databeej2w

OMG, I feel awful just reading your words. I cannot imagine how his parents bear with his burning candle behavior. The emotional roller-coaster of watching live events would be too much for me. I cannot watch a live competition unless I don't care about it. I have no problems watching old programs since I know the results. To be honest, I watch his programs for emotional serenity, soothing, healing, and inspiration. I do not have the mental strength to know more about him now. I have to distance myself a bit.

Oh~no. I wish I hadn't asked. He did three 2-hour shows with an injured ankle? How could he go on like that? Maybe he can change the format of the performance. Instead of doing live shows, he can film his performance or ice story as a movie, and then people can watch it in movie theaters. He can sell it overseas. I think the box office will be great. This way, he doesn't have to perform 10+ programs in 2 hours and can rest several days between filming.

I was deeply involved in another fandom for a 90s TV drama about 20 years ago. It was incredibly vibrant—fans produced over 10,000 fanfictions just for the main character! I stepped away from that community about 15 years ago, but returned around three years ago. To my delight, the fandom hadn’t completely faded and was still attracting new fans. However, most of the old forums had vanished. So many sparkling discussions and creative works were lost, including several of my favorite fanfics. It’s heartbreaking to realize that these things don’t exist forever. Now, whenever I come across something wonderful about Yuzu, I make sure to save it on my computer. I’ve learned from past experience that they might not exist forever. If I had followed Yuzu’s journey in real time, it would probably have been even more intense—filled with thrilling and heart-attack moments (like his difficult decision to withdraw from NHK 2017 due to injury). Many incidents were bloodier than described in his biography. The amount and intensity of criticism he received is more than I could have imagined. Still, I’ve also found plenty of cute and heartwarming moments. For example, Kurt Browning’s comments about Yuzu’s smile after a mistake in the FS at NHK 2012, and his saying that “building (choreographing) a program for Yuzu is like playing a video game, because Yuzu is able to do pretty much anything a choreographer can dream up.” This comment and the video game analogy made me smile. And finally, may I ask, who got a sprained ankle, David or Yuzu, in January?

Thank you, Martina, for asserting my observations. I am so glad that you are still active. Most YouTube channels about Hanyu that I enjoyed and learned a lot are dormant now (like "Figure Skating Fans"). In this past weekend, I came across the blog https://www.tumblr.com/the-real-xmonster. That blog is like a time capsule. From it, I got to observe how people have reacted to every Yuzu incident in real time, more detailed and more shocking than illustrated in Yuzu's biography. I felt like I was traveling backward in time to witness his journey. Moreover, her technical analysis and knowledge about figure skating is so good. I hope the content she left on the blog can be preserved forever, so valuable.

I’ve been checking out some other skaters lately, and now I totally get why Patrick Chan is a 3x world champ. People always talk about his “deep edge,” and honestly, his skating is utterly smooth. When I watch Patrick, I sometimes wonder if Yuzu could skate like that—though Yuzu obviously shines in other ways. I still don’t get *how* Patrick manages that flow; it’s like he never loses momentum. Javier’s amazing, too. I noticed his 3-turn entry into jumps, which Yuzu himself said he learned from Javi. Their styles are clearly different, but both have really strong skating, footwork, and jump quality (thanks, Toronto Cricket Club?). My favorite Javi program is his SP at the 2017 Worlds—the 109 he scored there was totally deserved. Sorry, I can’t break it all down better; I’m not an expert, just a casual fan. As for Shoma, his upper body always leans forward—he rarely keeps a straight line from his torso to his legs. His butt kind of sticks out all the time. Yuzu and Javi usually manage to keep their bodies in line, and it just looks way better to me. And honestly, I still don’t really get the hype about Nathan. Spins, transitions, body movement? I feel like plenty of other skaters are stronger in those areas!

To Martina: Your impact is huge. So many people cited your posts. It's a huge treasure for me to dig. My next plan is to study his ice shows and read your posts.

Hi Jenn: Thanks for referring me to Coach Ghislain's interview. I've studied Brian, Tracy, and Johnny, but haven't studied Ghislain. I found the full interview, and I like his way of dealing with those annoying things. He is a great coach.

To Yuzurujenn: I know 4A is his childhood dream, but it's indeed a way to redeem himself, in his biography (last chapter, vol3). I’m convinced the unfair scoring is real, and it makes me feel awful and angry. So I came here to vent. He said at his retirement press conference that he doesn’t need that kind of validation anymore. Now I finally understand just how much frustration and struggle those words were carrying.

To Yuzurujenn: I know he switched back to Chopin and Seimei at 4CC specifically to test the judges. In his biography (vol. 3, last chapter), he actually said that his Chopin at 4CC 2020 was the most perfect version he’d ever skated—and his coach agreed. But even then, he didn’t get the scores he was hoping for. The scoring system had changed, but the PCS rules stayed the same. That’s when he realized it didn’t matter how much he improved; he just couldn’t get higher PCS. I didn’t mention this in my first post because I was worried it would stir up more criticism against him. The last chapter of vol. 3 and the preface of vol. 4 go into a lot of detail about what was going on in his mind between GPF19 and 4CC20, including all the reasons he went back to Chopin and Seimei (regaining confidence was one of them). My English isn’t good enough to explain it all here, but those sections really dig deep into his thoughts at the time.

Wait! Are you the author, "Martina", of Sportlandia? I've read some of your posts. They are incredible. Please accept my highest respect. I cannot believe you responded to my humble post!! That's super exciting for me.

Hi! Martina and Yuzurujenn: I didn't expect I could get such meticulous and detailed responses in just a few hours. Thank you so much. English is not my first language. Allow me a few hours or days to organize and type my response.

I just noticed him in March 2026.

So, I’ve only known Yuzuru Hanyu for three months. Honestly, I missed his entire competitive career because I was a working mom with two kids (born in 2015 and 2018), and life was just crazy busy. My days were all about work and babysitting, and I barely had any time for myself until my kids started school. I’d heard his name before, but I just thought, “Oh, must be another good-looking skater who has a ton of fangirls.” I never bothered to check him out until one day I watched a few intro videos about him on YouTube after the 2026 Olympics. And wow, I was completely shook by how much he’s accomplished and just how young he was when he did it! I felt kinda embarrassed for myself, comparing what I’ve done in the last 16 years to his record. Sure, fan videos might hype him up, but what really blew my mind was the wisdom he showed in interviews—especially the “Olympics is Never Fun to Me” one (link). Anyway, I ended up buying all 4 volumes of his biography (in Traditional Chinese), hoping to figure out how he's so successful, how he stays motivated after reaching the top, how he handles challenges—basically, I wanted to see what makes him tick. At that point, I was way more interested in his life story than his skating, tbh. Here are just some random things that stood out after a month of “studying” him: Most celebs write their biographies after they’ve lived a lifetime, but Yuzuru published his first one when he was just 17 and a half. Which is kind of insane. He is human most of the time, (though occasionally he is not) He has made tons of mistakes, had setbacks and failures. When I mess up, I hide. When things go wrong, I bail out. I don’t have the guts to keep trying. But he actually uses mistakes and regrets as fuel to push himself further. I can’t believe how many interviews he does—even about his mistakes. He could have chosen privacy and avoided scrutiny, but he spoke openly even about his regrets. In his biography, he’s frustrated with his mistakes, but never dismisses the entire experience. After listing his errors, he also outlines the parts he handled well and the lessons learned. He’s so grateful for everything, big or small—his skates, the ice, his coaches, teammates, just everything. Not just out of politeness, but wholeheartedly. It’s almost unbelievable that someone with such a pure, noble soul exists. Honestly, his sheer existence makes the world better. He does what he says, says what he means. No pretending, no drama. Just authenticity and determination. Almost unreal! There was this interview where he was asked how his parents raised him (because Japanese moms are obsessed with figuring out how to raise their kids like Yuzu). Honestly, it felt like a trick question—he was only 19 or 20! But he just said, “Everyone is unique, has their strengths and weaknesses. I have weaknesses, too. Look at the strengths, not the weaknesses in your kids.” That’s the perfect answer. And it’s not just talk; he REALLY lives by that. I am sure people around him are not all pleasant. He recognizes and appreciates their merits, so he gets along well with everyone. Those were my thoughts after month one. I was maybe naive, but his story made me feel like I could step up too if I learned from him. He was my role model, though he is 14 years younger. Then things kind of changed. The more I learned, the sadder I got instead of feeling inspired. I try not to get into those “underscoring” debates—honestly, it’s pretty discouraging if it’s true. I don’t want to believe someone pushed him away from the sport he literally poured his life into. It just rocked my belief that working hard and being nice means the world will treat you kindly in return… I wish it were true, but it’s clearly not. I watched most of his competitions and started to understand figure skating a bit more. He only skated clean maybe less than 20% of the time. That’s because he kept raising the difficulty level, always pushing himself. Making two mistakes would cost 20-30 points easily. But still, whenever he actually nailed a clean performance, he basically broke the world record. From 2013 to 2018, he always managed to make a comeback with a big win after setbacks. But between 2019 and 2022, that didn’t happen. I kept telling myself, “No one’s actually against him—the real enemies are age and injury.” He can’t push his limits forever; that’s just how it is for athletes. Sooner or later, he has to retire from competition. When he reaches 40 or 50, he as to retire from performance as well, just like Brian Orser, Plushenko, Kurt Browning, and Johnny Weir. It’s sad, but I gotta accept it. I also told myself, the change of scoring in 2018 is not against him, since IJS 1.0 also heavily rewards quads over spins or choreography. Nathan could do two more quads than Yuzu, which gave him a 10–20 point lead. Yuzuru had to be perfect elsewhere to even catch up, which is really tough. He never landed two clean programs head-to-head against Nathan after 2018. The scoring system isn’t perfect, but I get why they use it—it’s more objective to tally up jumps than argue about choreography. And even if judges gave him weirdly low GOEs, the system tosses out the highest and lowest to reduce bias. When he skated clean, he still got high scores. I didn't see evidence of huge underscoring, at least not big enough to change the results. What I overlooked at first is that he was actually shocked by his results at GPF and JNats 2019, lost his confidence, and switched back to old programs (Chopin and Seimei). He said in his biography by 2020 that he realized he couldn't get higher PCS, no matter how much he improved. Honestly, I don’t get why he seemed so discouraged, since a 0.74 points difference in PCS (48.40 in 4CC 2020 vs. 49.14 in GPF 2015) wasn’t enough to beat Nathan’s technical scores anyway. But then, I finally got it — Nathan’s PCS was insanely high, even greater than Yuzu (e.g., 95.78 for Nathan and 93.64 for Yuzu in GPF19). It was like he couldn’t beat Nathan on PCS or GOE. The only way left was to raise the base value. So he changed his goal; he tried to redeem himself by challenging 4A. OMG. Nathan's PCS really puzzled me. For example, Nathan had a PCS of 97.22 at the 2022 Olympics, higher than Yuzu’s 97.08 at Worlds 2017. His FS in the 2022 Olympics is definitely not comparable to H&L in Worlds 2017. What's wrong? I’m definitely not a skating expert, but a program with PCS of 97.22 should be so mind-blowing even casual fans should go “wow, that’s perfect.” But I can see many places to improve, so why do judges think it’s flawless? Are there “Picasso on Ice” that only judges can see and general people are too dumb to appreciate? At that point, I am convinced the scoring was problematic. Nonetheless, though problematic, none of the over/underscoring was big enough to change the results of the competition. Why risk the sport’s credibility by favoring anyone? Is Nathan really so much better in both technical and artistic aspects? I’m confused. Even with fair judging, Nathan would still be hard to beat, but not totally impossible. Maybe he wouldn’t have felt so desperate, risking his health to challenge 4A? At least, he would feel that his improvement in skating skills got recognized? ====== Despite all that, Yuzu didn't become cynical but remained kind to the world and cordial to everyone. He congratulated Shoma genuinely, not just for show; he was truly happy for him, knowing Shoma had gone through a tough year. He didn't collapse and moved on to complete the Gala and the MOI as planned. One could barely notice his frustration and desperation. ====== I honestly have no idea how to wrap this up. There’s no happy ending, and I can’t find any meaning in it. I don't know how he felt about the 4 years now. Losing the gold in 1988 haunted Brian Orser for decades. For over 10 years, Brian couldn't watch his own FS in the 1988 Olympics. I don't know if the same feeling haunted him, but I was haunted by many **What if** thoughts in the past few weeks. I really need to get them off my chest by posting them here. Many fans must have gone through a similar process 4 years ago, and hence, my post probably adds no new value to the world Thanks for reading and letting me vent. ====== BTW, Yuzu is so productive. Look at how many shows he created in the past 4 years. He is still unbelievable.