the OP and ED songs, and sequences, from this show. They were so fun.
The key animation throughout the series, though, was sometimes painful to watch. It'll be interesting to see whether the bluray releases are as big of a step up from what initially aired as Sailor Moon Crystal's were.

Anyway, I am looking forward to season 2 airing, and seeing everyone's reactions along with it.
inkstone: Lambdadelta from Umineko (absolute certainty)

[personal profile] inkstone 2017-01-07 06:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah! It was so surprising to see so many non-anime people latch on to this & a little bewildering. I am sad that it is a dude-heavy show that does so but not especially shocked.
erinptah: (Default)

[personal profile] erinptah 2017-01-07 06:55 pm (UTC)(link)
If by "main fandom" you mean the fandom that's usually focused on series with slashable pairs/groups of dudes...MCU, Inception, Teen Wolf, Supernatural...then yeah, YoI is the kind of anime that's gonna sweep it. Didn't that happen with Prince of Tennis back in the day?

The canon gay definitely helped. And I think it also got a boost from having characters that were explicitly from so many different countries, so people got to see their ethnicities and heritage celebrated in a way that a lot of shows don't go into. Steven Universe is big for similar reasons. (Although probably not with MCU-type fans? That's an impression, not a scientific survey. I know it's popular with mahou-shoujo fans.)

The animation just made me really sad that Crystal couldn't have been this good. You watch the skating routine sequences, with all these lovingly animated muscle movements, even the motion of the hair, chests heaving as they try to catch their breaths afterward...and compare that to Crystal's "let's crop the frame as awkwardly as possible so simple actions happen offscreen and we don't have to draw them" and "all you get for this action moment is the camera panning across a dramatically-posed still"...it's kinda soul-crushing.
erinptah: (Default)

[personal profile] erinptah 2017-01-08 12:41 am (UTC)(link)
Migratory Slash Fandom, perhaps? Which usually overlaps with Western media fandom, but that includes plenty of series that have significant female casts -- Harry Potter, Glee, Doctor Who, even Twilight.

I dropped Crystal before the end of s1, tried to pick it back up at the start of s3 because the henshin sequences looked so much better, but ended up dropping it again. They didn't even put in the effort to animate nice things for the opening credits! (Another area where YoI isn't just competent, but knocks it out of the park.)
jesse_the_k: Swim fins which are also high heels. (shoes are swimmer deluxe)

[personal profile] jesse_the_k 2017-01-07 10:14 pm (UTC)(link)
"Monolith fandom" has been added to my vocabulary, thank you.

There's a remarkable skater-AU novel in SGA. And that's all I know on the subject. /o\
jesse_the_k: Text: "backbutton > wank / true story" with left arrow button (Back better than wank)

[personal profile] jesse_the_k 2017-01-07 10:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Although naraht helpfully linked to scores of stories from Yuletide

http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/634709.html

where I saw your perfect storm: YoI set to Hamilton music!

http://lola.dreamwidth.org/108151.html

yes, the animation is beautiful. Maybe I do need a new fandom.
Edited 2017-01-07 22:24 (UTC)
starlady: Raven on a MacBook (Default)

[personal profile] starlady 2017-01-08 06:06 am (UTC)(link)
You're totally right about your cynicism, but I also think the timing was key to it blowing up--I mainlined it in Japan before episode 8 aired, and it really did provide a much-needed reminder, at the end of November 2016, that not absolutely everything is terrible, at least not yet.
liseuse: (Default)

[personal profile] liseuse 2017-01-08 04:55 pm (UTC)(link)
I think some of it becoming popular in mainstream fandom can be linked to Hockey fandom getting hold of it - particularly the bits of Hockey fandom that are also in Check, Please! fandom. Check, Please has a (delightful) ex-figure skater character and I definitely noticed the hockey fandom part of my tumblr/twitter getting excited about Yuri on Ice.

I watched it but I didn't get staggeringly excited in the way that some of my friends did. I liked it, but ... I think I'd rather just watch actual ice skating. Partly I think it's because I am so unaccustomed to the media-norms of anime that I found it hard to latch on to. And partly it's that I just didn't click with it. I liked it! It was sweet! I'll probably watch season 2. I just have no fannish enthusiasm about it.
mako_lies: Lebreau (Default)

[personal profile] mako_lies 2017-01-12 09:49 am (UTC)(link)
You've summed up a lot of my thoughts about it. While I'm super into it, the fact that it's so dude-centric has me :/ (plus coupled with, well, lets just say some of the bothersome fandom trends [if the word sin could die in a fire, that'd be great]). But overall, it probably was one of the shows that's made me the happiest in a while, even if it wasn't perfect.