I’m back from the event and I’ll write a report before going to sleep, mostly because I’m sure I will not be able to decipher my scribbles when I wake up… It’s not the full talk show since you can’t record it and also I couldn’t possibly write down everything, but I tried to take note of most things, especially stuff that has never been mentioned elsewhere. In the end it became quite long so I guess I was able to get most of the stuff down…

Needless to say it’s my notes, so other people might write about parts I omitted, etc. To be honest quite a few of the things they said especially in the beginning, like what the seiyuu think about their characters, is something I’ve read so many times in interviews that I could almost answer in their place, lol… I was a bit disappointed that one of the questions that was answered is the one about Chris’ mysterious acquaintance, because actually Kubo answered that in Pash already (it’s in the Q&A part I’ll be translating later), and I hoped they would feature questions about stuff that hasn’t been explained yet. Well I guess not everybody reads interviews, but still…

Due to the format of the report you can find my comments here and there, mostly in brackets.

Under the cut because it’s long.

I forgot to mention something important: the ones participating in the talk show were Mitsurou Kubo, Toshiyuki Toyonaga (Yuuri), Junichi Suwabe (Victor), Kouki Uchiyama (Yurio).

The talk show was divided into 3 parts: short program, free skating, interviews. The “short program” was mostly them saying basic things like impressions on the show etc, the “free skating” was about curiosities and other things that can be said now that the anime is over, and the “interviews” part was a Q&A (but they didn’t really keep the format for the SP and FS parts..)

I went to the live viewing, not the actual place where the event was held, but in this case there were no differences (no extras in either place). They published a new official picture that you probably have already seen.

After some introductions they started the “short program”, whose first topic was “how do you feel about the character you played?”.

Toyonaga said that he didn’t play Yuuri with his mind but with his heart, so his acting wasn’t really intentional but more spontaneous, in fact he doesn’t really remember how he acted him, what he remembers is mostly because he watched the anime afterwards. He also said that it was an honor to work so close to Suwabe and that they get along well (to which Suwabe initially joked “do we?” but then confirmed, lol).



Suwabe said that especially in the beginning it was hard to grasp Victor’s character because he’s different than ordinary people and also he can’t really relate to him, but after some time he decided that thinking too much was wrong and decided to play him in a “don’t think, feel” way (he really said “don’t think, feel” in English, and I wonder how many in the audience could understand that, lol). So actually, much like Toyonaga, he doesn’t really remember how he acted. It was a very unusual character to play for him.

Toyonaga said that, since when he plays Yuuri it’s really like he’s “becoming” Yuuri, he gets very nervous when he’s asked, for example in events, “say this line from the show!” or “say something as Yuuri!”, because it’s hard to suddenly get into that state of mind. At this point they also mentioned that they recently had to play the characters’ roles again for the collaboration with the browser game “Shingeki no Bahamut” and they sounded amused. (I actually started the game last week for the sole purpose of playing the collaboration event… I’m sure someone will post pics when it starts)

Uchiyama said that Yurio’s hairstyle changed and with that the impression he gave him changed too, but actually he didn’t really change the way he played him.

Kubo also said that she was so busy with the storyboard because of the tight schedule that she also doesn’t remember some things, like how she decided some parts, so actually when she watched the anime she could watch it with renewed feelings, as if she was just a viewer. She also said that some scenes turned out a bit different in the anime than they were in her original storyboard.

After this they were asked which scenes left a strong impression on them when they watched the broadcast.

Uchiyama mentioned Yurio’s lines when he says “pig”, and the part where he’s sent “training” at the shrine and waterfall by Victor. The others laughed because it was like “in the WHOLE series are THESE the scenes that impressed you??”.

Toyonaga said that for Yuuri’s very first lines in episode 1 (before the OP, when he says “He always surprises me” etc) he was actually told at what point of the story Yuuri says it. I mean, Yuuri narrates this part as if he’s looking back on the past, and Toyonaga was told at what point of the story this happens, but he said that he’s not going to reveal it and asked that people try to imagine when it is that Yuuri “narrates” this part. (I personally have no idea, though Yuuri doesn’t sound very cheerful so I’d argue that it’s in one of the “tense” moments of the show, like ep 9 or the end of ep 11? But too little elements to judge)

They mentioned that because of this narration fans made theories about Victor eventually dying, and Suwabe was like “Victor is alive!! And Makkachin too!!”.

After this Suwabe said that neither now nor in the future he is going to reveal what he thought when acting the scenes in the anime. He said that of course he has his own interpretation and he played Victor based on that, but that since this anime has many elements that can be read in lots of different ways he is not going to disclose his personal views and wants fans to interpret it each in their own way. The only thing he confirmed is that he likes Makkachin, lol. (To be honest, it’s basically the same as what Kubo says, but Suwabe articulated it better. As a side note, Suwabe is a very good talker, always expresses his point clearly and is really careful about what he says and how it could affect who listens, while I think Kubo has a messy way of speaking which is sometimes hard to follow, even in written interviews, and I believe this is what is causing some controversies)

Suwabe also said that, as a viewer, the parking scene in episode 7 touched his heart. Here they mentioned that YOI was featured on the TV Asahi music program “Music Station” on Friday night because this scene was aired too, and they laughed making some comments about how the scenes they showed were “barely ok for prime time”. (It’s because they basically showed scenes like when Yuuri and Victor are with their foreheads touching and Yuuri tells him “please only watch me”, etc, which are scenes that would make anyone misunderstand the point of the show if they don’t watch them within the context… But I swear this time it was better, because the last time YOI was featured on Music Station they showed the scene at the end of ep 7 too… I really wish they’d show more figure skating scenes so that it doesn’t just look like a BL anime about skaters, sigh. By the way this time it was featured because “History Maker” was ranked #11 in a ranking of popular anime/drama theme songs)

Uchiyama said that he was impressed by all of Yurio’s rude expressions like “pig”, and especially when in ep 10 he told Victor “a ring received from a stupid animal is just rubbish”. He said “I’m surprised he could even come up with such a wording at all” (Yurio actually says “kachiku” in that line, which means “livestock/cattle” and in Japanese it’s very much like calling someone an “animal without a brain”). The seiyuu thought he said “kachiku” because he used to call Yuuri “pig”, but Kubo said that actually it was meant to be a pun with “Katsuki” because it sounds similar to “kachiku”. (Though to be honest Yurio is definitely speaking Russian here so he couldn’t possibly make a pun with “Katsuki” and “kachiku”, lol.)

Suwabe said that he likes the scene where Yurio tells Lilia “I’ll gladly give you my body and soul if that can make me win”.

Kubo said that in the beginning she inserted everyday life scenes so that the viewers could get familiar with the characters, and though they did their best to make the skating scenes interesting too she was scared that people would complain that they preferred the everyday life scenes, but luckily she didn’t receive this kind of comments. She also said that she likes how Hasetsu is mentioned again various times throughout the show (like in ep 10 indeed).

Here the guy doing the MC, which is also the guy that voiced one of the commentators in the anime and is actually an announcer for TV Asahi, said that when YOI was airing the real GP series was being held too, and that commenting for YOI had just the same feeling as commenting for real TV matches. Kubo said that when she wrote the storyboard she actually listened to sport live commentary on TV and wrote it down to use it as reference for writing the live reporting in YOI.

Toyonaga said that when there were no monologues during the skating scenes he just watched them as a spectator. Actually when they did the recording, apart from the first episodes, the anime footage was not ready yet so they did most of the recording watching Kenji Miyamoto’s footage. Uchiyama said that Yurio’s skating was performed by a woman, and Kubo praised her saying that she was really good.

Toyonaga said that sometimes he had mixed thoughts in his mind when playing Yuuri during the skating scenes, because part of his mind was thinking (looking at Miyamoto’s footage) “I wonder how this turns out in the anime”, but since he had to act he actually had to picture in his head how the scene would turn out.

They mentioned Seung-gil’s costume (the rainbow-colored one) and they all agreed that the gap between the costume and Seung-gil was hilarious. Kubo said that actually when she ordered the costume she thought that Chacott’s designer would create something that would make Seung-gil look like a cool guy, and she didn’t expect it to be something flamboyant like the current one. They said that it looks like it has origami cranes attached to it, and Kubo commented that he looks like “a new species of bird discovered in the tropics”.

Still regarding costumes, they said that the mismatch between Georgi’s physique and his costume was also amusing. The seiyuu commented how Georgi was the most popular character among male members of the staff, but Kubo said that actually later on he was substituted by Otabek, because all guys found Otabek cool.

Regarding the last episodes Kubo said that Nobunari Oda wanted to participate in YOI himself and so they gave him a part, but it happened after the series was already airing, it wasn’t planned from the start. For Stéphane Lambiel it was even more a last-minute decision, because it was really sudden and they had to redraw a part of episode 12 (Hiramatsu did this) to feature him and had to re-record the scene. The episode was going to air on Wednesday, and they called Suwabe a few days before asking him to come back to recording on Monday (yes, 2 days before the airing..) for the scene with Lambiel. Kubo also said that when she mentioned that Victor’s blades are gold because they took inspiration from Lambiel’s he showed them his skating shoes and she was very happy about that.

Suwabe commented how YOI was very popular in the anime event in Taiwan he went to recently, and they all agreed on the fact that it’s really popular overseas. They also briefly mentioned Evgenia Medvedeva but didn’t comment in detail though they were all kind of giggling.

The “short program” part ended here, yes it wasn’t very short.. And they started the “free skating” part.

They asked Kubo how she got into figure skating, and she said that in the beginning she was just a very light fan, like she would sometimes watch it on TV when it was on, but she had a friend who was really into it. She got more passionate after traveling to Europe with Yamamoto to do research for the series. Yamamoto explained her a lot of stuff about figure skating, and it’s also Yamamoto the one who was a hardcore fan from the start. (Kubo praised Yamamoto lots of times during this event and emphasized the fact that many things were her idea. I have the feeling that she feels a bit bad because since she’s the most “visible” one she gets all the appreciation by fans, even though Yamamoto had as big a part in creating YOI if not bigger, since she was the one who originally came up with it and was involved in the making until the end, even after the manga storyboard was completed)

She mentioned that recently she spent 18 days in Europe with Yamamoto, but she pointed out that it’s not for YOI’s 2nd season or something like that, they just had decided that after YOI’s end she and Yamamoto would go on a trip to Europe together. They went to see the European Championships in Ostrava (Czech Republic) and Art on Ice in Zurich. She mentioned how it’s really hard to get tickets for figure skating in Japan while in Europe it’s easier.

She told an anecdote about when she was in Ostrava. She said that she spotted two girls cosplaying Yuuri and Victor (not really full cosplays, just partial) at the ice rink, and after the tournament was over they were taking pictures in front of the rink. When they saw Kubo they spoke to her in Japanese and asked her if she was Japanese (they didn’t understand who she was and she didn’t mention it), then they told her she could take pictures if she wanted, and she was amused because of this curious happening (but she did take pictures). She also said that when she posted on Instagram that she was in Ostrava a person replied to her “if you want I can show you around!”, and when she checked her profile she realized it was the girl that was cosplaying Victor at the ice rink. And she said that she even saw her again on a train when they were leaving Ostrava, but she didn’t have the courage to reveal who she was. (I must say this is quite a coincidence…! I wonder if the girls will find out about this now that Kubo has said it). By the way of course she was really happy to find YOI fans, but she said she preferred not to post the picture online because Japan has different cosplay manners than many other countries in the world and she didn’t want to look like she approved of cosplaying at an ice rink when there’s a competition going on (in Japan it would be super taboo to cosplay at any ice rink, or any public space actually, unless you received a permit to do so).

Toyonaga said that he sometimes receives fanletters from overseas fans written in Japanese and he really appreciates the effort. He was amused by a fan whose letter started out very politely but then somehow turned into plain Japanese (with no honorifics etc). Suwabe said that he too receives letters from overseas and also he receives a lot of replies in other languages on Twitter. Kubo said that currently most of the replies she gets on Twitter are actually from foreigners and she is always worried when she wants to write a pun because it would be hard to translate into another language. She also mentioned how sometimes she gets replies from people saying in Spanish “I can’t understand what you say (because it’s in Japanese)” and she was like “I can’t understand what you say either…!”. (To be honest, I really don’t understand why people send her replies in languages that are not English, especially the ones writing “I can’t understand!”. What’s the point in tweeting that to her?? She isn’t even very good at English, I think Yamamoto is better..)



Suwabe said that he likes how YOI is realistic but it’s not just hyperrealistic and has some fantastic elements in it too, because he said they are balanced very well.

Kubo said that she is very happy about YOI’s popularity but she feels that she didn’t absolutely create it alone and it was the result of many people working together, so now she actually wants to do something to repay YOI for all the good things it brought to her.

After this it was the end of the FS part and the start of the interview part, aka Q&A.

Q: What do you pay attention to when drawing the characters?

Kubo said that first of all she decided to create designs that would allow to distinguish the characters even when drawn in very simple deformed ways (like how she usually draws them in the autographed shikishi). Since Yuuri is the protagonist she created his design so that he would be easy for Hiramatsu to draw. She drew Victor in a very detailed way, but actually in the beginning she didn’t make his eyelashes so visible, because she usually doesn’t make eyelashes on male characters very evident. Victor’s beautiful eyelashes are something that was added in the anime, but she liked it and now she also has fun drawing them like that. Yurio is actually the character that she designed first, and she took inspiration from other male characters with blond hair and light eyes that she used to like, like Rabi from Madou King Granzort and Hyouga from Saint Seiya.

Toyonaga said that indeed in Kubo’s storyboard he could understand the character’s expressions even when they are drawn deformed. Uchiyama commented that he misses reading the storyboard and that he wants more of it (in the audio commentary of the BD vol.2 he also says he really liked reading it). Kubo said that while in Europe with Yamamoto they decided the contents of the short manga that will be given as a present to the purchasers of all the BD or DVD volumes of the anime. She didn’t say what it would be about, but she said that it will not contain all the characters and that Uchiyama will probably like it (so I guess Yurio has a nice role in it). She also vaguely mentioned Barcelona so it might be set around eps 10-12, but yeah it was really vague so we can’t know for sure.

Q: If you were a skater, who would you want as your coach?

Toyonaga said of course he would like Victor, but he also commented that probably sometimes Victor would really get on his nerves because there are moments when it’s impossible to understand what he’s thinking. He also said that he wouldn’t mind JJ’s parents either, but Kubo said that they have a set of family customs, like sometimes you must hug them etc, so if you’re like Yuuri who prefers to be left alone you’d probably feel super uncomfortable.

Suwabe said that Yakov must be an excellent coach because in the end all the best skaters were trained by him.

Regarding Celestino, Uchiyama commented that he was surprised at how he’d say something as blunt as “Phichit has a radiance that Yuuri hasn’t”, considering that Yuuri used to be his pupil. They commented that he has a strong personality and that in the past we also see that he didn’t really get along well with JJ.

Uchiyama also said that he likes Lilia and Yakov, and that when they are together with Yurio they look visually striking, and almost like a family.

Kubo said that in Switzerland she spotted Alexei Mishin (the coach who was very likely the visual inspiration for Yakov) carrying a heart-shaped cushion that they threw to one of his students, and when they were outside he put it on his head, she guesses maybe because it was very cold. The picture of Yakov she uploaded on her Twitter after the talk show is a reference to that, lol.

Q: Who is the man together with Chris?

Kubo said he’s a member of the Swiss Skating Federation and maybe he used to be an ice skater, and for some reason is caring for Chris’ cat (mentioning that he cares for Chris’ cat probably caused people to read between the lines, because many around me were giggling, lol). The character design for him was not really made by her but by the animators. She said that she doesn’t know his name but that since she thinks he resembles Masumi from Glass no Kamen she calls him “Masumi”.

Q: What figure skating technique would you like to perform?

Toyonaga said he would like to do hydroblading (he didn’t know the name, he visually described it and Kubo said the name), and that he wonders how skaters see the surroundings while performing this technique. He also said he would like to know how the world around you looks while you’re doing figure skating jumps.

Suwabe said he wants to do a 100-rotations jump, or a quad axel. He would like to be the first in the world to perform a technique.

Uchiyama said “there isn’t really anything I would like to try myself (and here everyone laughed because really, the way he’s just emotionless about things, without meaning to sound offensive or anything, is just amusing), but I wonder, don’t skaters get headaches when they do spins?” Kubo said that, compared to Western athletes, the faces of Japanese athletes don’t really get red when they spin, like she said that Shizuka Arakawa’s face never turned red. They concluded that it probably depends on the single person’s constitution, on the way they spin and that maybe there are racial differences too.

This was the last question and then they just said the final greetings. In the end Kubo commented about the fact that YOI can be interpreted in various ways and that, even though in interviews they ask her details about the story and so she answers, she actually encourages people to interpret the series how they prefer, without necessarily being influenced too much by what she says in interviews. (And here I remind you something she said in the booklet for the BD vol.1, which is that it’s fine to interpret the series how you prefer, but do not go around saying that your theory is canon. In other words, she is fine with people creating their own headcanons and believing that they are right, but she would prefer that they do not try to force single interpretations onto other people unless they are officially confirmed. The recent Pash! interview actually gave me the impression that sometimes she is forced to point out some things because she sees people trying to convince others that their own interpretations are correct even though they are not supported by official material)

Beside that they all said the usual things about “please support the series because if many people support it maybe there will be a chance to see a sequel, since we all want to make one too”.

Bonus random facts about the screening of the anime (in random order):

-For the first episodes they used footage from the BDs, not from the TV airing.

-In the cinema I went to people were mostly silent and almost no one used penlights, but lots of people cheered (and laughed) on Georgi and JJ.

-During the scene at the end of episode 7 I thought people’s reactions were very realistic, because you could hear muffled screeching, people holding their breaths and going like “ahhhh…”. I thought the audience watching the scene in the real arena within the anime must have sounded like that too, lol.

-Thunderous applause when Phichit congratulated Victor and Yuuri for their “marriage” in ep 10.

-Not as many people singing along JJ’s song as I would have expected, probably because the lyrics are in English.

-People giggling during the scene where we see Chris’ mysterious acquaintance.

-The close up shot of Victor’s naked ass from ep 1 on the huge cinema screen: priceless (Chris’ ass too).

-All the close up shots of Yuuri and Victor all over each other on the huge cinema screen: priceless and more embarrassing to watch than the ass shots (I mean it in a positive way, lol).

-The sound was very nice and you could hear the audience’s cheers much louder than from a TV or PC (for the first time I could hear people screaming “davai!” at Yurio in Onsen on ICE).

-Applauses at the end of every character’s performance, and most of the times after jumps as well.

-People crying during Yuuri and Yurio’s last FS performance (and some during JJ’s as well).

-The OP footage was only shown before ep 1 and the ED footage only after ep 7 (both times they were shown creditless). The “special ED” of ep 10 was shown too of course. No next episode previews.

Unrelated: I received a few questions via private message, I will get to them when I wake up…