I got hyped. I love a good sports anime. I especially love the short and focused ones, like Big Wind-Up, Scorching Ping-Pong Girls, or Yowamushi Pedal, but I also have love for the serials like Slam Dunk, Eyeshield 21, and Haikyuu. I even have love for the hybrids like Battle Athletes, a long time love from the Suncoast bargain bin. BUT, and I say that with the biggest of but’s, Yuri on Ice just couldn’t hold it together for me.

YOI starts the story using the well versed fall from grace and the climb back to the top. Our main character, Yuri Katsuki, comes in last place at the Grand Prix, and the story quickly catches us up on all of his accomplishments and struggles making it this far. You quickly get a sense of how talented this person is. Normally, or maybe on average, sports anime start with the character either being unaware of how talented he is, or conversely, knowing he simply wants to be the best and he has SOME talent, but has yet to truly understand how high the climb is going to be. YOI however skips right to the fall from grace, so maybe 26 to 40 episodes of a regular sports anime, which was refreshing! Get to the good stuff!

I couldn’t have been more excited, when you hear that opening theme and see the main cast perform an intense choreographed sequence to the theme, you get goosebumps. But by episode 5, a slightly unfamiliar sports arc begins to happen. A series of characters you never really get to know take center stage and perform. Now, the reason this is unfamiliar is because generally, in sports anime, the other competitors are built up as having some kind of specific special talent that makes it harder for our heroes to reach the top. In YOI, you  never get a chance to experience anything other than a mild sense of their exaggerated personalities and an arbitrary score at the end of their performance. This is a big issue because outside of the score, we as a the viewer are not privileged to the difference in skill between the competitors. All of the ancillary characters seem to know who the competitors are and what challenge they present, but they never really expand on it for more than one scene. I suppose the point is Katsuki is his own worst enemy and thus everyone else is pointless filler.

We also never get a chance to grow with athlete Yuri Katsuki, primarily because this show is not sure if it’s a romance or sports anime. It could have been both, but neither one takes a long time focus in the story. In between the series of competitor skaters performances, we generally only see Katsuki doing the same performance, doing just a bit better each time, or him learning to deal with pre-show jitters. His growth isn’t very hard fought because it happens so quickly. He seems to take to being sensual and sexual on the ice pretty quickly, despite his protests, because the show would prefer to show the same performance over and over instead of showing us his practice sessions. In sports anime, the practices are what make the games that much more interesting to watch.

At the end of the day, this was entertaining from time to time, but mostly, it was repetitive without offering any advance in the story that was meaningful. The writing and screenplay display genuine emotion, and while some performances were initially electrifying, the show falls flat only 6 episodes in. I recommend the first 4 episodes, as they were immensely entertaining and provided something in sports anime I hadn’t really seen condensed so well, it’s just too bad the rest of the show didn’t turn out this way.