rockstaryuzu

He should be an honorary Canadian! In my heart he's one. More to the point, Kurt and PJ both know Yuzu personally. Of course they're going to talk about his season. You'll note Nathan didn't make the poster.

Yes, Kurt is a bit that way, but his specialty is songs like these, and at this point I think Yuzu would be pretty comfortable speaking up for himself and getting his own influence in. Pop Jeff in the mix and I think the three of them could make something really unique. Also, I happen to like HILY. It's not like Yuzu can't do flirty, after all.

And now for something completely different: How about a sultry, seductive Yuzu? Are we ready for that? I could totally see him doing this as a SP, but in order for him to get the right attitude going, I think he'd need Kurt Browning on the choreo. This is the kind of song Kurt does in his sleep. Maybe a Kurt/Jeff collab?

He would be all that in the West too! His character is admirable everywhere.

Huh. Isn't that interesting. If you go north of the border to Canada, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who wouldn't consider Yuzu attractive, Asian or not. In the words of my one of my senior-citizen Polish-Canadian friends, "he's adorable". And Yuzu aside, there's a lot of variety in what's considered male attractiveness here...like, I don't think you could actually find a 'standard' for male beauty here. (Except for 'athletic', which is an attribute everyone seems to like).

I hope I won't offend anyone by responding to this but, yes, I can tell that Boyang has a Chinese face and Yuzuru does not. But I work with a lot of Chinese people who have immigrated to Canada and my eyes have become used to how they look. However, there is something very interesting that I noticed when I went to ACI last year, I've been wondering about it all year, and I was afraid to mention it in case people take it the wrong way. But I must know if anyone else has experienced this: when I saw Yuzu in person, his face looked much more 'Japanese' to me, than it does in photos and videos. I don't know why that is. Is it just that I'm crazy, or is it that his Japanese-ness can shine through better when you see him in person? has this happened to anyone else?

It is a math thing. From the ancient Greeks, no less: Phidias, the man who designed the sculptures of the Parthenon. Plato and Euclid also described the concept in some detail. It's universal, like gravity, and not specifically Japanese.

It's a risk either way at this point...if he does an edge jump on the wrong ice conditions for edge jumps he could hurt the ankle again too. I'm guessing that having more options is better from that perspective as well.

I wonder about that. From what I've seen, PCS tends to reflect technical scores to some degree, so if the overall tech score average across all skaters goes up, so will PCS. Simply put, I don't think either PCS score reflects reality all that much.

Bingo! That is exactly the difference between Yuzu and everyone else

I can see what you're saying but compare it to his SP from last season. It's a vast improvement (I know people prefer Nemesis but I find it much more devoid of choreographic content than Caravan). You can see that SLB did her best to give him something good, and it's not awful (sorry, I thought it was their first time collaborating but she did Nemesis too, so wiki tells me). Take a look at Great Spirit for comparison - it was literally too much for Shoma; every time he performed it it nearly did him in, and I suspect that Shae-Lynn overestimated what he was capable of. Whereas with Caravan, I think she gave Nathan exactly what he was capable of and no more. And taken by itself, Caravan's not a bad program - certainly on par with what most of the men's field come up with. The trouble with it, in my opinion, is that (jump layout aside) it seems like something anyone could or would do. I could totally envision Brezina or even Brendan Kerry doing it. And I don't know whether that's because there's nothing of Nathan's personality in there, or whether it's because Nathan's artistic personality is just not that unique.

The way I'd put it is this: Caravan is what you get when a super-competitive and talented athlete reads a bunch of feedback about himself online saying he lacks artistry, so he goes out and hires a great choreographer to give him a great program that he can perform to prove to everyone he has artistry. Etude is what you get when an artist decides he wants to take the audience on a journey with him, using his superlative figure skating skills and the beautiful music to draw them in and tell the story, so that he and the audience can experience the moment together and achieve victory as a by-product. Personally, I think you can't compare them and shouldn't try; they are two entirely different things. And the scores are from two different eras. Etude was scored when the max GOE was +3, so unless you're going to try and do some kind of conversion to the current system, you're not comparing apples to apples at all.

He'd make them work like nobody's business. If he wants to really bring the drama, Yuzu could do Wagner. Ride of the Valkyries. Can you imagine it? 🤣 DA-da-dah-da, DA-da-dah-da, DA. DA. DAAA!!! With Yuzu in a Viking outfit.

@kaeryth beat me to it, but what they're talking about is the Golden Mean, not the 'golden portion'. Basically it's considered the ideal ratio of length and/or width to height to produce an image pleasing to the eye.

Will do. God bless.

Just a note here, because everyone seems to be interpreting this differently: there's more to Yuzu trying to reintroduce 4Lz and trying to get 4F than just a quest for higher BV or more candies from the judges. As I understand it, he also mentioned (in a post-WC interview) that having only edge jumps other than 4T is a serious disadvantage for him because edge jumps are more affected by ice conditions than toe jumps are. So he's looking to improve his strategy and give himself more options. I think it's a really smart thing to do, especially if you consider how often the ice has been soft at competitions this year. Because he's great, he's managed to overcome this without too much point loss this year, but why not just skip the stress and give each program a 'good ice' and a 'bad ice' layout? Planning ahead, always thinking - that's our boy.

I think it's too soon to make predictions but I'm expecting a new short but a recycled and revamped Origin. Just a gut feeling I have.

I think Japan Open coincides too closely with ACI, right? It's at the very start of the competitive season. From Yuzu's POV, I would guess it's probably more worthwhile to do ACI and get scores that count towards the ISU standings and so on. I suspect if Yuzu ever did do Japan Open, he'd be doing it the same way Nobu does. i.e, not while he's still competing officially.

Maybe one day, people will be saying "I saw the great artist Hanyu", and not only "I saw the great skater Hanyu" , because I really think he does approach skating like an artist would.

No, we all think the same. Welcome to the club.

He was but a fleeting mirage....

Well, it would have been! But unless he re-uses Origin for next year, the chance is gone now. But boy, was he ever shooting for the stars last summer! It almost makes me sorry that chill, Zen, 'I want to skate for myself' Yuzu didn't last past ACI.

That first layout for Origin - I knew that opening gong was always supposed to be for the 4A! I just knew it!

Yagudin the fanboy!