the gayest skating anime (Yuri!!! On ICE)

I know. Li just started collecting the Funko Marvel Pops and now I have half the Avengers team sitting in the bedroom judging me silently along with Darth Vader and a Stormtrooper, and now YOI are doing figures, plus the Overwatch nendoroid of Tracer is really fuckin' cute. I just swapped out books for another collecting obsession.

 

What's a nedroid

 

Nendoroid makes really cute chibi-style figures of anime and game characters. I think they're made of vinyl?

 

The Yuuri one in specific looks like this:



as you can see, it is adorable as fuck, and fandom collectively lost their shit over it when it was first announced

 

Oh my god, it is gorgeous.

 

An assortment of Y!!!oI routines by ballet/modern dancers!

Spoiler: cut for long

 

jj is my favourite. make a jj nendoroid

 

>8( Why. Everyone's entitled to their opinion but why.

 

Why does the Yuuri nemdroid have to be so cutteeee. I can't afford one right now :(

 

WORSE, THERE IS NOW A VICTOR ONE:



I am never going to have money again at this rate

 

Oh nooooo, their tiny hands and their cute little faces...

 

Okay yeah whatever I didn't need groceries or the savings for a new laptop I need. These nendroids will be company on the long hungry nights spent worrying about homework I can't do.

 

haha, a lot of reasons! I have a few.... I am.... Passionate about JJ, I unambiguously love him.

hm, so one I'm Canadian and personally I very rarely see someone from my country and the very rare instances I do see someone they're usually very milquetoast. JJ is really refreshing! It was nice to see the flagwaving and his pride and all his... this very unusual Canadian persona stepping up.

Two - I kind of like unapologetically ambitious characters in sports anime. I think they hold a pretty realistic mindset that kinda gets villainized a bit? My favourite in Haikyuu was Oikawa so, shrug.

Three, I feel the fandom is extraordinarily harsh on JJ, especially since they are very light on other characters. JJ will have a joke fall flat, be that awkward person on the edge of the group who's a bit arrogant and full of himself but ultimately usually just trying to tease people lightly or be friendly in a way some people find annoying? All creator commentary points to JJ being boastful but not malicious. On the other hand we have characters like Yuri... who calls Yuuri a fat pig repeatedly, is p vicious to all the women in his life, calls JJ's fiancee an ugly hag repeatedly, is outwardly really violent and yet he is unambiguously a sweet baby to fans. I find the contrast ironic!

Eh, I feel JJ is treated pretty unfairly by fandom in general tbqh. But it's okay, I love him. He got bronze and I'm happy for him.

 

Tbh I'm not a big fan of Yurio either especially cause the misogyny but I like that he kinda gets run around by Victor. And everyone else. They don't take his shit.

 

I kind of had meta thoughts a while back about JJ being really anxious and socially awkward and covering it with this totally OTT persona which falls really flat in person, and I do kind of love him just a little because being on the outskirts of a social group and having your efforts to fit in rebuffed resonates deeply, even though it's kind of treated as a joke in the show. I think if JJ stopped trying so hard the core group would be more receptive? But he's built his reputation and fanbase on the confident showman front he's built for himself and I think that's what ends up hampering him so hard at the GPF. He's just so desperate for validation.

Yurio gets a lot more slack because he's young and projecting a tough exterior, while being small and cute and delicate. I don't think it's coincidence that Yuri's Angels wear cat ears and such, he's like a kitten puffing itself up and hissing at its own reflection. It would be really cool if they acknowledged that if he grows up being treated like that it will probably totally fuck him up - I remember being very small and angry and even more pissed off that the the world would not take my anger seriously. And I'm a complete hypocrite because I think Yurio's current attitude is hilarious. But it's not healthy. (See also above - desperate for validation.)

 

I don't particularly like JJ, but I did really like what they did with his character in Episode 11. That character archetype in sports anime doesn't usually end up cracking that hard under the pressure, and it made his character a lot more relatable and interesting, I thought. And I agree fandom is unnecessarily mean to him at times -- he's an arrogant asshole but like you say, he's not malicious toward the other characters or anything, so he's really not that bad. (Though I don't think he should've won bronze, but BAH.)

Meanwhile I am ridiculously fond of Yuri because tiny shouty tsundere boys are very much a character kink of mine, even when they are raging assholes. I would imagine the people in fandom who treat him like a precious cinnamon roll have something similar going on, though they do sometimes go overboard with it.

fake edit: also I agree with everything @hellfirelover said for both, including thinking Yuri's attitude is hilarious but bad for him.

 

@hellfirelover

I kind of had similar thoughts, honestly... I like your thoughts on JJ.

Ngl, JJ's misses with his jokes just remind me of my painful baby autistic years when the group ostracizes him, so I actually feel for the dude in a kind of personal respect as well. He genuinely seems to love and reciprocate affection to the people who support him, so his arrogance and teasing don't come off as very negative qualities to me. Some of them just seem to be attempts to connect that get a bit misread (I recall one of the creators even commented that this was basically the canon read of some of his intentions).

I feel for the desperation for validation.

Also I know Yurio's 15 but JJ's younger than most of the main cast at 19, so I feel people could be a bit nicer. Both of them seem comparatively young to me.

Yurio ultimately is a lot younger than everyone, so I understand his behaviour! and I sort of understand that as a point of people being extra nice... I guess as someone who as a Bad Kid it's also annoying that a lot of characters who are younger have their bad traits erased so they become 'generic kids' in fanworks in general. UT has that issue as well. My post wasn't to villainize Yurio, I hope it doesn't come off that way... I don't think his current situation is good for him. Although Victor and Yuuri seem to call him out, I feel a lot of people just shrug and go with it. The only person he seems to really respect or be gentle with is his grandpa, and then later on Otabek. I just think negative qualities of certain characters get emphasized while other characters get treated very harshly. Honestly I'm sympathetic enough to JJ that the in fandom treatment he gets is baffling to me, (though a lot of it seems to come from Yurio fans?). It's the hypocrisy of it, I guess

 

That's definitely how I read him. Sort of clueless and I think he probably thinks he's bffs with everyone and doesn't really realize how off-putting his attitude is. I think if someone actually got around to telling him that the main group of skaters don't actually like him he'd be confused and hurt, and after working through that, get better.

People totally seem to forget that JJ is just 19. That being said, there's a huge difference between 15 and 19. A lot of development happens them. At least from a US standpoint, 15 is early high school and 19 is college or entering the workforce. And once you hit that stage of your life, high schoolers do seem kinda like tiny babies.
ETA: I hope this doesn't come across as being negative towards JJ. He is my trash child and I love him.

I also find Yurio hilarious because he reminds me of myself and my friends at 15--angry at everyone, thinking we were totally adults, and rather cruel. I think also everyone's reaction to Yurio is also why I like him. As long as he isn't catching them off guard (like Yuri at the very beginning of the show), they treat him like a 15 year old. His bluster doesn't faze them one bit and occasionally someone steps it to remind him that he is really a tiny baby child. Most people grow out of being 15 pretty quickly, so I'm not particularly worried about him.

(On a mostly unrelated note, we have taken to calling our cat "Kitty Plisetsky" because he is basically Yurio in cat form.)

 

I really like what they did with JJ's character because I didn't see it coming AT ALL, and they could very easily have just had him stay as that arrogant type character without adding much more depth, but having him choke at the GPF gave him a whole lot more depth than I was expecting, and I liked that they went out of their way to humanize him that way. I kind of want him to sit down and have a talk with Yuuri; for all that they're very different people, their shared anxiety issues could give them a lot to talk about.

There is some definite hypocrisy going on with Yuri fans and JJ haters in this fandom, I won't argue with that. I've seen Yuri treated as both The Best Character Ever who can do no wrong and The Worst Character Ever who does EVERYTHING wrong, but the latter is mostly on FFA where they're rather irritatingly cynical anyway. On a personal level, I like him a lot, and I'm willing to give him a loooot of slack, because he's quite young and also because it's implied he hasn't had the nicest home life (where the hell are his parents?), so he probably has a lot to be angry about. I'm assuming he'll chill out and relax a bit in a few years, and if he doesn't, someone needs to talk to him about his attitude.

...then again, I'm also willing to afford JJ the same slack, because I remember what being 19 was like and it kind of sucked a lot, and he's got a whole lot of pressure on his shoulders, so /shrug

 

The thing that gets me about Yurioh is that he's in pain. Yes, his behavior isn't okay, he is misogynistoc and should be called on it. But when Otabek described him as having 'the eyes of a soldier' that broke my heart.

Yuri grew up training intensively. He wasn't able to be around his family. He was a child surrounded by other children who had to toughen their bodies while their peers were playing videogames and having sleepovers. He may have been like Otabek and been living away from his family. And maybe in some ways that was easier - they might have inadvertently put pressure on him. He is and has been the family breadwinner for a long time.

I can't imagine what it's like to he a child and to know that you absolutely CANNOT deviate from the path in front of you. People are counting on you. Persevere. You're injured but it's fine. You can't stop. Persevere.

I think some of the reason that Yurio is so abrasive is that he never learned how to make friends. He was always working hard, not focused on socializing.

And I don't think Yuri was indifferent to all this instead of a possible normal childhood. Otabek tells him that he felt they have something in common. He also talks about how hard it was for him being in Russia. When he describes coming home, he says he 'finally' made it back to Almaty. 'Finally' implies that he wanted to go home all along. And I think that's what he saw in Yuri too. That they were both homesick but neither one of them was allowed to show weakness.

So yes Yurio's a brat and he needs smacked upside the head but he also needs to learn how to accept love and warmth from others. I think Otabek is a step in the right direction, but it'll still be hard for him to open up to others. So while the smack upside the head is due, just one will suffice, because that's not how you show someone you want them to open up to you.

I have A Lot of Feelings about Yuri Plisetsky but *shrug*