{"id":322,"date":"2016-10-13T01:46:19","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T01:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/?p=322"},"modified":"2016-10-13T13:20:36","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T13:20:36","slug":"yuri-on-ice-episode-2-two-yuris-drama-at-yu-topia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/13\/yuri-on-ice-episode-2-two-yuris-drama-at-yu-topia\/","title":{"rendered":"Yuri!!! On ICE – Episode 2 – \u201cTwo Yuris?! Drama at Yu-topia\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

To anyone who remembers The Soup<\/i>, the only program on the E! Network ever worth watching, you might remember a segment they had called \u201cGay Shows,\u201d where a clip with some homosexual subtext would be shown, and they would often be at the expense of Gold Rush: Alaska<\/i>. Lots of talk about drilling and glory holes, if you catch my drift. But there\u2019s a fine line between subtle double-entendres and full-on \u201cthis is very, very gay, and I like it.\u201d And thankfully for me, and many others, Yuri!!! on ICE<\/i> is a case of the latter.<\/p>\n

\""Something
“Something something Russian something.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Continuing from last week, Viktor\u2019s sound asleep at the Yu-topia hot spring inn, but news of his departure from Russia has seemed to make headlines, with many citing that video of Yuri skating his routine to be why he\u2019s flown out to be his coach, complete with luggage and boxes of furnishings for his new residency. Back in Russia, though, the younger and more short-fused Yuri isn\u2019t too happy over this bit of news. With any coaching regimen, there\u2019s always a first step, and for Viktor, his first step for Yuri is to cut that extra weight, which means one dire cutback: no more pork cutlet bowls. GASP! Yuri and Viktor start setting up the new room, when Viktor\u2026 well, I\u2019ll just say that he gets pretty close to Yuri, asking him quite a few \u201ctrust-building\u201d questions. Sure<\/i>, and it\u2019s nothing more than just that. Yuri ends up being just a little bit flustered over these new living arrangements, but in his own words, he says to himself, \u201cMy heart\u2019s pounding because of how happy I am.\u201d Again, not saying nothing, but yes. From there, things shift over to, of all places, a ballet school. And more specifically, Yuri\u2019s ballet school, with his instructor, Minako, telling him to take advantage of Viktor offering to coach him back to success. There was a pretty cute moment with Yuri and Viktor at the nearby Hasetsu Castle, which Yuri calls a home for ninjas, so naturally, this leads to a photo-op for Viktor on the ol\u2019 Instagram, with \u201c#ninja\u201d under the picture. And, of course, since it was geo-tagged, a LOT of media folks and general fans find out where he went off to. A week passes by, and it seems the Russian Yuri is on the hunt for Viktor, keeping a close track of his whereabouts and geo-tagged Instagram posts.<\/p>\n

\"screen-shot-2016-10-12-at-8-55-31-pm\"<\/p>\n

Backstory time, everybody! Back when Yuri (the Russian Yuri) was a younger child, he would often get scolded by his and Viktor\u2019s coach, Yakov, for going too far with routines – you know, 4 spins instead of 3 or 2. And during this time, a promise was made – if Yuri can win the Junior Worlds without any quad jumps, then Viktor will choreograph a program just for him. Back in the present day, though, Yuri (the Russian Yuri) finds his way to the skating rink, where Yuri (the Japanese Yuri) bolts to, and this leads to the meeting of the Yuris\u2026 which is mostly made up of the Russian Yuri trying to punk out the Japanese Yuri. I sense some jealousy, here. And with both Yuris watching Viktor run a routine on the ice, the Russian Yuri\u2019s motivation comes to the surface: he wants Viktor\u2019s help for his seniors debut at the next Grand Prix Final. But with two Yuris wanting similar end goals, what is Viktor to do? A compromise, choreographing a program for the both of them. And it\u2019s gonna be made into quite the grand show at Ice Castle Hoshido, to see who can wow the audience more. And unfortunately for Yuri, \u201cYurio\u201d (now coined) is staying with him and Viktor. Strange bedfellows, indeed. To close out the episode, both Yuris are with Viktor, where he has them listen to the music for their programs and tell him what they feel about it. Both Yuris have their own takes, serving as their own counter-points and differences in character, and they both like one variant more than the other. So, naturally, Viktor declares that they\u2019ll skate to the opposing songs, instead. They both have one week to master their routines and come out with a surprise performance. Good luck, gents.<\/p>\n

\"screen-shot-2016-10-12-at-9-17-40-pm\"
“Both of you, skate like you want to win!”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Drama bomb, y\u2019all<\/i>. We have our trio of the established heartthrob, the new flame, and the old flame, all commingling with one another. Get ready for hijinks and drama to form out of this unique union. It turns out, as confirmed with this week’s episode,\u00a0Viktor seems to be trilingual, knowing Russian, Japanese, and even a little bit of English, and he\u2019s taken a strong liking to some of the Japanese cuisine courtesy of Yuri\u2019s family. As someone who has a very broad European ancestry, this kind of cultural inclusiveness rings well with me; it’s always nice to see characters in an anime that aren’t always Japanese… even though they all speak Japanese with perfect fluency. But hey, in fiction, the narrative’s language is the universal language. In probably the most noteworthy moment of the episode,\u00a0we have the scene of Viktor asking Yuri everything he wants to know, while getting very<\/i> handy. A touch to the shoulder, the hand, and the chin, along with quite the longing stare into his eyes. I\u2019m not going to say anything for fact, but come on. We know. We all know. And that ship is sailing itself. Knowing more about \u201cYurio,\u201d after this episode, I\u2019m getting a serious vibe of \u201cex-boyfriend who hasn\u2019t let go\u201d from him. Clingy, jealous, short-fused, unwilling to play with others, the signs are all there. And I\u2019m not too much of a fan of that kind of thing. Didn\u2019t like it with Rin from Free!<\/i>, and I don\u2019t really like it here. As for these three little kids that keep butting in the flow of things, my stance on little children groups in anime remains the same: NO. Nothing is contributed, and they\u2019re always an annoyance. Looking at you, Eureka Seven<\/i>. The themes of the music at the end, interestingly enough, are of \u201cunconditional love\u201d and \u201csexual love.\u201d Both themes strike a chord, with Yuri liking the former and \u201cYurio\u201d liking the latter, so it\u2019ll make for an interesting end result with what they come up with, next week. In all, though, this show is keeping steady, through its second episode, personal character archetype grievances aside. It\u2019s supplying plenty of \u201cthe gay\u201d to keep me coming back, and I just want to see it build and build throughout the rest of the series, and this time, have it end with\u00a0proper<\/em> resolution. As in… you know, lip-on-lip action.<\/p>\n

\"screen-shot-2016-10-12-at-8-42-52-pm\"
#ninja<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If there was a moral to be learned in this episode, though, it\u2019s this: don\u2019t use geo-tagging on Instagram. Ever.<\/p>\n

Yuri!!! On ICE<\/i> is available on Crunchyroll as a weekly simulcast, every Wednesday at 3:00pm EDT. An English simulcast dub will be available from Funimation later this fall. Additional screencaps are available\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To anyone who remembers The Soup, the only program on the E! Network ever worth watching, you might remember a segment they had \n [...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[29,60,73,74,64],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animation","tag-anime","tag-crunchyroll","tag-figure-skating","tag-sports-anime","tag-yuri-on-ice"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":0,"sum_votes":0},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.surrealresolution.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Screen-Shot-2016-10-12-at-8.21.16-PM.jpg?fit=1912%2C1078&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8GYHU-5c","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}