Yuri!!!! ON ICE anime review

Yuri!!!! ON ICE is a sports anime surrounding a young men's figure skater on the verge of quitting the sport entirely after a rash of painful losses in competition. By chance, he performs a routine choreographed by his idol for a friend, and a video of said routine is recorded and uploaded, going viral instantly. Seeing the video, his idol travels to his home and insists on becoming his coach.

Honestly, I would've put this off for other shows that I've been waiting to see for a longer period of time. But, with all the spoilers and clips and fan raving going on, I had to know what the fuss is about. Usually a mistake on any good anime-watcher's part, but this time, not so much.

The plot is pretty simple. You usually can't expect much of a sports anime in that department anyway. If anyone has any suggestions of sports anime that do otherwise, please leave me a recommendation in the comments.
More than anything, you get the characters and their current struggles with past and present events. It's a bit bland for my taste, but one might also call it a pallet cleanser in anime.

The characters are pretty realistic with a few twists of humor. My only issues with any of the characters are usually to do with their nationality and the lack of terms used from their mother tongue. I know they must all speak Japanese (you couldn't pay me to watch the English dub, really), but when the Russian man uses more terms in English than in Russian and the Swedish man's only foreign language term is a French one, it bugs me.
That aside, all of the characters were pretty good, relate-able and deep in their own ways. Yuri Plisetsky is a little angrier than I'd like, but even he was a cool enough character.

The voices are almost all-star, whichever version you watch, though the Japanese version introduces more new voices I've never heard before than the English dub does.
The music here is impressive. Fun and gravitational... not sure if that's the word I want, really. I mean to say that it pulls you in, and moves your heart a bit. And, the language nerd that I am, I love that Japanese men are singing in any language not their own! It's probably my favorite!

This show is visually stunning. The biggest part of the show, arguably. If only in the skating scenes, they move like real athletes would, all the gestures, jumps, I even cringed at some of the falls because they looked so realistic! This animation is a truly beautiful piece to capture so much movement and make it look so close to the way real people make these movements!

In short, I liked the anime well enough. Cool to listen to. Gorgeous to watch. The fan in me feels a little empty for a lack of Shonen-ai, but, otherwise, I'm not entirely disappointed.

Watching on,
Tatsuno13