Yuri On Ice from a Performer Perspective

Hi everyone and welcome to my place!

Welcome to my first random thoughts post!!!!! Yeah, I’m going to talk about Anime this time, but it is not really a review. As you know, my reviews are always spoiler-less which is not be this case (so SPOILERS AHEAD!). Other thing is, I’m not going to talk about all the things about Yuri on Ice, I’m only going to talk how I related to this Anime and how he showed pretty well a performer life.

For the people who don’t know, I play the flute for more than a decade (although this last year I didn’t play at all 🙁 oh well time is not enough for everything I’m afraid) and I had the opportunity to play in all sort of events, alone and in a group (and while in group I had the opportunity to play some solos).

This way, the thing I want to talk (and what I loved the most on Yuri on Ice) is how accurate they show you all the feelings and thoughts people have before, during and after a performance.

• Let’s start from the beginning, the first episode where Yuri just performed horrible due to being nervous and then goes to the bathroom to cry his eyes out.

I can’t express the amount of nervousness and pressure you feel before starting a performance! Really it is just overbearing! And I can’t imagine what people may feel when they are entering to do something for the WORLD to see! It’s just too scary guys! And it’s normal for you to sometimes F up, specially when you are doing something where you need to be in your best capabilities to perform well and let me tell you… It is only needed one mistake for everything to fall apart. Why? Because you completely lose your focus and without focus more mistakes will happen. It is really hard to do a mistake and overcome it in the middle of a performance… Normally when you are nervous you just take a deep breath, focus and continue, but let’s face it, if you are doing something that you need to control your breathing for the right moment such as playing flute or dancing it is just not possible. So I really can understand what Yuri felt and why did he performed so badly. Remember this, because I am going to pick this up later in the post.

Afterwards Yuri goes to the bathroom and starts crying. Some people may find this as showing a weak character, (I KNOW that I read someone saying this and I wanted to put here the link because it is really a nice review, but I can’t remember for the love of everything who was it and I can’t find the post anywhere -.-) but for me it only shows him as human.  Think about it, you worked months for that performance, you did it without any mistake countless of times and then, when you have to shine the most you get overburden with anxiety and fear and you just mess up everything… It is just horrible! I’ve cried after performances because they weren’t as good I was capable of, I lent my shoulder to friends of mine for them to cry after doing the same thing. It is just normal! It’s not only the feeling of sadness, but also the feeling of irritation and frustration. So I really loved this part, from the beginning I knew this Anime will not only be about some guys ice skating with all these powers, no! They would be real people who did mistakes and when they failed they would feel sad about it.

Other example about this pressure is when King JJ also gets completely overburden with the pressure of being in the finals and also just makes mistake after mistake. Even though he was able to recover he couldn’t perform well because his concentration was already gone.

• Performing better while alone

Remember when I told you I would come back why I understood why Yuri performed so badly? Well I also understand why he performed so good later while doing Victor’s routine. Let’s face it, he is in the world finals so he needs to be good! And when you feel completely comfortable is when you are able to do the your best performances (That’s why when doing it in public never seems to be so good as you did in your room). So it really didn’t surprise me for him to be able to perform that routine brilliantly.

• Everyone makes mistakes

Let me tell you, doing a performance without any kind of mistake is almost impossible. There are always tiny things that don’t go that well and there are always small mistakes. Yuri on Ice really did show how reality is, if you go and watch the real grand prix finals you will see that most of them make mistakes. It’s just only natural, they are trying to overcome themselves with their routines, it’s the only way to win! So, it’s just normal that they all end up falling here and there, it makes part of the performing world!

• Entering the Zone

This is something that is really rare to happen, but entering the zone IS possible (I’ve been there – one of my best performances that I was never able to surpass) so I really liked to watch Yurio to go into the zone in the short routine – although I’ve seen this in other animes such as Kukuro No Basket. But the thing about this is how well they made it! Your mind goes completely blank and you feel that you are 100% focused, maybe 110% and it’s true that in the end you don’t remember anything that you have done! You have a feeling of making a great job, but don’t have any recording of what were you thinking during the performance – which gets me to the last point:

• Thoughts during the Performance

I know that for someone who doesn’t perform may think that people while doing their thing are not thinking. They are completely focused and can’t even see their surroundings… Well in reality you think… AND A LOT! From a musician perspective there is a lot to think about in a second, for you to understand I’ll point out the things I am constantly thinking when playing the flute:

• Which modulation I’m in – so I know if a need to make a sharp, flat or a normal note
• Rithm I am currently doing and which one is coming next – contrary to a book where you only read word by word, in music you need to be aware what comes next, so you will be reading the present and the future
• If I am in tune – flutes are really difficult to be in tune, we always need to be changing lips and head position. It is said that for you to tune 2 different flutes the only way is to kill another one

You would think that this is enough right? But nope: I also think:

• My hands are shaking, I need to be able to calm myself in some way
• Am I playing “insert the emotion” this music asks
• Is my posture correct?
• Yaiii! I was able to do that without a mistake
• Oh god! I failed hard in that one! I need to focus!
• (Arthifis from the future here, I forgot to tell you that sometimes I do all this while marching at this time)

And some more… So I really liked how they translated that on Yuri on Ice! They always show what the competitors are thinking while skating and I really think that they did a good job!

It’s amazing what our brain can do isn’t it? Because I’m not that special, every each one of our brains are like that! Probably if you train him you will be better than others that haven’t trained, but everyone as the capability to learn an instrument and do all this as many musicians do (even as a beginner).

And I think that’s it! 😀 Maybe this should be in a review post, but since it’s only focusing one part I prefered to put it in as a random though! 😀

Comment down below if you liked this post! 😀 It really is important for me to understand if you find these kind of posts are interested to you! Moreover comment down below what do you think of the matter! 😛

See Ya Soon! 😀