Forum - View topicNEWS: Oricon Raises Yuri!! on Ice's 1st-Week Sales Figures From 35,589 to 50,878
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Rednimue
Posts: 107 |
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I really hope that, with all this money, MAPPA will make more great original Anime like Yoi in the future
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iamtooawesome
Posts: 351 Location: Thailand |
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Hey hey Fujoshi's are not the only one who's supporting this, let's not forget that figure skating otakus are in love with it. 1st week sales are kinda impressive considering that this is an original project with no franchise or whatnots.
This will definitely pressure Mappa  Season 2 or nah?
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I kinda doubt there are THAT many figure skating otaku out there to move the numbers that much, but I do agree with your premise that fujoshi aren't alone in their love for the show. And maybe I'm wrong, I just didn't know figure skating had any sort of major following. |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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Ice skating is fairly popular in Japan, actually. I remember reading a year ago it got higher ratings than soccer at one point. Both soccer and skating are more popular in Japan than the US. |
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Keichitsu0305
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Recent news article that talks about the popularity of figure skating in Japan, just to be fair in the argument over how wide spread YOI's appeal is with both female otaku + fujosh and non anime fans: http://jpninfo.com/58891
I do recall at the 2016 GPF in France that there were Japanese ads on the ice rink walls but, that only proves how smart Kubo and Sayo were in creating a sports anime that's niche in the US yet popular in Europe and parts of Asia while ALSO creating a genuine romance to attract female fans. But seriously, where's my movie Studio MAPPA? 
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Admiral Pizzaman
 Posts: 504 |
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I think it's about time to bring in more female directors to the anime industry. They may have some new ideas or concepts yet to be explored.
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4370 Location: New York |
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At least Americans GET soccer. It's nowhere near as popular as other sports but we get it, league matches air on basic cable TV, and it has a healthy pool of participants. Figure skating? Our biggest ode to figure skating was Blades of Glory, a film about how stupid figure skating was and how dumb the sport looks. If you're going to put on ice skates, put on some pads and play hockey. |
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iamtooawesome
Posts: 351 Location: Thailand |
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I agree with you no opinion is right or wrong since nothing is confirmed yet. Yet It's fairly popular too, I did a little research on Kubo and she did made a tiny impact to the Japanese(and most,y international) figure skating media...have you read her re-tweets? Her retweets mostly includes promotions of popular/Juniors Japanese FS including Yuzuru Hanyu(who have a very large fanbase in Japan and worldwide) she even did a lil' post/ or a market pitch for s certain female amateur FS and that expanded to veteran retired skater and now turned choreographer Kenji Minamoto up to international FS' and world champions like Evgeni, Lambert, Weir and Denis Ten(which all recognized and followed her on twitter btw). Tho everything is mostly directed towards the olympic champion Yuzuru because he's an icon in Japan. Considering that he has so many non-anime otaku fans, guess who probly dragged them to it? yoi lel. I forgot to mention this I just found out recently that alot of Japanese queers(mostly lesbians) supports YOI. If you notice the non canonical fanbase pairings in Twitter Victuri takes first place, then Otayuri then MILASARA(the only female pairing and it's ridiculously popular like the ShinjixKaworu pairing). The amount of queer-support that YOI has is massive, even straight males/females joins the queer bandwagon regardless of the pairing's gender. Unlike Free! which clearly aims at adult teen audience it didn't made much impact to the LGBT/queer community in Japan even tho it has some fairly balanced female characters. It seems like nobody can explain it yet why the queer community of LGBT supports YOI mostly and it could be one of the factors why it sells high. |
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manapear
Posts: 1525 |
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Hear, hear~. Agreed with and loving the comments on fujoshi saving anime, and how historical the show is (and because of Sayo Yamamoto and Kubo-sensei as well). I'm so glad for all of this. This is very amazing, and also very needed in these kind of times~. |
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archyteckie08
Posts: 21 |
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You are reading to much into this. Please understand that Japanese don't see things the way Americans do. Just because YOI is doing good, it does not mean Japan is can't get enough of gay love stories. Just because Japanese lesbians like YOI doesn't make it a marker for LGBT acceptance. Gay Japanese anime fans can like YOI on ice solely for the ice skating or to cosplay Victor. Please understand, it's not good to make assumptions without understanding the context. It's like how Japanese people think America is a pro-gay country because we have gay marriage. You and I know that that is not true.So why would Japan be any different? YOI's success is based on it being the first ice skating anime. Ice skating is big in Japan;http://jpninfo.com/58891 .So don't doubt YOI popularity isn't due to this. Next time you watch an ice skating show, look at how many Japanese companies are advertised in the rink. This show may have been advertised as a pro-gay anime in America (which is really the only way to market this show in the US; ice skating isn't big here and this show as never going to appeal to the average anime fan in the States) but in Japan it was heavily publicized on it been the first major ice skating anime. Please note that MAPPA spent A LOT of money promoting this show. In order to keep up with my Japanese, I read a lot Japanese magazines and cruise various Japanese sites (from anime to mainstream). There were multiple ads, feature stories, and fluff pieces on YOI on every Japanese magazine or site I went to. So gloating about YOI's recognition, is like bragging about Walking Dead's success in America. Neither was gained organically. They were planned to be the successes they came out to be. Anyhow most Japanese reviewers make a bigger deal of the skating sequences than Victor/Yuri's relationship. Therefore the bulk of reviews on Amazon JP either briefly or don't even mention the BL stuff in the show. In fact according Japan's no.1 character ranking site, the Russian Yuri is more popular than Victor, Yuri, or Victuri in Japan; https://www.animeranking.net/stat.php?id=771. It will be interesting to see if this trend will reflect in YOI's merch sales. If so, a sequel to YOI could switch to Russian Yuri's perceptive. Japanese people also don't make a big deal about the show being made by and for women. In Japan, its understood that anime industry is trending towards female audiences and sports animes. From the creator's interviews, she implies that YOI was conceptualized based on these factors. In Japan, its understood that if you want to reach women, you must hire them. Video game companies hire Japanese female staffs to produce female games. Japanese people do not marvel that a woman director and creative director were hired to produce YOI. What would be newsworthy is if they were hired for the latest Gundam show. You must understand that the average Japanese has seen a massive amount of BL stuff in their life. It's never used to "show acceptance among LGBT" but mainly as fanservice or comedy. Fanservice pushed to trigger BL fans to buy a lot of goods. Picking at BL for comedic reasons is extremely popular in Japan; http://www.geek.com/games/gakuen-handsome-is-ugly-as-sin-on-purpose-1671878/. So BL stuff is not progressive in their society at all. At its worst, its considered exploitative. At its best, its considered hilarious. Even if you were to make a legit gay manga or anime in Japan, the Japanese wouldn't recognize it as being anything but BL fanservice or as a comedy. However having an openly gay idol group make a major debut, would be considered progressive in Japan. Any whiff of gayness on an idol can completely destroy their career. However a popular BL manga or anime can be a major payday for the creators. I know it sounds odd but Yes, Japan shrugs at fantasy gayness but shuns actual gayness. This is a hard concept for pro-LGBT Americans to understand. An American who is anti-gay wouldn't watch YOI but a Japanese who is wouldn't let that stop them from watching YOI; because they like Russian Yuri and ice skating. There are several reasons why a Japanese person who is not gay or pro-gay would make or watch a BL series. One example, they can't draw women well. Patalliro! is a classic comedy manga that centers around a flamboyant king, his pretty boy bodyguard, and the bodyguard's male lover who become pregnant later on in the series. The author is straight and admits that his stuff is BL driven because he can't draw women well. Japanese people read it because they thought it was funny. Secondly, Japanese men and women have always objectified pretty men; http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2010/08/1000-years-of-pretty-boys. If you watch an interview with a modern bishounen celebrity, the male host (who is straight) will always compliment him on his beauty; saying, "美しいな" ( beautiful) randomly through out the interview. This is not considered weird by the Japanese audience. He's not so much admiring a man but a pretty object. Same with a woman fangirling over two pretty boys together; she doesn't care about the pleasure of the men she's observing but her own. Sadly, Ikemen/bishounen were and have always been heavily objectified by Japanese society. Displayed as objects without sexual agency and whose beauty existences purely for the male/female gaze. Victor is constantly put on display not for Yuri's pleasure but for the audience (at home or at the skate rink). Victor's showy-est affections for Yuri were always done in a public manner, never with them alone or unseen. To the BL fan, this is what YOI's BL moments are all about; self gratification for themselves not the characters. How progressive is that!? Thirdly, the Japanese love to compare a deep same gender friendship as similar in passion to a romantic relationship. So they constantly use or allude to sexual themes to quantify the strength of character's friendship. In interviews you'll often hear famous Japanese unmarried male actors (who are known for being good friends) commenting that they are like an old couple. In Japanese history, you'll study poetry made by a warlord proclaiming the love of his soliders; and it reads like a love letter. You'll also read about the letters from famous Samurai's proclaiming strong love for his former Master/Teacher (師弟愛, lit. "Teacher Student love" ) . These loves are considered to be spiritual and non-sexual. The romantic tone is done for metaphor purposes. So some Japanese audience will accept YOI's BL, as a metaphor, to illustrate the deep kinship or student-teacher relationship between the Yuri/Victor. Another reason, BL is profitable. BL is a merchandise driven genre. So much so, you'll have a popular non-BL series that produces official merchandise with BL fan pairing; Bungo Stray Dogs with Dazai and Chuya and Durarara's izaya and shizuo . There is loads of YOI merchendise coming out late Jan - April 2017. So much so, there is a blog just to catalog it all; http://yurionicegoods.com/. Finally BL genre is a shortcut to gain popularity, show case their drawing style (to get hired by a company to make a manga adaptation), or a easy way for a struggling manga artist to pay the bills. A lot of mainstream manga artists, started out drawing BL; Strike Tanaka (Servamp), Yana Toboso (Black Butler), Yukihiro Utako (Uta no Price Manga) , and Natsume Ono (Resturante Paradiso). For manga artists, that want to be taken seriously, doing BL is seen as "selling out." It's seen as being lazy because the BL genre is known for exploiting tropes, bad writing, and bad drawings. YOI being an original, expensive to produce, and unproven concept uses BL as a way to safe guard its popularity. The creator nor the director are famous enough to have an anime show popular off name recognition alone. So if they use BL elements, they can depend on the BL audience to support the show no matter what. While at the same time, they could use those same BL elements as a metaphor for platonic love; which is why Yuri mentions in a press conference, he skates for non-sexual love, why Victor become Yuri's coach, and why the creator tweeted that YOI was not BL. Not mention designing a lot of the characters based on real ice skaters and having guest voice work done by famous ice skaters. This would provide legitimacy of YOI not being BL. They had to do this to ensure YOI popularity by playing to BL and mainstream fans simultaneously. BL fans can't move 50,000 units without the mainstream's help. However, I believe YOI's sales will drop dramatically with the discs that feature the most BL driven episodes. When viewing stuff made from a different culture, please try understand the way you see their stuff isn't the way they see it. When I started really learning Japanese, I found out a lot of my perception on Japanese culture was fundamentally wrong. I had to correct my thinking in order to communicate successfully with Japanese people. Grammar and Kanji doesn't hold foreigners back in learning Japanese as much as their unfounded prejudices or assumptions do. It's fine if you want to enjoy YOI as LGBT friendly but please understand most Japanese (even gay ones) don't find it that way. Many Japanese just see it as a ice skating anime with BL fan service. |
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relyat08
Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I reject the idea that Yamamoto and Kubo only put the "BL" in this show to safeguard its popularity and success. Their interviews throughout their careers, and especially Kubo's interviews on YOI, make it very clear that they wanted to depict a gay romance. Kubo even expressed confusion that some International fans didn't recognize it as such. Subtlety and subtext are inherent and much more common in Japanese culture, and this was pretty blatant stuff. I don't think the sales will drop because of the heavier BL stuff, but I think they will drop because that's just what happens to later volumes of pretty much any show. Especially a show with bonuses and event tickets for the first volume.
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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Asking people not to judge anime through an American lens is hard. Not that I disagree with archyteckie08, but ethnocentrism is a term for a reason. Americans are usually the ones making a big deal about racial and gender representation in media and the industry. Not surprised to hear it's mostly westerners making a big deal on those things.
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Ashymo
Posts: 66 |
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Source to these so called interviews, please. I'm with archyteckie08's post although I don't agree with everything they said. Their paragraph about the bishounen bit is spot on though. Kubo clearly said in a report right before the show aired that she wanted to emphasize the male characters sexiness and beauty, and didn't want them to lose to bishoujo's in that department. Nowhere in her report did she mention that she wanted to depict a BL romance. |
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5504 Location: Mexico |
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From the writer's twitter "Regardless of what everyone thinks of this work, in the world of Yuri on Ice, absolutely no one will be discriminated for what they love. I will definitely protect that world."
She's also previously tweeted that she was tired of male/female romances and that she wanted to portray and develop a mature relationship between two men. Don't have the links for those, though. And there's also this translation of a recently published interview in which she says things such as "[Victor and Yuuri] can't live without each other" and that her favorite scene to be animated was [the kiss] in episode 7 and they worked really hard in building the emotional momentum towards it so it felt natural. |
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relyat08
Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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^This stuff. (Thanks Crowlia!)
If you don't think that's Kubo clearly stating she was depicting a gay romance, you will never convince me you understand Japanese culture and their views on relationships and public affection. |
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