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.
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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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