My Favorite Fall 2021 Anime will possibly be my favorite anime of the year, even though its not among those bloody action adventure stories I love so well. Especially since I got a little spoiler on tomorrow morning's episode. Netflix is airing this anime and let me say that it is groundbreaking in a lot of ways. It is a slice of life anime, which takes their characters a bit more serious...but I have never seen a transsexual character treated seriously before in an anime. Usually, in shonen (boys adventure) anime, they are the comical characters. Blue Period is different. It's different in a lot of ways. Leveling up in this anime isn't learning a new fight move or a new supernatural ability. Leveling up, for main character Yaguchi Yatora, means learning about stuff like stippling, using a roller. impasto (he hasn't learned this yet in the anime), proportion, perspective, and style. Yaguchi has decided, rather abruptly, that rather than drifting into adulthood in a dead end job and continuing to be a delinquent (although a delinquent with good grades) he is inspired by his friend Ryuji (trans girl character) and another classmate to do art. So he joins the art club in his 3rd year with the overwhelming goal of getting into one of Tokyo's most prestigious art colleges. The stress art students endure is highlighted (Yaguchi breaks out in hives he is yet to recover from, one classmate is hospitalized, and Ryuji walks out of the college first exam). It also highlights Ryuji's stress of being a trans person in a country that doesn't accept them well in very realistic fashion. I knew in the first episode that Ryuji was probably trans due to the name. People refer to them as Ryuji (almost always, 99% of the time a male name in Japanese...it kind of means dragon child, by the way). We see them going on a date with another student in epsiode 2...but in episode 3, the young man breaks up with them and we see just how close of a friend Yaguchu is to Ryuji. This is a heart-rending scene, and I found it on YouTube. I thought then that this anime was doing something different. Probably even the manga, when it came out in Japan in 2017. I'd never seen a anime devoted to art before. Stylistically, it's gorgeous. The painting scenes and the insight into the art world (even from the perspective of students visiting art shows and museums for inspiration) is fascinating. Their teachers are inspiring and the other students are quirky as hell...as you'd expect from creatives. We creative types are wacky. Some of us are proud of it! I'm looking forward to Episode 9 (Wandering Knife) tomorrow morning but from the spoiler I received online, I may need a pack of tissues by my side, as Ryuji will have some heavy-hearted issues to work through and hopefully a good friend will be there for them. I'll leave you with this. Another thing that makes an anime for me are the opening and closing songs and animations. The opening and closing sequences of this debut season of Blue Period are f*$%ing awesome! I found them on YT also, and will post as my wrap up, consecutively. I highly recommend this show...even for people who are new to anime and wonder if they would like it. Realistic, entertaining, emotional and with believable characters you can grow to empathize with and love.
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The final "free" Crunchyroll sponsored episode. I'm seriously debating putting up episode's 6 and 7 that are on here as well, though they are on personal accounts. That always makes me feel weird and awkward and bad, but here's the thing...if there episodes considered most important and most ground-breaking in this anime, it would be episodes 6 and 7, especially episode 7. But episode 6 leads to the groundbreakingness of episode 7, so let me wrestle with my conscience a bit more before deciding... Episode 5 is on YT also, under a user's account, and it is a cute episode showing that Yuri K. already has somebody on the Japanese skating circuit, a younger talented skater named Minami, who is also has the hots for him. I will at least make a post of clips of 6 and 7 and other eps that show the continuation of this dramatic and powerful change in anime direction in anime in Japan (and the dramatic and powerful evolution of "eros" in the character Yuri Katsuki as he awakens to the sexuality within him and the love he has for Victor). This Eros Evolution is only shown on the ice and in one censored moment on the ice in that groundbreaking episode 7...a moment that caused fujoshi and fudanshi yaoi fans (women and men fans of male gay anime and manga, respectively) to scream everywhere when it happened. I refer to this as the "Fan-Squeeing Heard 'Round theWorld." Just search for any review of this episode. You'll see). So we have the face-off at Yu-Topia. Yuri Katsuki versus Yuri Plisetsky. On the line, Victor's unwavering attention for training (perhaps love as well...I always thought that Yuri P. was a bit smitten with Victor too, who the hell isn't in this series? But Yuri P. meets someone later who is more his type of partner...no spoiler, but...it's just perfect all around and leaves open a chance for the Yuri's to become better friends than rivals). Here in this episode, we see something I HAVE NEVER BEFORE SEEN in anime or real life. In real life and in anime, we often we male and female characters in sports trying to become stronger, more masculine, to complete with rivals in their sports. Here in this episode (and in later episodes with Yuri P. when his coach's ex-wife gets involved in his training) we see male characters aiming to become more graceful and feminine with their approaches to their ice skating. That was something altogether new and different for Japanese sports anime and it was a breath of fresh air to see male characters (especially later on a hothead like Yuri P.) embracing the feminine side of their natures. If you know and believe in the philosophy of yin and yang, we all apparently have the masculine and feminine natures within us. This episode shows it well. Yuri K's getting in touch with his divine feminine performing the beginning of the Eros skate causes the Japanese announcer to stutter in a future episode. Same, dude. Same. The older, self-conscious Yuri Katsuki faces his rival: the younger, swaggering, arrogant edge-lord Yuri Plisetsky in a battle for Victor's attention and one-on-one training at stake. Which Yuri will win? Will Victor be able to change the two Yuri's with the wildly different pieces of music he has chosen for each of them, music that contrasts their personalities? On Love: Agape, (charitable, unconditional love) for hot-tempered Russian Yuri, and On Love: Eros, (erotic, passionate, sexual love) for the shy and demure Japanese Yuri? Is Yuri Katsuki Victor's Pygmalion? Can he turn a little Japanese piggy into a prince? Watch it and see. My only regret is that Crunchyroll has only one more free episode of this up on YouTube. But you can always watch the rest with ads on Crunchyroll if you don't want to be a paying member. There are bootleg vids on YT of some of the other episodes but I don't roll like that. I will try and find some of the best scenes after the third episode...to show in continuing posts. And there are some really great scenes, especially of the Grand Prix final and other skaters, and Victor and Yuri's growing relationship. Someone pointed out to me that Funimation also has the English voiced version of this (dubbed) . I am not generally a fan of dubbed anime, preferring to watch most of my shows in the original language with subtitles. I have exceptions to this...anime that I consider so great in English voice that I prefer to watch them that way (Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Soul Eater, xxxHolic, Black Butler) but they are the exceptions to the rule. A fun fact...the English voice actor for Victor is NOT the character who voices Gru in Despicable Me, though fans will often meme that shit and it pisses me off. They sound remarkably similar though, and maybe that is why they do it. Fans are funny like that. Now, episode two of Yuri on Ice!!!: Two Yuri's?! Drama at Yu-topia! Comfession: I like professional and Olympic ice-skating, gymnastics, all that kind of stuff...as well as gay anime and manga. Gay anime and manga is called yaoi, for for characters that are male and queer and yuri for female characters that are queer. There are a few transgender series out there and honestly, Japan is kind of backwards and awkward about this stuff, even though they are more open about creating comics and animation that are gay. So I'm not sure what the names of those are yet...I have one on my to-watch list and I'll let ya'll know when I watch it what the Japanese word for the genre is, if they have one. I like both yaoi and yuri depending on the subject matter and how the couples get together. I'm not a big fan of "non-con' yaoi or yuri. That's fan slang for "non-consent" and you know what that entails. Though it seems a lot of Japanese gay anime has it, even the less erotic stuff. I've read several literary essays about how it began to be a thing ("non-con" yaoi) because Japanese woman (in a repressed society, yaoi has been around awhile now) enjoyed the idea of a man being...well...raped. Disturbing...and so not cool. IMO. Well. Enough of that cringy talk. I will cover more "consensual" anime in the future. That doesn't happen in THIS anime. In fact, you only get teasers of relationships going on, basically because this anime is a SPORTS anime, first and foremost. Yuri Katsuki is a complicated character. The first episode sees him as a 23 year old, down-on-his-luck, seemingly washed up skater, while his idol, a bit older, Russian superstar Viktor Nikiforov is still winning gold medals. He returns home to Japan from the US after losing the nationals and finishing college and dismissing his coach, only to have is former ballet teacher reprimand him. He escapes to the skating rink rather than watch ice skating with her, where he meets with his old friends (a girl he used to crush on) and skates a famous routine by Viktor (gorgeous overlay scenes of Viktor skating the same routine at Grand Championship Finals on television as Yuri's mentor watches at Yuri's family's business—a hot springs/inn). Wait! You say? A girl he used to crush on? Yes. Yuri is a character that not only seems to be gay later on, but also seems to be "demisexual." People who identify as demisexual only feel sexual attraction to another person if they form a strong emotional bond or connection with them first. He confesses to Viktor in a later episode that he had a girl come on to him in Detroit but he didn't know how to deal with it, because he did not feel that way toward her and he was awkward. As the show progresses, even within the first three episodes, you will see that Yuri Katsuki begins to develop feelings for Viktor. And while Viktor is at first teasing...eventually he returns those feelings...even beginning to by episode three. As luck would have it...Crumchyroll has uploaded the first three entire episodes of this wonderful series on its YouTube site. And I don't call it ground-breaking lightly. This is the first time ever, in the history of Japanese anime, that an anime mainly labeled as a sports anime, features characters that even hint at queerness. Unfortunately, due to Japan's strict censorship guidelines, hint is all they really can do. But...they push that envelope to the very extremity. And queer anime fans all over the world loved it. I can only imagine what joy Japanese queer kids and young adults (and adults) felt with such representation, albeit not completely "open" representation. I will upload all three of the videos in due time. In the meantime, enjoy episode one. With a bit of..ahem.."fan service" at the end for you ladies, if you enjoy that. I know I do. Here's Yuri on Ice!!! Ep 1: Easy as Pirozhki!! The Grand Prix Final of Tears. |
anime n' mangaI blog about a lot of regular, harmless sci-fi and fantasy anime n' manga, but I'll throw the occasional yaoi n' yuri (gay) posts in here. 'Cus I like that shit too. archives
December 2021
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