junichi suwabe's tweet on the iceado cancellation :(

they will always be real to me

im taking the news well

Viktor Nikiforov will always be a gay, Russian, Olympic athlete, and he will always be a part of anime history, and dear to my heart

i don't know how many people here on tumblr have seen this thread on twitter/x, where leaks from someone who claimed to be in a position to know about ice adolescence and what had happened to it several years ago were finally made public today, but since all we've been given from MAPPA is that the movie was cancelled due to "various circumstances" and no one else associated with it has given us any concrete info, i'm personally choosing to believe this leaker. their stated reasoning of the movie being left to die because of "LGBT issues" and concerns about chinese/russian distribution sadly lines up all too well with the fact that this always, always happens to queer media. whenever it seems like progress is being made, with creators fighting to get beautiful queer stories told, the people in power do everything they can to ruin it and the world just feels like it goes backwards. if what's being said in this thread is true (and really, even if it isn't and there's actually a completely different reason that iceado was canned) then i feel heartbroken for sayo yamamoto, mitsuro kubo, and everyone else who fought for viktor and yuuri's story to be told and who tried their hardest to get this movie made. they deserved so much better than for this to happen.

while i think we all knew that this day was coming, i still chose, for seven years, not to give up hope. i put my faith in mappa and the yuri on ice team and while i'm not surprised by the cancellation, i'm still so dissapointed.

listen, i understand. there were a lot of factors that made production and release hard. it wasn't meant to be. i get it. but it still hurts. i still think we deserved clearer communication on this.

yuri on ice was a major part of my life for so long. that show opened my eyes to healthy queer relationships and made me realize that i was queer myself. watching the episodes as they came out and debriefing them with my friends was the highlight of my week. i have consumed fanworks from incredibly, astoundingly talented artists. i have created fanworks. i have talked to and connected with so many amazing people, all because of this show.

yuri on ice got me through the darkest points of my life. when shit hit the fan, i'd curl up in bed, wrapped in my blanket from hot topic, and loop the soundtrack to ground myself. yuri on ice has been there for every major turning point in my life, and comforted me through it.

although more recently i haven't been as involved in the fandom, it's still so, so dear to me. i'm sitting here, writing this, surrounded by yoi merch i've collected over the years. keychains, plushues, stickers. i'm blowing my nose with tissues from my makkachin tissue holder.

...it's just so surreal that the movie has finally been put to rest. but i'm happy to have known and loved this fandom, and i will carry these memories with me, always.

it's been a very long 7 years, yall. I'm honestly not even sure what to do with myself with this news.

I guess I'm just really glad we didn't get this news sooner, tbqh. 2017-2021 was an incredibly hard time for me and waiting for iceado to be released is genuinely the reason I'm still alive today. If we had gotten this news back in 2019 instead of the postponement, I honestly can't tell you if I'd still be here.

I have so many feelings about all of this. Hurt and anger are definitely the strongest. I don't think those feelings are ever going to go away entirely.

im gonna be real with you guys it's been a ROUGH April for me, and this is far from even being the worst thing to have happened to me in the last 3 weeks, but I'm letting myself breakdown over this so I can keep dealing with everything else with a brave face.

I wish the production team well. I wish the creators well.

I may have to make a decision on whether or not I'll keep this blog. Who knows right now. I haven't actually been in the yoi fandom for years and iceado was the one thing I was holding on to the blog for. But at least for now it'll stay up as a place to mourn.

mourning the loss of yoi…

i am the strongest and most patient person on planet earth .

I’m very upset.