Much like Welcome to Nightvale, I feel like a lot of people have forgotten just how big and influential Yuri on Ice was. It fully broke into the mainstream. It was everywhere. Evgenia Medvedeva, the top female figure skater in 2016 and 2017, had YOI plushies thrown to her on the ice and wore a Victuuri tshirt to an interview. Japanese pair skaters Miu Suzaki and Ryuichi Kihara skated to the YOI theme at the fucking Pyeongchang 2018 Olympics. The Olympics. Canadian ice dancer Joseph Johnson did the ‘J.J. Style’ hand symbol in the kiss and cry. Johnny Weir made me cry by talking about how he wished the homophobic world of figure skating he experienced could have been more like the kinder world of Yuri on Ice.
There were cameos and references to it everywhere. Everyone was talking about it. People who had never watched anime were watching it. It was so big it crashed Crunchyroll and Tumblr. Twice. And all that for what was at its core, a queer love story that helped pave the way for more queer stories to come.
It aired in Japan in a midnight/1 am timeslot. It was a 12 episode limited series. And it was still absolutely huge in Japan two, three, four years later.
Yūri's hometown of Hasetsu was modelled on the real town of Karatsu in Saga Prefecture. I visited in 2019, and there was Yuri on Ice stuff ALL OVER the town. Everyone knew about it. There were standees in Karastsu-jō. The onsen that Yū-topia was modelled on was bursting with memoriabilia.
Mizuno, a Japanese sportswear brand that sponsors some of the country's top skaters, made replicas of Yūri's training gear. All of their flagship stores put out displays for Yūri's canon birthday in November—even most recently in 2022.
I was fortunate enough to go to Yūri on Concert in 2018. Coincidentally, I went to the show that was livestreamed. Y'know, the one where they announced Adolenscent on Ice. The middle-aged lady sitting next to me had been to the show three times.
Over the winter of 2018/2019, the entire series was screened at major cinemas over a three-week period in January. Each screening I went to was packed.
I also went to the Yūri on Ice exhibition that was hosted by LOFT Umeda (and in other places around the country). They had full-life replicas of the costumes. Replicas of the medals. A gallery of animation cels and handdrawn frames. Photo ops. A pop-up shop where I spent so much they gave me a copy of all three free-with-purchase posters.
One of my students once saw the charm on my phone, and correctly identified it as Yūri Katsuki, even though she had never watched the show, even though it was the most generic looking black-haired anime boy charm ever (the outfit was his one from the ED theme, i.e., plain black sportswear. He didn't even have his glasses).
Japan is not a country that, politically, is very welcoming or inclusive of queer people. I was nervous to live there, because I felt like I would have to put my queer identity on hold, that I would have to mute myself. But I met amazing queer people in Japan whom I still think of as family. And the whole-hearted embrace of Yūri on Ice, of an unashamedly queer love story based around one of the most popular sports in the country, made me feel like my heart was overflowing.
It aired on a middle-of-the-night timeslot. And everyone knew about it. In Japan.
My queer experience in Japan was astonishing, and not entirely predicated on Yūri on Ice. But it would be a bald-faced lie to say that Yūri on Ice wasn't something that significantly contributed to my life there in an entirely positive way.
