axelsandwich

I'm giggling imagining Chopin with a besti 4Lz.... I'll take the spread eagle

lol it was a joke, ofc I don't expect him to have regard to that Also hm @fireovertheice - I'm actually wondering if he would debut an untested layout (especially a new jump) at the Olympics if he's not 100% by Nationals. He definitely could pull it off if the stars align but that would be an unprecedented level of YOLO lol. *To be fair, he'd have the team event

Does that mean...4Lz from spread eagle............ I've always kind of had this feeling of 4Lz as a 'hard'/explosive jump so it'll be interesting to see how he makes it fit with the delicacy of Chopin....if he does it. This boy has no regard for our heart health does he??? Yeah, I feel like Shoma's cemented himself in the 'top' PCS corridor given how he was scored in PCS with a fall... If Nathan pulls out clean skates from here on out, he may get there too. GPF will be very interesting between the two of them for sure because it'll be Nathan's best bid to get himself in that top contender range.

Max......please let your ninja insiders be wrong.......... (I....wouldn't put it past Yuzu............ )

I was pretty damn proud of that one slightly off topic but here's the ladies version!

A really lovely sentiment and an important one, and good to hear about NHK (despite drop in TV viewership numbers). While I don't deny there is a huge gulf between Yuzu and my next 'favourite' skater, I'm so glad he was my 'gateway drug' so to speak in learning to appreciate and enjoy the skills of all the competitors and appreciate the sport as its own entity, on top of my appreciation for Yuzu in particular as a skater and person. Thank you @gladi for the translation as always!

my fave video compilation series with an update! (yazunori deserved better than those P&G posters tbh )

Yeah the 30sec CM they showed yesterday seems to be the one being 'broadcast' today which makes....no sense... >__> I bet there will be more but it's a question of 'when', there's so much footage that wasn't included in the 30sec one (there's the Plushenko message, the shot where he's holding skates, and the dialogue voiceover in the BTS about him and his mum fighting isn't the dialogue in the 30sec one...).

lol.......so the full 30sec CM was aired yesterday already.......? #trolledbyyuzu I demand a 20min making of a la Ghana. tbh the BTS/trailer is more compelling for me, probably because it's less polished and shows more candid/artistic moments (I also think there will be longer versions - we haven't seen Big Brother Plushenko on the projector screen yet...I'm hoping they're just staggering the release) The one detail in the Brian article was that Yuzu was competition-ready by July and this didn't seem to be a good thing in Brian's view, judging by his repeated emphasis on how Yuzu was training so hard and was 'a little too early'. It's not exactly like Brian's going to say 'this is a disastrous situation for Yuzu' in an interview, but I do think he has a point about delaying Yuzu's peaking. So uh. Fingers crossed.

Which is why I’m amazed - that’s a tricky background! They even added some of the lighting I think? It must have have been almost frame by frame. And if you look closely, they got all his flying hair too (how??? Granted I have no idea what video editing/masking witchcraft exists now, maybe they can track colours or motion or something now) (lol what Yuzu bts, show me the editing room and their screens!)

...damn, I wonder how long it took to extract him from that background o:

A question that just occurred to me: is...that actually old footage of him in the mirror or a child dressed up like him? I somehow assumed the former since I know there was footage of child Yuzu jumping in those clothes and it looks very similar but then I looked at the lighting and was like 'how could they isolate old footage + adjust lighting so well....' So uh, I guess more likely it's an actor (I noticed he only did a 2 turn spin so maybe they found some kid with Yuzu's body type from the local skating school??? What a find...)

lol i finally posted this which i was sitting on for ages. suggestions welcome for the other skaters : D

ありがとうございます！I suspected it meant 'ingredients' but my dictionary only gave me 材料 so I got confused And thank you! 後押ししてくれる was def because Yuzu's first し was very soft so I didn't hear it ;; new vocab words to learn!

Man this was a struggle, not to understand the general sentiment but specific words. My listening skills with Yuzuru always seem to fail, either because he's using Sendai dialect words or I just suck at understanding the way he speaks lol But roughly: 'When I moved from Sendai to Toronto, of course I had worries. But my mother came with me. She would look for ingredients and make Japanese food for me. So that I could devote myself to practice, she washed my clothes for me everyday. She supported my dreams like it was an obvious/natural thing to do and I am incredibly thankful. Okaa-san arigatou!' ＊食材 = shokuzai = ingredients : D ＊夢を後押ししてくれているので感謝しています @MrPudding this isn't the entire CM so we'll probably get something slightly longer tomorrow

That Pino clip is.........another trailer guys, albeit almost (probably?) the entire thing (definitely the real dialogue of the CM)

Awwww........what a wonderful sunshine family, no wonder he’s the sweetest boy around

I mean.......he still has a bit of a mushroom (we've had like 91017204218401 hype materials for this CM, I have high hopes about its creative direction)

gosh, zhenya's a tiny slip of a thing isn't she? her legs are as skinny as her arms and yet she still jumps like that, amazing. I feel like they photoshopped her chest area...her left shoulder area and bust looks slightly weird, but it's a cute photo

That's the one thing I think commentators overlook -- that for Yuzu, his 'comfort zone' is taking the risky path and pushing himself to the edge, gambling with a huge success or loss. The bigger risk for his heart and mentality is actually to hold back. That's why when he succeeds, it's always convincing, it's always something you know is the absolute limit of what he can do at that point in time. He doesn't hold back for the sake of a medal or even for a clean skate, it's a very uncompromising 'all or nothing' mentality that is often needed for greatness. But it's obviously, the part where he gambles on being able to show his best self at the right time. If this was 19yr old Yuzu in the same situation, I'm almost certain he'd be gunning for 4Lz no matter what (Mr 'still put in choreographed 4S fall at Sochi'). I wonder if age and his new position now (and the desire to go clean) may have mellowed him out, made him slightly more risk adverse and/or receptive to others' opinions that may sway him. It's a natural thing to happen with maturity, though I do wonder how much of this whole 'challenger' mentality is less about youth and actually just one of the core 'essences' of who he is. If it's the latter, too many people persuading him to take a different path may cause the war of hearts that you mention. The difference is also with how badly he wants the OGM and how badly he wants a clean OGM which I think will affect his mentality (as we saw in WTT...wanting it too much and not being able to relax is usually how he tends to make mistakes). Well. Just massive speculation. Let's just hope he recovers well for now.

^that above scenario lol

^Yes to all of the above. He's a bit 'damned if you do, damned if you don't'. If he keeps 4Lz and fails, people will say he could've played it safe and won. If he doesn't keep the 4Lz and any of his rivals land more/equal number of quads, there may be space for him to lose and/or people will complain about his PCS/GOEs (or say stuff like he was being judged on an easier layout/different standard). The only way he can win absolutely and unequivocally (in his mind, I'm guessing) is to match the hardest tech (as in have the same range of jump varieties) + clean skate. That being said, I still think if he kept his WC layout and skated 2 clean programs, that would still prevail with very little room for debate so that's the gamble he'd be taking. I wonder if the kuyashii from taking a risk with his ideal layout and losing will be stronger than if he won with a 'safer' layout and which he would prefer. I suppose it comes down to whether his ideal is two clean skates at the Olympics or if it's to skate clean with the +4Lz/originally planned layout. That being said, we know from precedent that an easier layout does not equal a clean skate so I'm almost positive the most devastating scenario for him is if he goes safe and still doesn't skate clean. Sigh. What can we do. All we can hope is that he knows what he's doing and recovers enough to contemplate this question.

I'm referring to the sound that rings out at 1:44 (you can hear more clearly in his comp music). It sounds like a mix of something that sounds like bells/xylophone/chimes on top of some sort of synthesiser perhaps? I can't really hear a koto sound, but the notes have an echo-y/resonant quality that could be a really heavily plucked string? It just evokes the sense of prayer bells or something to me, even if that may not make sense. Is that the koto playing at 2:51 though? (maybe we should take this to the music thread lol sorry, I'm just curious)

Beautiful! I wish we had a proper recording of the clip (the strings section in particular sounds a bit muffled, though idk if it's because it's recorded second hand or if the original video didn't mix the sound properly)... it's such a beautiful piece...may we hear it played again soon Also, can someone more musically inclined tell me what instrument plays during the section from 1:20 (the highest sound carrying the melody... I guessed maybe some sort of xylophone but I can't be sure because it sounds more resonant than a typical xylophone). I've always been curious.

He's literally half the weight of Shohei l o l And I love that no matter what athlete, he always goes straight to asking them about their craft, he's such a nerd (also Kenzo is younger than him! I had no idea Kenzo was so young!!) I want to see him interact with Kohei and also with Kei Nishikori ; u ;