Tag: SO BEAUTIFUL

But now, looking back on it, one of the reasons we think it was successful was, as you said, the relationship between Yuri and Victor. But to go further than that, the show managed to break down many, many barriers; whether that’s international borders or linguistic barriers or even barriers regarding gender and sexuality. This was really something that the director and her co-creator focused on: Not to be caught up in these barriers of language, race, gender and sexuality. Instead, to just draw human emotion and human relations. That perhaps more than anything, including the portrayal of those values in Victor and Yuri’s relationship, is what fans have been responding to.

Another thing that’s interesting is how most of the characters are in their twenties, either early twenties or mid twenties. For example, Yuri is 24 years old and Victor is 27 years old. Usually, when you have characters who are in their twenties in animation, they are already in position of a “master at their craft.” The idea that somebody in their twenties, like Yuri, could face a lot of setbacks but still work very hard to build up their career again and come back out on top is a theme that isn’t explored too much in current day animation.

On top of that, as talked about before, there are so many different characters from so many different countries and so many different backgrounds that it’s probably one of the biggest reasons why it gained so much popularity in an international community. In that same vein, as you know, many characters in animation tend to look older or younger than they really are. For Yuri!!! On Ice, we placed a lot of emphasis on being realistic in terms of portraying the character’s actual age. If the character was 24 years old then he should look 24 years old, and same goes if they were in their 50s, 60s, or 70s. We think that this idea of having a kind of spectrum of all these different ages and age groups was also very appealing.-