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thegirlwhorideslikeasamurai · 1 year

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YOI meta: The mechanics of reigniting your love for skating with the help of a childhood friend and a gay love song

During my latest rewatch of Yuri!!!, the missing pieces of why Yuuri chose, of all of Viktor’s programmes, Stammi Vicino (aka Stay By My Side And Never Leave) to get his love for skating back and what part Yuuko plays in the scene he skates it fell into place. Spoiler: there are some beautiful symmetries, be they unintended or by design.

Of course, Stammi Vicino is Viktor’s current free programme; picking it seems convenient at first glance. However, apart from obvious plot reasons, Yuuri didn't choose this routine on a whim.

If this were the entire point, Yuuri could have chosen a programme he and Yuuko copied together as kids—something they enjoyed tremendously and still have fond memories of. Would make more sense than skating one of Viktor's recent programmes, wouldn’t it?

A recurring theme in Yuri!!! is the skaters’ artistic expression through a piece of music that resonates with them, and this holds even more true for Yuuri, whose entire character arc features his struggles to understand and voice his feelings and how he improves his ability to express them on the ice (the alexithymia is strong in this one, hehe).

As discussed at length, Stammi Vicino is a gay love song (this post explains how you can recognise the gayness*), and there's absolutely no way Yuuri doesn’t know this. As an avid watcher of figure skating and taking the subtle sports commentary in Yuri!!! into account, i.e. Morooka saying that this programme brings out a new side in Viktor** (curiously, the same wording describes Yuuri's performance On Love: Eros), the entire skating community knows by now.

Let’s take a closer look at the lines we see Yuuri skate to (check this post for lyrics and translations):

Con una spada vorrei tagliare/With a sword I wish I could cut Quelle gole che cantano d'amore/Those throats singing about love Vorrei serrar nel gelo le mani /I wish I could seal in the cold the hands Che esprimono quei versi d'ardente passione/That portray those verses of burning passion

The bitterness in these lines mirrors the conscious and subconscious layers of Yuuri’s current struggle quite brilliantly, and both are linked to Viktor:

1) Yuuri’s frustration about his career: His love for skating is hanging by a thread, the results of his last two competitions smothered his passion for the sport, retirement is a tempting option, and he missed his chance to meet his idol (according to his memory). The poor boy has hit rock bottom and returned home. To him, it must seem absurd that so many people around him are hyped about skating and celebrate him as a star while all Yuuri sees is the shitty season he just had. And as if that wasn’t enough, they don’t tire of referring to Viktor like “But Viktor would do this, look Viktor is on TV…” (looking at you Minako in particular), which is not the kind of reminder he needs right now.

2) Very literally unrequited yearning for love or, more precisely, gay love. At this point in the story, Yuuri is far from being in love with Viktor, but seeing him sets Yuuri into an instant swoon,

and, after drowning his anxiety with champagne, he hit on Viktor at the banquet and made him fall for him, not to forget this totally-not-subtle display of physical attraction

(I'd love to know what was going on in Viktor's head at that moment lol)

It hardly can get more obvious than that.

This is the second set of lyrics Yuuri skates to:

Stammi vicino/Stay close to me Non te ne andare/Don’t go Ho paura di perderti/I’m afraid of losing you

Le tue mani, le tue gambe/Your hands, your legs Le mie mani, le mie gambe/My hands, my legs I battiti del cuore/The heartbeats Si fondono tra loro/Are fusing together

(Both Yuuri and Viktor skate the parts of the programme that reveal their strengths as skaters and their current situation to the audience. Interestingly, we don't see Viktor, who remembers the banquet, skate to these intimate and pleading lyrics, but Yuuri.)

Again, there are two layers:

1) Keep pursuing Viktor as a competitor: Ever since Yuuri saw Viktor skate for the first time, he emulated Viktor, worked hard to become like him/his equal, and wanted to compete against him. However, to continue pursuing this goal, Yuuri needs his love for skating back. The better part of his life revolved around this, and he's desperate to preserve it.

2) Finding his soulmate: These lines above refer to Aristophanes’ soulmate theory from Plato’s Symposium, which appeared in the context of Yuri!!! before. For instance, Kubo-sensei herself referred to Yuuri and Viktor as soulmates. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:

people in love say they feel "whole" when they have found their love-partner. […] in primal times people had doubled bodies, with faces and limbs turned away from one another […] these original people were very powerful. […] Zeus […] decided to cripple them by chopping them in half, in effect separating each entity's two bodies. Ever since that time, people run around saying they are looking for their other half because they are really trying to recover their primal nature. […] when two people who were separated from each other find each other, they never again want to be separated.

Sounds a lot like Viktuuri and “Stay by my side and never leave”, right?

All this makes me actually wonder whether Yuuri's subconscious mind remembers the banquet and had a part in his choice.

Besides being a gay love story, Stammi Vicino reflects Yuuri’s and Viktor’s current situation as athletes or, more precisely, their loss of passion for their sport. Yuuri’s feelings for Viktor and his love for the ice are closely intertwined, whereas Viktor is drawn to Yuuri because of his beautiful skating, which ultimately reignites his own passion. Both can't be without one another, and both cannot turn their back on skating. We call everything on the ice love, indeed.

Now on to the last set of lyrics:

Ora sono pronto/Now I’m ready

Yuuri is not yet done. He has fought through the slump and battled his depression. A part of him refuses to bid his desire to skate on the same ice as Viktor again goodbye for good. He still yearns to become Viktor's equal, maybe even surpass him, although he cannot yet admit this to himself. And he returned to where it all started: his home rink.

And that’s when Yuuko enters the equation.

While Minako suggested trying figure skating to Yuuri, Yuuko plays an active part in Yuuri becoming ambitious about the sport and pursuing a career in it.

Yuuko introduced Yuuri to Viktor. Together, they fangirled over Viktor, watched competitions, devoured every piece of news about him, and copied his programmes.

Yuuko protected Yuuri, she encouraged Yuuri, and she believed in him. She never made him feel bad about himself or blamed him for his failures. She doesn't patronise him. Ever wondered why she’s the Madonna of Ice Castle? That’s why.

Not her

But her

(Yes, there’s Christian symbolism in Yuri!!!)

Yuuko is an integral part of Yuuri's support system. He looks up to her, he trusts her, and she knows how he feels about Viktor and shares his crush,

so it doesn't come as a surprise that he shows her his version of Stammi Vicino. In a world where everyone celebrates Yuuri while he perceives himself as a loser, she is a safe space, someone whose approval means something to him. His performance is, to some extent, about her, too.

Because Yuuko introduced Yuuri to Viktor, because she believed in him, he was motivated to pursue a career in figure skating and chase Viktor as a competitor. If he can revive these memories, he might revive his love for skating. And he invites her to share this love with him and be a part of his journey as a skater again.

Yuuri is good at conveying his feelings through skating but sucks at verbalising them. The press conference of the Worlds' medallists that interrupts his conversation with Yuuko hints at what he cannot get across in words. In real-time, Viktor would sit on the kiss and cry and wait for his result (the press conference is 15-20 minutes after the event, actually). Yet the cuts in this scene suggest both happen simultaneously, and that choice isn't random.

Characters supplementing meta-information for other characters' thoughts and emotions through a POV switch is a frequently used technique in Yuri!!! We see this a lot during the competitions, and episode 1 follows the same pattern. Both Yuuri and Viktor are confronted with the loss of their passion and its impact on their future. While it's implied that Viktor cannot let down his guard, Yuuri feels safe enough around Yuuko to try.

(I cannot decide which of these precious boys looks more miserable)

Until recently, Yuuko's role in this episode was a bit obscure to me. Her detailed introduction suggests a more significant role throughout the series, but she fades into the background after three episodes. What's the point in showing a detailed childhood montage of her and Yuuri obsessing over Viktor when she's a minor character with only little screen time, especially since the creators had to boil down their script to the relevant bits in order to fit it into 12 episodes? It's because she plays a significant role in setting the story in motion.

Twelve years ago, Yuuko helped Yuuri pursue his dream through her undying support and their mutual fangirling over Viktor. Now that Yuuri has returned to the start, she takes over her old role one more time by watching Yuuri's very intimate performance of Stammi Vicino. And that's just the beginning. While she still gives Yuuri the support he needs to carry on, her daughters take over the active part of her former task: acquainting Yuuri with Viktor—with the result of making Yuuri's dream come true and bringing him and Viktor together for real.

If you enjoy my meta posts, please consider giving my blog a follow or checking out my works on AO3(link in bio). You will find the results of my meta musings in there!

*OP and I have different interpretations of the lyrics, but they don't contradict each other imho

**this wording is from the corrected subs in the Blu-ray version

#yuri on ice #yoi meta #my yoi meta #yuri on ice meta #katsuki yuuri #viktor nikiforov #yuuko nishigori #yoi #anime #stammi vicino #plato's symposium #plot analysis #figure skating #this has probably been analysed over and over so sorry if I'm stating the obvious

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staringblankly · 2 years

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Once upon a time people were not born separate from each other, they were born entwined…kind of...coupled with each other. So there were boys attached to boys, girls attached to girls, and, of course, boys and girls together – in a wonderfully intimate ball. Back then we had eight limbs. There were four on top, four on the bottom, and you didn’t have to walk if you didn’t want to. You could just…roll.

And roll we did. We rolled backwards and we rolled forwards achieving fantastic speeds that gave us a kind of courage. And then the courage swelled to pride. The pride swelled to arrogance. And we decided that we were greater than the gods and we tried to roll up to heaven and take over heaven. The gods, alarmed, struck back. Zeus, in his fury, hurled down lighting bolts and struck everyone in two…into perfect halves.

So all the sudden, couples that had been warm and tight, and wedged in together were now detached...and alone…and lost…and desperate…and losing the will to live. And the gods, seeing what they had done, worried that humans might not survive or even multiply again and, of course, they need humans to give sacrifices and so on and so forth. So the gods decided on a few repairs…

Instead of head facing backwards or out, they would rotate our heads back to forward. They pulled our skin tight and knotted it at the belly button. Genitalia were moved to the front so if we wanted to, we could… And etc. etc. And most important, they left us with a memory. It was a longing…for that original other half of ourselves; the boy or the girl who used to make us whole. That longing is still so deep in all of us, men for men, women for women, men and women for each other that it has been the lot of humans ever since and that we travel the world looking for our other half…

And when, says Aristophanes, one of us meets another, we recognize each other right away. We just know this. We’re lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy. We won’t get out of each other’s sight even for a moment. These are people, he says, who pass their whole lives together and yet if you ask them, they could not explain what they desire in each other…they just do.

- Plato's Symposium

#plato's symposium #my favorite story ever #words #soulmates #i love you

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