12 Reasons to Watch, Re-Watch, and Love Yuri on Ice

6. Skating Accuracy

Somehow, some way, it’s possible to end up learning more about professional figure skating from 12 episodes of an anime than from 12 or more years of just casually watching figure skating whenever it’s on during the Olympics or when you end up finding a competition on Sunday afternoon after football’s over.

The show not only takes pauses to explain how a skater’s score is calculated, but actually turns programs and placement of jumps during those programs into serious plot points. Since it also treats these things very seriously, it can lead someone into wanting to discover how it all works in real life…and it’s not that much different, at least to a fairly untrained eye like my own. Combinations matter, as do how well or how poorly you perform on your jumps. In fact, Yuri on Ice actually explains how the Grand Prix of Skating works and how everyone manages to qualify.

(The Grand Prix of Skating is also real. Yes, this came as a surprise to me, and it still astounds me after first noting this earlier.)

Also, since the programs are all choreographed by a retired Japanese skater, it makes perfect sense that people have now started to recreate them in the real world, either by skating them themselves or putting the show’s music to other programs. The above video, which features Patton Chen, is just one of many you can find on YouTube and other video sites.