But how such a promising show ended up being so underwhelming? It has an interesting premise, very appealing character designs, previews suggested strong visual direction and great sports scenes combined with a quality soundtrack. The first two episodes were perfectly watchable. What went wrong? Well, honestly, quite much.
Firstly - Yuri on Ice is surprisingly cartoonish - it heavily relies on exaggerated goofiness and chibi faces. It definitely isn't a serious sports drama - its general tone is rather light-hearted and inconsequential. In itself it isn't anything wrong (although I admit it isn't what I expected), but it heavily damages its ability to create tension. And tension is something which this show sorely lacks - during ice skating performances there wasn't a single moment I felt on the edge of my seat, feeling pressure of important things being at stake. So I felt exactly the opposite one should feel watching well-executed sports anime.
The show also significantly struggles in the writing department - the script seems devoid of ideas of how to outline key events and where to go with them. It's also very repetitive - the typical episode goes as following: someone does a skating program (with all important points of it explicitly explained to us in an off-screen commentary), he is scored and then the show proceeds to the next skating program. Repeat several times. Most of events, characters backstories and development are narrated to the audience by internal monologues of skaters during those programs. It comes off jarringly unskillful. All the more the show has a penchant for introducing number of new skaters per episode, telling their stories only during their skating programs, and forgetting about them the moment they get the score. As a result the show is extremely unfocused. It jumps between skater to skater, with little connection to the main narrative, as if it wanted to fill up the time the writer had no idea how to spend better. If we combine that with questionable quality of individual lines, the fact most of side-skaters are boring and with the annoying tendency of the show to reiterate the same points over and over again we have to come to a sad conclusion: the writing is bad.
After the second episode the anime doesn't excel in animation either. Quality takes a big hit, ice skating programs lack frames and key animator's polish. It makes one wonder even more strongly why this show decided to include so many of them. The soundtrack helps to save the situation a little - some of those skating programs are still quite pleasing too watch - but it's by no means enough.
THE NEXT PARAGRAPHS CONTAIN VAGUE SPOILERS
And finally we've come to the show's main selling point - M x M romance(?). What this show plays with its main pairing is probably the most self-aware, obnoxious and dishonest baiting game I've ever seen in the medium - the anime is constantly devising the scenes building up a serious, honest, for my taste even tad too conventional, romantic relationship between two guys. But all of that in either a tongue-in-cheek or very fuzzy way. It does it so intensely at the end of the show the main pairing is almost undeniable, but at the same time as a relationship it remains totally ambiguous.
Usually I don't mind ambiguous relationships in anime that much, I even frequently find them offering interesting storyline perspectives. Not in the case of Yuri on Ice though - this show suggests non-straight relationship in so utterly unsubtle ways they make sense narratively only if they lead to a conventional and clear romantic pairing. They don't. As a result the show ends up being extremely disingenuous and deserves only to be booed off for that.
Even ignoring the above dishonesty the show still isn't a particularly good romance - it spends too much of its energy on setting up those little moments suggesting (never confirming!) the characters are in love to accurately capture the magic and emotion between too people drawn to each other. Since it also isn't a good sports show nor a character drama it ultimately isn't worth even a tenth of the hype it currently gets. The show might not be atrociously bad, there were clearly refreshing and interesting ideas behind it. But they were not enough.
All the more it doesn't really end conclusively - it only offers more promises and tells us we should wait for them to be delivered in the second season. I am not forcing anybody to do the same, but personally I'm not falling into that trap again.
