this seems to play every time I think about YOI tbh
I'm not the greatest fan of anime, I have to admit. But ever since I first saw caps and gifs of Yuri on Ice from friends, I knew that it was an anime that at some point, I should probably get into watching it. This is mostly from the first two episodes, so maybe i'll update it later on with more complete thoughts.
You can obviously tell that this show has a lot of money dumped into it considering how good looking it is. There's a couple of establishing shots that really impressed me with the amount of detail that was present (One in specific that I remember was Yuri coming into the train station after five years away, and the amount of details present on the electronic gate itself was quite nice) But one thing that really helps the show, at least from a visual standpoint, is the on ice shots. There was another one of Yuri and Pilsetsky standing together with the light streaming in from the windows, and I dunno, maybe it's me looking too deeply into it, but it gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling. Same sort of feeling I get going into community rinks all across Canada for an early Saturday morning hockey game.
Granted, some of the other elements are kind of iffy, It kind of feels like the relationship between Yuri and Viktor seems forced right off the bat, but I haven't seen many animes that even try to be honest with same sex relationship elements, only using it as shipping bait *coughFree!cough* but YOI manages to buck the trend, at least from early viewing and succeeds for the most part.
I think there's a reason why I was drawn to watch this anime at some point: it's a beautiful show, and aside from some pretty obvious and always regrettable fujoshi elements that seem practically par for the course in any popular sports anime, it does feel like an honest and well meaning same sex relationship between Viktor and Yuri.