#anyway have a meta about my precious boy because i love him dearly thank you

[cutesilyo]

On Love: Anxiety (A Yuuri Katsuki Analysis)

The thing about Yuuri is that he's such a relatable character to me. Even more so now that he's in a relationship with Victor, so I can honestly say that YOI is the anime that I've always needed.

Because:

Yuuri has anxiety.

Yuuri is in a relationship.

Yuuri is in a relationship with someone he thinks is too good for him.

Yuuri has a low opinion of himself.

Yuuri is an unreliable narrator.

Yuuri hates losing.

...and etc.

These are all things that I can relate to! So, forgive me, but I absolutely hate how this anime ended. And although I loathed Episode 12 to death, the ending of Episode 11 was something I didn't expect and yet it was something I didn't know I needed — mainly because Yuuri’s anxiety reared its ugly head in a way that I am all too familiar with.

[Pictured: Yuuri Katsuki clenching his fists in an attempt to gather up the courage to ruin his own life for Victor's sake]

i.e. Cutting your own losses before you lose them.

So from the perspective of someone who also has low self-esteem and is in a relationship with someone who I think deserves much better, here's why I believe Episode 11 was necessary in a way that Episode 12 did not give justice to. Here we go!

You see, I have this tiny theory here about what Yuuri was thinking when he said those words that ultimately broke everybody's hearts. Everybody's been talking about it since the episode aired. But here I am, regardless, because I need to deposit these two cents of mine even though the account is already positively overflowing.

There's this belief I have, and I have no idea if this is just something that I have because I've been raised with an Oriental mindset or something specific to just me, but I'm afraid of being too happy. I believe I can only achieve a particular level of happiness; if I experience more happiness that I deserve, bad things happen. If I have too much, you bet your ass at least some of that will get taken away.

There needs to be balance in this world, or so I and many others believe — there is no shadow without light, and the moon has no meaning if she is not opposite the sun. Suffering and happiness? They go hand in hand. And in the same vein, there is no success without strife —  and that's widely preached. But the opposite is also true; because there is no strife without success, and I'm willing to bet my non-existent balls that Yuuri and Victor are kind of the epitome of the latter.

[Pictured: Victor Nikiforov before he met Yuuri Katsuki, i.e. incredibly lonely and trusting only a dog for providing him constant companionship]

And while Victor's end of the spectrum — his gold medals were the fruits of labor that his loss to life and love bore — were given their high-key focus in Episode 10, Yuuri's end of the spectrum was a low-key theme throughout the entire series. Yuuri's talents were paid with leaving his hometown and family to pursue an incredibly unconventional career choice, having the press hound him for every anxiety attack that he can't control, and bearing that enormous pressure of representing his entire nation on his shoulders — and his poor anxiety-ridden heart can't deal with that most of the time.

[Pictured: Yuuri Katsuki's mouth giving an involuntary wobble before he forces himself to smile for his parents' sake, also known as a frame that deserves more attention]

There's a stereotype for Asian parents: that if their child gets less than an A, it's a failure. It's a joke most of the time; for Yuuri, he applies that to his entire career as a competitive figure skater. Add the fact that he's representing the whole of Japan for one of the highest titles a figure skater can get, and the anxiety he's developed over the years, and you get a bundle of nerves on the best days — complete breakdowns at the worst.

Plus his dog died just days before, or maybe even during, one of the most important competitions in his life.

Oh, and he is an unbelievably sore loser.

[Pictured: Yuuri Katsuki in that infamous shot of him breaking down in the bathroom; note that he only lets himself cry when he thinks that there is nobody around to see him]

And he's probably thinking i could have done better and he's probably thinking i guess i really should retire, but I propose that he's also thinking this is payment for all the other competitions i've won, isn't it? That he's thinking, this is payment for all the hardships i've put on everyone else. That he's thinking, oh well, i guess i deserve this after all.

It's like all the little bad things he's done over the years have finally come back to haunt him in one big smack of karmic retribution, right after the cruelties of fate have already given him a taste of what it felt like to be part of the winning team. Because don't tell me that Yuuri didn't feel this sense of pride, of fulfillment, of complete and utter joy when he was assigned to the GP Series and qualified for the Finals. That he didn't feel happy when he got the chance to train, abroad, with an actual coach and an actual rink despite just coming from small, seaside Hasetsu. That he didn't arrive at Detroit, wide-eyed and nervous but so young and hopeful, knowing that he was the JSF's certified top skater.

Then he lost at the GPF and he probably felt like all of that went moot. That all of a sudden, all his medals and trophies and successes didn't mean anything anymore. There's a reason why Minami was introduced, after all: to bring home the point that while Yuuri thinks he's an average skater, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily true.

It's further cemented by the fact that, when Minami says that his costume was inspired by one of Yuuri's older ones, he's mortified as he shrieks, "That's a costume from my dark past!"

Minami, bless him, talks back and says that Yuuri doesn't have a dark past to speak of. He's the actual cinnamon roll of YOI, guys. Imagine how happy he was when he cheered for Yuuri in the GPF in Yuuri's own house and saw, in person, all the trophies that Yuuri had been keeping in the background — and the fact that Yuuri even keeps them in the background speaks so much of his lack of self-worth that it deserves its own meta.

[Pictured: Kenjiro Minami, tears in his eyes as he screams out at his idol: You don't have a dark past! Don't make fun of me for looking up to you for so long and trying to catch up with you! — breaking our hearts in the process]

So, basically: if Yuuri had given all he had with skating, was rewarded with triumphs and successes only to feel like that had all been taken away when he was dead last at the GPF (and not to mention, he probably feels like all of this was justified); why wouldn't he feel that way about Victor?

Because Victor makes him happy. So happy, in fact, that his skating and confidence levels have reinvented themselves as a response to Victor's presence in Yuuri's personal life. Why wouldn't he think that Victor was too good to be true? Why wouldn't he be scared that the cruelties of fate would, once again, take away his source of happiness in a twisted form of giving balance to the world?

So he comes up with defense mechanisms. He blabbers in metaphor and dabbles in double-meanings (Episodes 1-3) and he feels so relieved that Victor seems to accept that it's just the way he prefers to express himself (Episode 4). But then he keeps falling and falling and he gathers up the courage to be more accepting of his past because of Victor (Episode 5), to be more bold for Victor (Episode 6), to be more couple-y with Victor. (Episode 8)

And ordinarily, that would be a good thing right? He's growing up! There's character development! He has more confidence now!

But YOI, god bless YOI, shows that anxiety doesn't just go away. It comes back to haunt you and when you're at your weakest, it strikes. This is best exemplified in Episodes 7 and 9, where it's glaringly obvious — but in Episode 11, it takes some understanding of the previous episodes to know that the entirety of the drama comes from Yuuri simply being an unreliable narrator again than from any actual basis.

[Pictured: Two similar shots of Yuuri Katsuki from Episode 4 and Episode 11 respectively — the former, a happy blush as he prays give me Victor's time, if only just for now; the latter, horror dawns as Yuuri comes to the conclusion that Victor wants to go back to the ice and that their time together is ending]

Because Yuuri is the epitome of unreliable narrator, and Episode 10 was the ultimate peak of the mountain that YOI has been building from the very first episode — in an anime that opens with the self-deprecating protagonist reading articles about his loss, which is intentionally and deliberately set up to overshadow the fact that despite his loss he's still competing in one of the biggest competitions in the figure skating world.

The other thing that YOI has chosen to keep from us until Episode 10 was that despite the entire world being clamorous for him to go back to the ice, Victor actually . . . doesn't want to do that at all. He literally calls it a shackle on his neck. He waxes poetic about the life and love that Yuuri has given him, that he has neglected for so long. He gets kicked in the back and declared as dead by Yurio, and the most he does is mockingly crouch down and ask, did you want to compete against me?

Having Episode 10 come right before the massive fuck-up in Episode 11 was both an explanation and a warning: yeah, yuuri did all that and victor fell in love with him first. now remember how different things looked back in episode 1. because we're gonna go back to that in the next episode and y'all need to know what's real and what's just what yuuri assumes.

And the thing about Episode 10 is that it triggers this impulse to rewatch the entire series from Victor's perspective and contrast that to how different we saw it when it was just Yuuri's perspective we knew about. Doing that brings more impact to Episode 11, I think — which also highlights that despite Yurio found a friend, he still has some humility to learn and his arc isn't finished yet just because he managed to perfect Agape. While I do think he was being too mean (to a point that I considered it OOC, after Episodes 9 and 10), that's a different post altogether.

[Pictured: Celestino Cialdini comforts a sullen Yuuri Katsuki during the Sochi GPF; comes with Yuuri's monologue of I could never openly say that I'd win gold, but I never skated with the thought in my mind that I'd lose anyway]

I think that the way that Yuuri reflects to himself during his FS in Episode 9 echoes how he feels toward Victor. That despite never really admitting out loud that he wanted a gold, he never actually believed he would ever lose either — Yuuri let himself stay stagnant while tiptoeing between having the potential to be a winner and actually being one. In the same vein, Yuuri found himself walking that same fine line between being Victor's future and being Victor's has-been; someone between everything and something, but never actually nothing.

Yuuri let his anxiety get the better of him and he decided that being Victor's past would be best outcome he could ever hope to get. The events of Episode 11 have led him to believe that he would never be Victor's future; or at least, he would never be the future that Victor actually wants. And in Yuuri's twisted justifications, it would be a good thing that they would end their relationship after the GPF; it gives Victor the freedom to do whatever he wants and it gives the Yuuri the relief of not having delved deeper into the idea of them being an actual concrete relationship.

[Pictured: Victor Nikiforov, part of a newly discovered evolved species of humans called homo superior]

Except Victor, unlike Yuuri, has already considered the prospects of having a relationship without a time stamp and jumped right into it. Victor has already established in Episode 10 that he wants Yuuri, and that he would definitely choose a life without competitive skating specifically because it meant getting the love of a lifetime. Screw the consequences, he's getting what he wants and he will put every fiber of his being into nurturing this relationship that gives him all of the happiness that he never thought he could have.

He just never verbalized it. So while Victor gets the concrete proof that Yuuri wants him in the form of giving him the rings (although he does so in a way that implies he doesn't want to admit it), Yuuri doesn't.

[Pictured: Yuuri Katsuki, in doubt of where Victor's happiness truly lies: in a life with skating or a life without it]

Yuuri gets soft and sweet and cuddly Victor and it's enough to make Yuuri hope but it's not enough to help Yuuri understand that Victor truly wants him — how much Yuuri changed him. He knows the Victor that is, as Minako says in Episode 1, free with his charms and winks at the cameras and is touchy-feely with a man he just met; a Victor who was bored and had an impulse decision to coach him and ended up liking him. But the viewers get more insight into who Victor really was before he met Yuuri, who was sad and lonely and hollow — a Victor that fell in love with the boy with the drunken flamenco dance and was looking for an excuse to meet him again.

Victor, like anyone, wants happiness. Winning doesn't give him that anymore, but Yuuri does . . . even though he doesn't even grasp the true gravitas of the love they share.

[Pictured: Yuuri Katsuki, in tears after an amazing Free Skate and the subsequent roar of triumph thereafter; a perfect representation of what we all felt in this scene]

Ultimately, what pissed me off about Episode 12 was that it seemed to betray its own protagonist. We had all the build-up to Yuuri winning gold and finally getting the concrete proof that Victor loves him back and that he is an incredible skater in his own right — because I wholeheartedly believe that the perfect ending to Yuri On Ice would be Yuuri getting gold and realizing that it doesn't matter. And for one moment he would look at all the people who have supported him endlessly and, instead of pushing them away in shame like he would have at the beginning of the show, he would thank them with a happy smile.

How Yuuri would learn not to equate his worth by his losses or wins was always a theme that I wanted the show to address in the Season 2 that I wanted to have, but for that to happen he had to win first in the S1 finale.

But he didn't, and the finale for one of the most popular animes of 2016 was done so cheap that it actually does render the entire anime into moot. So to say I'm disappointed? Yeah, well, that's kind of an understatement.

[Pictured: Yuuri Katsuki with the wrong medal]

#yoi #yuri on ice #meta #yoi meta #yuuri katsuki #i havent posted in tumblr for two years whoops #anyway have a meta about my precious boy because i love him dearly thank you #im having trouble uploading the screenshots hnggg what a shame #mine

[lottesseenaghoul]

RE:169 quick thoughts before I go into rabbit hole of tg posts on tumbler (edited)

So I was expecting the scans to come out on Thursday but was surprised to see some fresh panels in the uta tag and FLIPPED.jpeg at my behavioural economics lecture. Honestly not the best place for getting a nosebleed xdd

Anyways here are some of hot takes I got from reading the chapter. More nuanced meta probably on its way. I read it on mangastream and I did screenshots there.

The chapter starts with the first part of Uta’s tattoo quote and ends with the second part, forming a sort of narrative framework to read it.

We jump straight into the fray, with contrasting shots of Yomo’s damn fine looking face and Uta’s there as well, clearly guided by very basic thinking and mostly intuitive, emotional impulses:

Like this is typical, stereotypical “unhinged” face people do in mangas. A mix of enthusiasm and bloodlust, it says this guy went “insane”. Ugh. Uta’s mental health warrants a LOT of unpacking nevertheless so let’s leave this face’ implications for later. 

We glimpse their fight styles then:

Uta is on the offensive, honestly his is such forceful, visceral way of attacking here - straight up fuck up your opponent with the sheer force of your blow. He is shown to be a lot more nuanced and deliberate in previous fights, steering clear from attacking and content with evading the blows, dealing some psychological damage afterwards. But that is Uta just half-assedly toying - clearly he doesn’t stop himself with Yomo. The reasons can be manifold - that’s how they’ve always done it; he’s so pumped, he stops thinking and loses himself in pure bloodlust; he’s in a serious crisis - this is my preferred angle.

Now his fighting style, besides the raw strength behind it, is also quick and agile. In a second Uta gets behind Yomo, and tries to strike through his body mid-air. His face looks like this:

Very unstable.

Uta’s pupils are incredibly large here - again, a visual reminder how little conscious control he might have in this situation. OR how vicious his intents are.

My impression is that when he’s led by such murderous motivation (whatever its composing parts), Uta moves intuitively, we don’t see him playing around or allowing to be struck. Here he has the initiative but Yomo can so far fend off or otherwise deal with his attacks.

I’m honestly so thirsty for Yomo in this chapter, just look at this fine motherfucker:

{I’m interjecting to thank my lord satan for my pan-shipping, slutty heart because now UtaRen became another ship I love. Add in some Itori and you have another one. This one just keeps on giving <3}

Also Uta is so messy here, my baby all playful like a rabid hyena. 

Despite all the refinements older Uta keeps about himself (suave clothing, neat hair, designer mask studio, antiques in glass cases, chess), he didn’t seem to have done much growing up, emotionally. Donato comments on it like that:

You just gotta love the fact that for most of the manga Uta keeps the facade of actually being the least reckless of the ghouls. But I trust Donato on this, who seems to know Uta’s darker impulses fairly well. Possibly better than Yomo and that dude got his fair of beating from Uta too.

What got me interested is how Amon had commented how pointless Clowns endeavours were. Initially I thought it’s Donato who said it, but later on he tells Amon that he would soon understand...

Oh Amon looks fine AF too. Be still my slutty heart!

Furuta says something possibly pivotal for the incoming plot arc:

(IDK wtf this is, but if even Furuta comments on it as if he was both grossed out/scared, it must be important. Oh, he meets Kaneki too, no biggie. “That’s just freaky!!”, I love you Nimura)

Back to my boys, Yomo is getting beat up but mostly evades Uta’s attacks and looks more and more pissed. Uta just looks like a dumbass. Or rather as stupid as cats who torture smaller critters for fun and recreation do:

Also we get a glimpse of his kagune. It seems to be very elastic, easily changing shapes as Uta sees fit. It was just this gigantic mass of RC cells in the beginning panels, now it’s much more resembling the spider legs en masse that we remember from his fight with Juuzou:

But what is most important here, we finally get the first shot of Itori. She is wearing a mask in the beginning, and it’s important in context of what Uta will be saying shortly: edit: It’s Itori speaking, thoughts on that in a different post.

She’s an observer in that panel, very significantly voiceless, not shown to be nearly as amused as Nico here:

Uta’s Itori’s words are honestly a key to Clown’s philosophy and deserve a meta of its own. [In the beginning I thought these were Itori’s words, especially after I saw “Kanekichi” being mentioned; it’s how she had referred to Kaneki before.] - no wonder, it was my brain’s way to remind me I was far too concentrated on Uta to consider the awesomest queen Itori :/

Uta Itori says something very interesting here:

Obviously, if he were to be an OEK, first or the second one, that would be right up the alley. But even if not, it hints at very interesting possibilities. I want to see Ishida expand on it in some flashbacks. 

The most important words are coupled with shots of Itori slowly taking her mask off. It has a very dramatic effect.

Theres a heck ton to unpack here. Honestly I would never think Uta would look at his value system from that particular angle. Edit - and he wouldn’t because he is currently in the midst of a mayor meltdown. It’s Itori who actually bothers with explaining.

He She refers to the coldness of their existence as ghouls, of how senseless it is - like a vast, cold void stretching infintiely in front of them. 

Uta’s ways of searching for warmth are probably the only ones somebody as uprooted as him could come up with - he sees drawing blood, wounding (but also getting wounded - Uta seems to have a very laissez faire attitude to him perishing eventually as we remember from his talk with Donato).

According to Uta  Itori, Yomo is the warm one. For him her, it’s via bloodletting that he can get closer to taste it. Edit Uta def seconds that in the panels to come with his own actions

 I still think there’s some theatrics involved in this speech, as the next panel shows....

God, way to make your opponent unsuspecting of your next move Uta. 

And we get another important shot of Itori. She’s clearly positioned as somewhat stradling the line between Uta and Yomo but this series consistently shows her as being closer to Uta nevertheless.

Her eyes are shining so bright here, it’s clear she’s in deep thought and possibly a bit torn apart with what’s happening here. What Uta says clearly strikes a cord but her taking the mask off, idk it may signal some important differences between her and Uta’s worldview. That or it’s a sign she identifies with his words deeply. Edit ditto, these are her words and the scene took entirely different meaning and made me Love Itori, the first time since reading the series.

Honestly Uta is just beginning tho, as he has some creepy words about dreaming of the day where he would get his hands stained with Yomo’s blood. He actually left Yomo on the ground to have this mini speech properly. He’s posturing as far as my impressions go - Uta reverts to his younger persona, sans earlier sentiments of not wanting to cut his fun short by killing the only one ghoul who could match him somewhat. 

The most important thing in this chapter is what Yomo says next...

Here Uta is, going off about his strange blood kink and Yomo goes all shonen manga on him. But it’s not the same shonen posturing he did in previous chapter. We don’t see his eyes - we see Uta’s and that dude is honestly #shook. 

Naturally he reacts in ways only Ishida can think of. Honestly how Yomo’s words are literally drowned out by Uta’s uncontrollable and histerical laughter is such a masterful move:

This is the guy who dug up Ren from the ground because he was his “friend”. Now he’s just a mouth apparently.

Idk but this seems like the key panel for analyzing Uta from psychological angle. This dude most pronounced feature is his mouth which is nothing like human’s or ghoul alike. It’s like he’s truly the chaotic trickster god with none of the sentiments he was hinted to possess.

I was talking with @gaiajulz and I love how she pointed out that it seems like Uta is actually drowning out Yomo’s heartfelt words and he isn’t even fully aware he’s doing it. With Uta’s firm worldview, he’d rather go full crisis-mode instead of acknowledging how vulnerable and in need of closeness he is. 

Honestly Uta is soo Washuu-like in this panel, like Furuta’s older brother or something. First screech like a  Cthulu monster and then do a little happy dance!

What’s important is how Uta links what he sees as Yomo’s nivete with his emotional honesty and lack of any hidden agendas. Yomo is pure and good and this is why he is naive enough to trust a world like this. Uta saw so many sides to it, he literally sees no other option than to play the fool, including fooling around with one of the precious few of potentially close people in his life.

I also think he kind of looks like crying? From laughing so hard maybe. 

The chapter ends with my baby going full kakuja (predictably it’s his shifty face that’s the most inhuman part here, just a mass of flesh) and this flirty words:

Renji seems so shocked, it’s possible he had never seen this form. Either way he’s speechless.

And Uta’s philosophy is hinted at again - he’s willing to trample his friend just to feel anything. 

What we are dearly in need of is some good meta on Uta’s mental health, how his values feature into it and how his own actions contribute to it unraveling. Obviously such speculations are about as scientific as psych profiling but I feel it would be very important to try and understand this character better.

And boy, is there a lot to unpack here... 

Edit - crossed the parts where it’s suggested it’s Uta who summarizes Clown’s philosophy. It’s Itori and I don’t get my brain could hint at the discrepancies in my own thinking but not make the definite link. Gotta love that sweet ADHD folks.

#uta #tg #tgre #tgre spoilers #tg theories #tg meta #tg theory #yomo renji