Yuri!! On Ice Episode 3: [I Am Eros, and Eros Is Me?! Face-Off! Hot Springs On Ice]

Now, that’s what I call an episode. I’m impressed and surprised at the same time. The show went all his way to offer not one, but two figure skating performances in a single episode! And I’m not even counting the practice ones. Each of them being really unique and nicely animated! Sure that still wasn’t as amazing as the one in the first episode but heh, I know hand-drawing things is horrendously hard so I think the quality was good enough for the amount of hand drawn movements we got in this episode. I did not count but the number of parts where characters were skating in this episode was really high, which only means, more frames to draw and more hard job for animators. So of course sometimes the faces were a bit off but heh! We still got much figure skating, so I won’t complain. I was fearing Yuri!! on ice will rely more on the “slice of life” aspect and leave the sport one aside for various reasons (especially money, since hand drawing dancing moves much cost a lot of work and money) but I was wrong. For the moment, Yuri!! on Ice is living up to my expectations. Sure there’s still the “bait” aspect of the show that I can’t really ignore because of how flagrant it is but still, I’ll try to skip that part and enjoy the greatness of the show.

This episode’s central theme was Yuri’s search for his Eros. Him trying to understand himself and his desires in order to regain confidence. As for Yurio  he started to understand there’s other things in life than greed for victory. Yurio found his agape in the person of his grandfather so I’m curious to see how the old man influenced that angry smol bean and also what made him so angry with life. Also, at the end of this episode, it looked like Yurio understood he wasn’t the center of the universe and his loss against Yuuri changed something in him. Now I can’t wait to see the moment he’ll come back in the show, changed and stronger than before.

I like the fact that you can tell Yuuri has grown as a character in just 3 episodes and I think his evolution can be told by looking at the way he acts around Victor. First he was blushing and uncomfortable around him and in this episode he was the one inciting contact and was less embarrassed by having victor wrapping his hand around him or other things. Sure he’s still blushing a bit, but he looks like he has accepted Victor’s presence and interest for him. Is it the first step towards more self confidence?

Now I wonder the direction the show will take. I was really expecting more episodes on Victor training the two Yuris in Japan, I did not think this will only last one episode. I was even envisaging the two yuris performance as the grand finale of the show. So now, what can they do ? Maybe meeting with the rest of the super skating stars who can be seen in the ending’s instagram feed? Maybe some backstory for Angry boi Yurio since the little backstory we got was some kind of troll, interrupted at the best part by Yuuri, as a way to say “hopopopop! It’s only episode 3, did you really think we’ll explain everything so soon! AHN! Naive you are”. Or maybe they’ll continue to focus on Yuuri’s training with Victor as his coach in order to win some championships. I don’t really know but I’m excited!