HAVE YOU SEEN WHERE KUBO-SENSEI HAS BEEN GOING LATELY?
SWITZERLAND
And there’s more!
SHE’S ALSO BEEN TO CZECH REPUBLIC
I believe she is now heading to Russia.
But GUYS. DO YOU KNOW WHAT KUBO TRAVELING AROUND EUROPE MEANS?
RESEARCH FOR SEASON 2 OF YURI ON ICE.
Before the first season, Kubo and Yamamoto traveled to Beijing, Barcelona and Moscow. They clearly weren’t just trips for fun.
Nothing has been officially announced in terms of a second season yet, but guys, it’s happening. Kubo wouldn’t be spending so much money just to go sightseeing.
So yeah, I think it’s fair to say that with this, season 2 of Yuri on Ice is as good as confirmed.
You can open those Champagne bottles. Because it’s happening, guys.
Now, for the highlights! (Aka “the meta that is now canonically confirmed”)
(ep 7) Yuuri
pushes the whorl of hair on the top of Victor’s head
in order to loosen up the atmosphere.
He came up with an idea to ease the tension and just acted it out, then
looking at Victor’s surprised face made him even more relaxed when he
started the FS.
(ep 8) Victor doesn’t want to compete against Yuuri as a fellow athlete [in regards to a question asked by one of the news reporters in the hotel]
(ep 8)
“By the way, I think that if Phichit-kun is the sun of Southeast Asia,
Emil is the sun of Europe. And JJ is just on a whole different dimension
than the sun.” [Bless this woman lol]
(ep 8) Yuuri skates better when he’s in an unfamiliar setting and tends to feel pressured when there are people cheering on him
(ep 8) The reason why Yurio didn’t skate his SP perfectly was not because his grandpa wasn’t there, but rather that Yurio’s development wasn’t fully complete yet [he was still discovering his agape, perhaps?]
(ep 8)
“Treating Yurio as a lady is JJ’s idea of a joke. He doesn’t mean to be offensive. Maybe he thought that Yurio would relax.”
(ep 9) Yuuri
has been able to work hard so far because he wants to win a gold medal and is confident that he is good enough to succeed. Even though Yuuri might look weak, he actually has been fighting the whole time.
(ep 9) The person Yurio most wanted to eat a katsudon pirozhki is Yuuri.
(ep 9) Victor hadn’t yet decided how long he would be Yuuri’s coach but hearing his feelings made him happy and made him realize that Yuuri also wanted to stay with him “until the end” (which Victor gladly wanted to do).
(ep 10) Yuuri bought both rings.
(ep 10) Victor is worried about people thinking that he has become stagnant and that he is dead as a competitor (or will become like that eventually).
(ep 10) In the scene by the beach, Victor was starting to seriously consider his future.
(ep 11) “Victor
used to think that new surprises and impressive feats is something that
he needed to create himself, however after becoming Yuuri’s coach his
world broadened, he realized that it’s not necessarily that way and this
changed him.”
(ep 11) “The reason Yurio could pull off his best performance is that many
elements like his experience and the environment surrounding him all
blended together perfectly right at this time. […] Every single second of a
young and strong athlete’s performance is the result of their efforts. I wanted to show this with Yurio’s SP.
”
(ep 11)
Victor and Chris have been in the Olympics and in ice shows together until now.
(ep 11) “Chris is probably the one that was closer to Victor in his career, and I think that Victor does genuinely like Chris’ skating. […]
I believe they are good comrades.”
(ep 11) “JJ calls himself the “king”, but if you think about it as long as Victor
was around he could only really become the king in the World Junior
Championships or the Four Continents Champsionships… I realized that JJ
is only saying that to motivate himself and in fact he is not a real
king, he is just behaving like he is because it’s his goal, and fans are
cheering on him for that… and in a way that moved me.”
(ep 12) “The part that I like the most in this episode is Yuuri’s monologue
before he skates: ‘My name is Yuuri Katsuki. I’m just an ordinary figure
skater, 24 years old.’ This is the same line he said in episode 1, so
it’s like he is going back to his origin, and I think it’s the moment
where he finally accepts himself. I cried writing the storyboard.”
(ep 12) Victor didn’t hug Yurio because he was begging for help to stop Yuuri from retiring or because he was asking for something. He only wanted Yurio to skate his best and wanted to show his support.
(ep 12)
“The reason Yurio cries after finishing is also not something logical. But I
think it was probably because he could skate at its best, and because
of the sense of fulfillment caused by being able to skate that well
despite a few mistakes. I’m sure he himself didn’t really understand his
own feelings at that time.”
(ep 12) Victor and Yuuri tried doing lifts while fooling around during practice and ended up incorporating them in the “Hanarezu ni soba ni ite” performance. [My headcanon became canon, bless.]
(ep 12)
“The selfish decision ultimately taken by the selfish Yuuri Katsuki was
to continue competitive skating. I think there were many reasons that
led to this conclusion. Not only what Victor gave him, but Yurio’s
performance in the FS also managed to pull Yuuri back to the ice, and
maybe he was influenced by the other athletes’ performances too.
However, Yurio definitely wanted to see more of Yuuri’s skating, and
Victor wanted as well. I guess Yuuri might be finally realizing how much
things have changed from one year ago, when he almost decided to quit,
and how now he’s on a completely different path.”
This got a bit long but I think it was quite a telling interview, so I encourage you guys to check it out in full (link at the top of the post). It definitely settles some discussions people had on some scenes, and is otherwise a good source of Kubo’s thoughts and intentions for particular aspects of the show. As always, big thanks to @toraonice!
This entire interview shed light on a lot of things and but one thing in particular that I want everyone to pay attention to is this part:
“The reason Yurio could pull off his best performance is that many elements like his experience and the environment surrounding him all blended together perfectly right at this time. […] Every single second of a young and strong athlete’s performance is the result of their efforts. I wanted to show this with Yurio’s SP. ” “Victor didn’t hug Yurio because he was begging for help to stop Yuuri from retiring or because he was asking for something. He only wanted Yurio to skate his best and wanted to show his support.”
Read that. Read it again. I want everyone to take this in. Yurio did not skate as well as he did or win because he wanted to stop Yuuri from retiring. Viktor did not ask him for help to prevent Yuuri from retiring. So many posts are going around implying basically that the only reason it’s ok that Yurio won gold and not Yuuri was because he did it for Yuuri and that’s just. not. true. I made a post about this at the time but I wanted to bring it up again now that Kubo actually confirmed it with words. Yurio won for himself, not for Yuuri or Viktor or anyone else for that matter. Yurio skated as well as he did and won because of his experiences and support and the effort he put into his performance. YURIO WON BECAUSE HE DESERVED TO WIN.
Ah, well, no, that’s not quite correct, unfortunately. As for Yurio’s FS - the one in ep 12 - Kubo had this to say:
“I believe Yurio thought “no way you can call it quits now!”. And I agree
with him. I think what he had in mind while he was performing his
program was something like “I know that whether to retire or not is
something the person concerned should decide, but I’ll still say my
opinion”.”
So in a way, he was indeed, at least partly, skating for Yuuri.
And yeahhhh I’m not into the “he deserved to win” argument since we could say that about literally every skater in the Grand Prix Final - no one was there ‘by accident’.
I did those
a few weeks ago (wow, weeks) and actually wanted to paint it, but… well, here I
am
Are based
on the memes in here, but couldn’t find the source at the moment (like,
seriously, I searched for almost half hour, if someone remember this post I’ll
be so much glad if you can share :) )
SO KUBO-SENSEI JUST CONFIRMED IN AN INTERVIEW THAT VIKTOR AND YUURI ARE SOULMATES
AND OBVIOUSLY, just like the rest of the fandom i was sCREAMING but then i had a flashback to my philosophy classes and i remembered this:
according to plato, the origin of soulmates is that humans used to have four arms and four legs and a head with two faces. but that annoyed zeus, who determined they should be split in half so they wouldn’t be as powerful and consequentially there would be more people to praise the gods and all that jazz, and it was said that when the two separated humans find each other there would be a deep understanding of one another and they would feel unified, and then they would be truly happy.
AND THEN I THOUGHT “BUT WAIT, THIS SOUNDS FAMILIAR”
THE CONCLUSION OF STAMMI VICINO IS ABOUT FINDING YOUR SOULMATE
