rockstaryuzu

That wouldn't necessarily be bad... I just made it to the PH status of my favorite program! Can I stay at 'Let's Go Crazy' forever please? With PPOS Yuzu to accompany me? Pretty please?

Well, there's no obligation upon him to have media day unless there's a lot of Japanese press asking for it, TBH. And I think he's definitely experimenting. After all, it's a new scoring system, new length, he's fresh off the greatest triumph the sport has ever seen so he can pretty well do as he likes...it's the perfect opportunity to make bold new choices and try new things.

try www.wanikani.com. I'm using it to learn kanji and it's pretty fun. As for Yuzu's 2018 programs...honestly I'm feeling a surprise vibe. I think we're going to see something 100% new and fresh from him this time.

There was an interview he gave (in 2015 or 2016, maybe?) to a Japanese interviewer (my memory is suggesting it was for Kenji's Room, but I"m not sure) where the interviewer asks him, in English, "How's your English?" and Yuzu replies in Japanese that it's 'questionable'. He's also on the record (in one of the P&G commercials I think) as saying that he finds it a relief to speak Japanese with his mom when they're at home in Toronto because being surrounded by English all the time is a strain. I'm pretty sure that no matter how much he's improved, he finds English a constant challenge. I can relate. Even though Canadians are officially supposed to be bilingual and I understand French well enough to watch TV in the language, if I spend too much time ( more than a couple days) in a purely French environment, my brain gets tired and it makes me really cranky.

I'm plumping for carnivorous heart-breaker Yuzu, myself. As opposed to NHK 2017 heartbreaking Yuzu...really please let's not do that again.

I forget who did it ( maybe TSL?) But somewhere in the depths of YouTube there's an interview with Brian after 2017 World's in which he talks about the lessons learned after Boston and basically implies that the whole team has changed the way they communicate so that problems don't get hidden anymore. He gives an example using Javi and Gabby, but it's not hard to read between the lines and see that he means Yuzu too.

@Hydroblade when you said this: "Regarding the "his english isn't good enough" thing, i am just speculating but his devices are probably set to japanese, and the forum detects which language you are using. So the interface should appear in japanese for him"...that explained something else for me. I sometimes find that some of my posts get reactions I wasn't expecting, and it's made me wonder what I was doing wrong with my English (I'm a native English speaker). But now I get it - basically, sometimes we're lost in translation. Anyway, it tickles me to think of Yuzu reading us, but realistically he probably has thousands of more important things to do in every.minute of his day.

You're deliberately tempting fate, aren't you? Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that Yuzu has actually created an anonymous account here on the Planet...which one of us do you think it might be?

I'm pretty sure that if he did read us, some of the things we've said would leave him blushing the way he did when Plushenko praised him at CiONTU....

It's hard to say. From things he's said in interviews, it's pretty obvious that he lurks on the Japanese fan forums and sees what they say but who knows if he does it for English ones as well

Maybe this is it? He wants to reach us and move us, and so we can't help but respond? In other words, it's a two-way conversation with the audience when he skates, and that's what makes him so magnetic?

That surely does contribute to his continued popularity but it doesn't explain why some fans fall for him at first sight nor why he is so very precious to all of us...

This is my point exactly. Yuzu's the only one with this power of drawing people to him. I can't help but wonder why it's so.

I think this is important. There are so many who are remarkably talented but don't get to achieve their full potential because of various factors. And so, so, so many odds were against Yuzu.

What a lovely way to put it.

This. I feel like this is true. If it wasn't skating, then it would have been something else, maybe. Some people just have the light.

I look at him, and I feel all those things too...and I don't feel them when I look at other skaters. It's him, himself. Something about him. But what that is exactly, I still can't figure out. He's like a lighthouse but I don't quite know where he's showing the way to.

This might be a bit of a silly question to ask the Planet, but I've been mulling this over for a while now and I can't come up with a satisfactory answer. So, here it is: Why do you think Yuzu is so important? I don't mean, why is he popular, or why are you a fan...but rather, what's his significance in the grander scheme of things? I ask this because in some ways, his phenomenon doesn't make sense. For example, when he got injured last season, I really felt deeply that it was a tragedy and genuinely prayed he would recover for the Olympics. That's not a normal response for me, and I wasn't a full-fledged fanyu yet at the time. I found myself wondering why I got so caught up in it. And if you look at Yuzu's work outside the rink...he's done great things for the 3/11 recovery effort. However, if there was no Hanyu, would there have been someone else to step in to that role? Why him? If you think about it, why does this skinny kid from Sendai with all the big ambitions matter so much?

Doesn't it just make you want to be one of those stuffed toys? My vote for most emotional program is definitely 2018 Olympic Seimei. I loved 2017 Worlds H&L, but I didn't spend 3 months praying for Yuzu's health before that one.

Oh the irony...

I don't have problems seeing ice dance as a sport equal to singles or pairs. But maybe that's because when I started out as a figure skating fan, the singles discipline included compulsory figures, which have the distinction of being simultaneously the most un-sport-like and yet most easy to score objectively of all the disciplines. To me, ice dance is basically the paired-up version of compulsory figures...so yeah, I have no problem with it being considered a sport on the same level as all the others.

Hey well, at least he knows himself!

Have you ever watched ballet live? Especially the men? You try doing some of these and then tell me how much athletics are in ballet. Don't forget that ballet dancers don't have the benefits of the speed and momentum that figure skaters can gather. A lot of these jumps are executed mainly from standing or running starts. The dancers are throwing themselves six feet in the air by muscle power alone, no physics to help them along. Let's just say that if it involves moving your body artistically to music, it's athletic, and leave it at that.

I consider things like warhorses and classical music/ballet-ish programs to be universal because they usually translate well across many cultures. I am indeed talking about more ethnic-type dances and music. For example, flamenco and tango are sort of kind of warhorses, but they also have a strong flavour of the cultures they're from. I think it would be interesting to watch Yuzu dive deep into what's beyond that in terms of dance inspiration. Remember he still has to make singles' programs out of it. So, things like Ukrainian dancing where the men leap and twirl from squatting positions, or Irish dancing, or even capoeira might work as inspirations.

Well, ice dance is to some extent a matter of taste, just like dance is, and not everyone likes Irish dancing. The thing about B/K is that, just like the Duchesnays before them, they were big innovators who bucked a lot of the prevailing wisdom ( which was for very 'classic', lyrical dances and/or strictly ballroom) of ice dance at the time, and who should have had that recognized with a medal or two. It's no coincidence that they won Worlds the year after the Salt Lake City judging corruption debacle caused ISU to rethink their scoring systems. But to bring this back on topic, it would be really fun to see what Yuzu would come up with if he tried to interpret another culture's dance forms in his programs. It's something most people are not used to seeing, either - an Asian man basically appropriating a bit of white culture.