taitetsu:

アニメ「ユーリ!!! on ICE」

I’m going through my early blogging days and…this was the first Yuri on Ice thing I ever reblogged… I did not even know the complete name cause I can’t read Japanese at all!! I tagged it with “soon”, “patinage artistique” and “so impatient”… I’m not even sure I knew how to say figure skating in English at that point (I always watched it on the French TV)… 

And wow, how far we’ve gone!! I would have NEVER expected that, NEVER! I was just impatient because I love sport anime and figure skating and the animation looked gorgeous.

For the first four weeks I did not even register it was out, and then I binged on it…and had to wait for all the other episodes. That’s how I spent my November and December months, always eagerly waiting on Thursday (the day I watched it), literally bouncing and running out of uni to go scream at my screen for a few hours. Yes, hours, because my Internet was hell back then and one episode took way too much time to lead. Also hours because I would scream and laugh and cry and take screenshots and tire all my patient friends out… 

The last months of the year are always very complicated for me, because my depression gets really bad when the days grow shorter. For 2016 at least, this hardship was made sweeter thanks to this amazing show. It made me hang on week after week and gave me feelings, real feelings, not just tiredness, sadness, emptiness… I would fall in bed giggling to myself, clutching my heart in happiness, and boy did I cry during episode 7… 

So yes, I get what people mean when they say the show has issues, the creators are not perfect, some parts of the fandom are vile… But just like Free!, YOI is another anime which helped brighten many dark days Just like Free!, the heartfelt music/songs and passionate characters made me have another look on my own life. If Rei helped me understand the beauty in everything and the value of trying, doing, even if you’re bad at what your heart wants, Yuuri proved me, again, that despite shortcomings and anxiety there may be a path in life for me. 

These things will never go to waste, even if Free! is basically fanservice and YOI may well be queer-baiting, I found so many precious things in them that to me, they’ll remain Priceless.