The second part of the episode commentary by Mitsurou Kubo! I have now fixed it with all the italic & bold parts as in the magazine (in the magazine they are actually bold & bolder). If you have any questions please send me a private message and I’ll reply when I have some time.

You can find the first commentary about episodes 1-6 here.

Just a note: when she quotes lines from the episodes I’m not using any of the “official” English translations, I’m translating them as I would translate them myself, so they might not be like you are used to hear them, but I think you will understand which lines they are anyway.

The translation is under the cut because it’s long.

***If you wish to share this translation please do it by reblogging or posting a link to it***

***Re-translating into other languages is ok but please mention that this post is the source***

Story Maker

Mitsurou Kubo complete commentary - Second half

Once again we have interviewed Mitsurou Kubo-san, who created the original plan, manga storyboard and character plan for the story! This is the sequel of the episode commentary whose first part was published on the Dec. 2016 issue of PASH! and covers from the second part of the China tournament in episode 7 up to the last episode. Here you can find her detailed comments for the 6 episodes!

Episode 7 “Kaimaku Grand Prix Series Yacchaina!! Chuugoku Taikai FS”



-In episode 7 I wanted to portay Victor’s inexperience as a coach and how this causes Yuuri to fall into his worst possible psychological condition, but also how Yuuri manages to get out of it. In the course of the story Yuuri necessarily had to experience a series of setbacks, however not as deep as to become fatal injuries, plus we needed them to be solved within the same episode and still in the same episode I also wanted to show him regain his strength without any grudges. That’s why in this episode, that is about halfway through the story, we had him “break”.

-The ones like Victor, who are more skilled than others, tend to wonder why others cannot do the things they can do, and probably have trouble finding the right words to say to people who can’t do what they can. The fact that “excellent athletes do not necessarily become excellent coaches” is also something I wanted to depict in the story. However, that is also the reason he and Yuuri are able to confront each other baring their souls, and when I drew the scene I was sure that they would be able to make up without any long-term effects.

-In every episode, when I drew Yuuri I was always careful to “make him act in ways Victor would never even imagine”. That’s why he pushes the whorl of hair on the top of his head before the FS. It was Yuuri Katsuki’s way to loosen up the atmosphere. He came up with an idea to ease the tension and just acted it out, then looking at Victor’s surprised face made him even more relaxed when he started the FS. How can Yuuri Katsuki skate with a new state of mind? That is something Yuuri himself is thinking about, and Victor is too. I wanted to show this in the GP Series, and I think episode 7 is where it became concrete.

-There are so many young skaters in the China tournament that Yuuri and Chris automatically look like veterans, even though they are still young too (LOL). In all this I wanted to show Chris’ charm as someone who looks at things from a different perspective than the younger skaters. In the anime his charm was just explosive. I love Yasumoto-san’s Chris! It was also wonderful how the animation expressed his sexiness, which is slightly different than Yuuri’s.

-Regarding Yuuri and Victor’s scene after the FS, I was fine with it being interpreted in any way. However this is the part that had more response from overseas, I was even directly asked “which one it was”. And then I heard from Japanese people too that some had an argument with their friends over whether they kissed or not, or they just hugged. I was surprised that people would want to know the truth. Up until then I had always thought that people wanted to be able to interpret fiction how they preferred. But seeing the reactions that this episode received, I realized that even if it’s fiction, inside people’s mind this series exists as a world of its own and so they believe that there must be a correct truth, an exact answer somewhere.



Episode 8 “Yuuri vs Yuri Osoroshia!! Russia Taikai SP”

-Victor is asked whether he would like to fight Yuuri as an athlete, but he really doesn’t think that. Actually many people were expecting to see Victor and Yuuri confront each other in a match eventually, however Yuuri is also “trying to win to prove Victor’s skating”. The director and I shared this same opinion when we wrote the series.

-As opposed to the China tournament, the Russia tournament has a completely different atmosphere and is more like a bloodbath (LOL). We had already decided which skaters would participate in which tournament and the results 1 year before the broadcast, but fleshing out the story we realized that the atmosphere was somewhat more tense than in the China tournament and we decided to emphasize this. Yuuri already knows Michele and Sara from last year’s GP Final, but they didn’t really make friends. By the way, I think that if Phichit-kun is the sun of Southeast Asia, Emil is the sun of Europe. And JJ is just on a whole different dimension than the sun (LOL).



-This is the tournament where Yuuri skates his best SP. He gets more heated up when he’s in an unfamiliar situation, which means that on the contrary he probably tends to feel the pressure more easily when he’s being cheered on. And just when you think that you’re going to see a confrontation between this Yuuri and Yurio… JJ arrives and paints everything in his own color. “Ahh, everything has turned into JJ color…” I was a little excited at the JJ shock (LOL).

-Yurio is unable to give his best performance because here I still wanted to show him “incomplete”. It actually happens often that real Russian athletes cannot achieve good results in their home country. Also, to show the difference between the episode 8 SP where all the ones supporting Yurio are not present yet and the episode 9 FS where they are there, and to create a development where he still isn’t able to win even with that, I decided that his grandpa, who is also his agape, would be unable to come to this tournament. But it’s not like he lost because his grandpa wasn’t there. He doesn’t physically go to watch all his matches, after all.

-JJ’s song was so perfect and amazing that I thought I wouldn’t need to put too much effort in my storyboard, as the song would probably be enough (LOL). His line “JJ will never stop~~~” is something I came up with from an early stage, to put in in the script used in the seiyuu audition, but he really became a character that would say such a line. Treating Yurio as a lady is JJ’s idea of a joke. He doesn’t mean to be offensive. Maybe he thought that Yurio would relax. By the way, he makes a joke in episode 10 too, but I have the feeling that neither JJ nor the others understand how much of it is a joke and how much is not (LOL). In the Russia tournament the entrance to the rink is also the exit, therefore I took advantage of it to show some exchanges between skaters who have just finished their performance and skaters about to start.



Episode 9 “Yuuri vs Yuri Osoroshia!! Russia Taikai FS”

-By having Victor temporarily part from Yuuri Katsuki as a coach, here I inserted a mainstream kind of development where “to grow, the protagonist loses something important”. I’m really sorry for Makkachin, but I didn’t have any intention of killing him off of course. I wanted to depict more clearly what Yuuri Katsuki himself wants to do.

-Victor said “if you are in trouble hug Yakov and he will help you”, but looking at how the episode developed, well, no, it doesn’t help at all! (LOL) However, it’s pretty common in manga as well that remembering someone’s words will help you when you are in trouble or help you get out of a difficult situation. In this case, those words said by Victor didn’t really help Yuuri (that’s also because I’m a bit mean), but I still wanted him to leave Yuuri with something before going away.



-Yurio’s FS is still incomplete, but I wanted to show how he was able to obtain a new strength and elegance thanks to the presence of Lilia, Yakov, his grandpa and JJ as a rival. I also depicted his aggressive side when he changes the composition of the program to win, and the fact that he still isn’t able to win against JJ, which is another trial that he needs to overcome.

-In a meeting with the director I asked her a very basic question: “Why does Yuuri want to win?”, and she replied “Well, he has never won a gold medal so far, of course he wants to win!”. I thought that made sense. Yuuri, who has never won an international competition, wants to win a gold medal before retiring. The “origin” of his desire to win is in fact pretty simple. He has been able to work hard so far because he wants to win a gold medal and is confident that he is good enough to succeed. I inserted that monologue because, even though Yuuri might look weak, he actually has been fighting the whole time.

-In the end the person Yurio most wanted to eat a katsudon pirozhki is Yuuri. I thought that this was probably the last time Yuuri and Yurio could have a conversation alone, so even if the scene itself is short in the anime, I hope they talked about lots of things here.

-I was told that the words “please take care of me until I retire” are actually something that real skaters say when they ask someone to be their coach. When I heard that, I thought that this was the perfect timing for Yuuri to tell Victor. At this time, Victor doesn’t take these words in the sense Yuuri really means, which is “until the end of this season”. He left Yuuri fighting alone in a tournament, so I think he was very torn about whether he should apologize and about what he should tell him when they met again. But then Yuuri told him “until I retire”, and I think Victor was probably really happy because it meant that Yuuri still needed him even when he was far away. Victor didn’t think that Yuuri would retire after the end of the GP Final, and he didn’t clearly decide until when he would continue being Yuuri’s coach, therefore I believe that he was happy to hear Yuuri’s feelings, to know that Yuuri too wanted him to be his coach until the end.



Episode 10 “Chou Ganbaranba! Grand Prix Final Chokuzen Special”

-Otabek finally shows up. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough time to show how his friendship with Yurio developed, but I wanted Yurio to think “the wind is finally blowing my way!” (LOL). Yuuri and Yurio kind of had something missing as rivals, so I started to consider Otabek’s role as the one that would steal the position as Yurio’s rival.

-What Yuuri bought is pair rings. When I looked it up I found out that buying a pair was cheaper (LOL), and I also thought that if they were going to wear something matching this would be good. There are actually many real skaters who wear accessories as “omamori”, protective charms. More importantly, Yuuri has been giving Victor fresh surprises until now, and I wanted him to get a new item, a weapon to fight in the final match. When I suggested the rings to the director she was like “Yes, that!!” (LOL). We were like, “yeah, a cornered athlete would do something like that!” More than implicating something like a wedding, it’s similar to members of the same circle deciding to have a matching item.

-Victor is surprised by Yuuri’s action but understands him, so he makes a wish upon the ring telling him “show me the skating that you like the most”. In the China tournament he said things as if he was testing Yuuri, he “broke” his heart, so here he finally vows to the ring that “he will completely trust what Yuuri decides” and is determined to do what he can as a coach.

-Before the GP Final Yuuri and Victor’s relationship deepened yet again, therefore I wanted Yurio and Victor’s relationship to change a little too, hence I inserted the scene by the sea. I’m glad that I did, because after this point there was no time to show them talk alone again. Like in episode 9 Yuuri and Yurio share a moment together, Yurio and Victor do too, and in their case what they have in common is the memories of Hasetsu, and what changed from that time, which is what I wanted to show here.



-There’s also a moment where Yurio thought Victor was smirking looking at the ring. Like Yurio says in this scene, people tend to believe that athletes “die as competitors” when they stop and “become stable”. But I think that Victor, more than anyone else, is sensitive to this topic and is worried that people will say that about him, or that he will actually become like that. In this scene Victor wasn’t smirking, he was starting to think about his future.

-The fact that in last year’s banquet Yuuri told Victor “be my coach” is something that we had already decided as a “hidden setting”. But we didn’t know whether there was time to add that scene somewhere in only one cour. Eventually we decided to cram this episode with amusing scenes from the beginning to the end, so we added a special ED and C part. Since there were no skating matches we inserted a lot of crazy stuff and there’s plenty of information.



Episode 11 “Chou Chou Ganbaranba!! Grand Prix Final SP”

-Yuuri makes an attempt at adding a quadruple flip in his SP, but actually in the beginning I wasn’t planning to have him jump so many quads. The increasing level of real life competitions prompted me to add a realistic feeling by showing how you can’t win if you don’t have multiple quads in your programs. The reason Victor jumps a quad flip together with Yuuri during his performance is, more than something he does as a coach, something that comes from his feelings as an athlete.

-At this time Victor still hasn’t decided how to use the experience earned in the GP Final to contribute to Yuuri’s future, and also hasn’t decided what to do about himself as an athlete. He used to think that new surprises and impressive feats is something that he needed to create himself, however after becoming Yuuri’s coach his world broadened, he realized that it’s not necessarily that way and this changed him.



-The reason Yurio could pull off his best performance is that many elements like his experience and the environment surrounding him all blended together perfectly right at this time. From an external point of view young and strong athletes somehow tend to look like they are “destined to win”, like they are performing a program prepared to win. However, every single second of their performance is the result of their efforts. I wanted to show this with Yurio’s SP.

-When Victor is watching Yurio’s performance we cannot see his expression because I myself haven’t decided what the truth is, like whether he is frustrated because Yurio beat his record, or he wants to surpass him again, or what else. However, when Yuuri sees Victor like that he becomes anxious because it looks to him like Victor wants to go back to the ice, and he himself wants him to go back, but at the same time he doesn’t… so he wavers. That eventually piles up and leads to the last scene of this episode.

-I think that Victor and Chris have been in the Olympics and in ice shows together until now. Chris is probably the one that was closer to Victor in his career, and I think that Victor does genuinely like Chris’ skating. Maybe Chris also did his best in his own style because Victor was a different type than him. The screen looks really vibrant when they are together, and I believe they are good comrades.

-We finally see Otabek skate. I like his song, it’s cool. While I was the one who created his setting, I wasn’t sure how to represent him as a “soldier” on the ice, and in the end I decided to emphasize his thirst for victory.

-JJ was overwhelmed by Otabek’s ex-delinquent-like spirit. I saw lots of comments from people who came to like JJ in this episode. It’s definitely his highest point as a character. However, it also looked like “JJ can overcome this” (LOL). JJ calls himself the “king”, but if you think about it as long as Victor was around he could only really become the king in the World Junior Championships or the Four Continents Champsionships… I realized that JJ is only saying that to motivate himself and in fact he is not a real king, he is just behaving like he is because it’s his goal, and fans are cheering on him for that… and in a way that moved me. In the end I’m really portraying every character thinking that I want them to win, and especially in JJ’s case, he has a power that makes you want him to win.



Last episode “Chou Chou Chou Ganbaranba!!! Grand Prix Final FS”

-In the storyboard I drew the scene where Victor cries, but then I couldn’t come up with a good line for him to say and rewrote it many times. In the end I chose the line “I didn’t think Yuuri Katsuki was such a selfish person” and then I also got the idea for Yuuri’s reply. In the part where he pushes aside Victor’s hair like a curtain, I thought “even in such a situation Yuuri still manages to surprise Victor”. After completing this scene I could finally start writing the final episode.

-What Victor told Yuuri right before he starts is performance, more than something that he really thinks deep down, is what he came up with when thinking about what could encourage Yuuri Katsuki the most, so basically it’s “Victor playing the role of Victor as Yuuri expects him”.

-The part that I like the most in this episode is Yuuri’s monologue before he skates: “My name is Yuuri Katsuki. I’m just an ordinary figure skater, 24 years old.” This is the same line he said in episode 1, so it’s like he is going back to his origin, and I think it’s the moment where he finally accepts himself. I cried writing the storyboard.



-The director said that he wanted Yuuri, that has spent half of his life with Victor as his goal, to try his hand at a program with the same difficulty as Victor’s, and I agreed. The development where Yuuri gets his best score and wins against Yurio in the FS is something we had decided from the start. Since not having a perfect ending is what spurs him to continue, we aimed for a conclusion that is not too nice, therefore we made it so that Yurio wins but is not completely satisfied with the result.

-Regarding the scene where Victor hugs Yurio before the competition, he didn’t do it because he was begging for his help to stop Yuuri from retiring, or because he was asking him something. He just wanted Yurio to skate at his best, it was his genuine feelings of support for him, as if he was saying “go and do your best!”. After all, until this scene we never really saw Victor support Yurio. It’s an action that cannot be explained with logic.

-I believe Yurio thought “no way you can call it quits now!”. And I agree with him. I think what he had in mind while he was performing his program was something like “I know that whether to retire or not is someting the person concerned should decide, but I’ll still say my opinion”. The reason he cries after finishing is also not something logical. But I think it was probably because he could skate at its best, and because of the sense of fulfillment caused by being able to skate that well despite a few mistakes. I’m sure he himself didn’t really understand his own feelings at that time.

-I really wanted to draw the scene of Yuuri and Victor skating the exhibition together. In the original setting Victor was meant to join in as a surprise, but in the anime they were wearing perfectly matching costumes and I was the one surprised (LOL). They were doing lifts as if it’s nothing, but Yuuri’s exhibition program for this season was “Hanarezu ni Soba ni Ite”, so maybe they just tried it out while fooling around during practice.

-I was told “we can have a C part, though only about 30 seconds!”, and thinking about what could fit I decided to show an ending that would give hope for the future, with Yuuri in St.Petersburg. I was told that the last episode had a number of scenes that was about twice a normal anime episode, and beside that they even had to add those 30 seconds. I’m sure the staff must have had a really hard time.

-The selfish decision ultimately taken by the selfish Yuuri Katsuki is to continue competitive skating. I think there were many reasons that led to this conclusion. Not only what Victor gave him, but Yurio’s performance in the FS also managed to pull Yuuri back to the ice, and maybe he was influenced by the other athletes’ performances too. However, Yurio definitely wanted to see more of Yuuri’s skating, and Victor wanted as well. I guess Yuuri might be finally realizing how much things have changed from one year ago, when he almost decided to quit, and how now he’s on a completely different path.