rockstaryuzu

Out of everything he said in his monologue, I feel like this is the most important. It at once explains both his achievements and his struggle. Nobody else will achieve your dream for you, but there's sure a whole crowd of 'Nobody Elses' who will try to prevent you from achieving it.

There's a ton of overlap - in the end, it would be all the fanyu ARMYs duking it out amongst themselves vs Ticketmaster's shady sales practices

Try to imagine how the stages would look...is there even a venue that could host such a thing?

Excellent news!

But actually normal for ice shows in Japan. Yuzu's been the exception

Yes but does Yuzu really want to skate a 10-minute program? Genuinely asking. I can't figure out if he does or not. Everything you've described, except for your final paragraphs, is just the details of how to convey the overall theme and story of a show. But where you start talking about Yuzu possibly exploring the philosophy or art, culture, and life, that's what I was trying to get at. If he's going to keep doing solo shows (and who knows if that something he will continue or not, it's a LOT of work and pressure), then he needs something to talk/skate about, to structure the show around, and it can't always be the history of his career. Sooner or later, he'll have to move on to other topics.

Yes to all that

so I've been thinking about this idea of what comes after GIFT for Yuzu. (obs, he literally has Notte Stellata in two weeks, but after that). The issue at its core boils down to: he's been a wildly successful pro skater so far, how does he keep that going? It's not a question of technical prowess or even artistry anymore. He has proven himself in both those areas. Though his physical stamina obviously plays a role in what he is able to do going forward - i.e. is the pace of 1, 2 hr or so, solo show put on for 2 or 3 nights every month or two, really sustainable? - it's also not going to affect whether he can sell out arenas for years to come. No, the challenge is different from that. The real Everest here, is content. What does he fill a two-hour show with? GIFT, like Prologue before it, and even CiONTU before that, is a show that finds it's basis in Yuzu's own life. It draws on all of his experiences so far to create an engrossing, moving depiction of what it's like to be the boy who follows his dream at all costs. This is rich source material for his creativity, but even for someone as much like an anime protagonist as Yuzu, eventually all the good stories will be told and he can't go back and keep re-telling the same ones every time, no matter how compelling a personality he is! (And he is wildly compelling to listen to! I could do it all day. ) He has done it his whole career. Every character he's played, every story he's told on the ice so far, has had elements of the real Yuzu in them: SEIMEI the wily warrior who vanquishes the monsters. The flirty flaneur of Parisian Walkways. Romeo - and Juliet. Phantom. Swanyu. etc etc all have succeeded because either the character has something Yuzu also has, or Yuzu has been able to find a bit of them in himself. The prime example of this being LGC, during which Yuzu so much embodied Prince the resemblance seemed uncanny - yet at the same time was sublimely himself, dragging the audience along on a swaggering rock'n'roll soliloquoy about the meaning of life. Now that GIFT has monumentally expressed all of that in one exquisite, one-time-only, 3 hour-long package, has Yuzu come to the natural end of his autobiographical style of storytelling? If so, what stories can he tell next? what should he skate about now? Stagnating is out of the question, of course. Other skaters have done that - moved through the years and the decades with the same limited bag of artistic tricks still earning them places in ice shows. Hanging on because they once were good, even as their technical skills faded. Pleasing ever-smaller crowds with the stuff they used to do, never exploring new avenues of expression. I don't think any of us want Yuzu to do that, no matter how much we love Ballade or H&L or RJ 1.0. It's plain to see from what Yuzu has said in his interviews since turning pro, that he doesn't want that for himself either. And I certainly can't picture him doing any of the common ice show cliches. Nor Disney on Ice (unless it's the story of him and Pooh-san, told for kids.) So what should he do, in terms of finding program content? What stories should he tell? While I can't tell him what he should do, I can point out that the answer lies exactly in what he's done with GIFT. By taking his own life story and re-imagining how to tell it, Yuzu also was taking intensely personal reactions and emotions and opening them up into a more universal truth. As he said himself of the loneliness and alienation expressed in GIFT (i'm paraphrasing) "All of us are like this to an extent." It's that thread of universality, I believe, that would serve him best, going forward. As he starts thinking about next moves and decides what kinds of shows he'll continue to put on, as long as he keeps looking for the threads of common human experience that underpin not only his own story, but all the best stories, he'll be able to continue to be fresh, innovative, and enthralling in his chosen art. Each thread contains the potential to lead him in many directions, opening up whole worlds of expression he's barely begun to explore. It's an exciting prospect!

ToshI might just be one of my most favorite fanyus. He gets so swept away by Yuzu. 🤗

Funny how that happens. When I saw him live at competition, that was my reaction at the end of his programs, too. An urge to bow in response to his bow.

Especially in the current times. It has been on my mind lately, as I get drawn deeper and deeper into certain fandoms etc, that the real true and sole purpose of humanity is to make this world better and brighter through joyful, loving, and creative pursuits. When we (i.e. our species as a whole) don't do this, but instead indulge our destructive impulses, all of our mental health suffers and the world is a poorer place.

@ValerieFang is this you? Very nice job!

Thank you, and now I'm embarassed. Didn't realize I was the author of my own troubles on this one! 😳

I just had a whole long post typed out, hit 'Submit Reply' and it vanished without a trace. I've also had sentences disappear from my posts in between my hitting 'Submit' and my post appearing on the forum. Is this happening to anyone else? Is it an intentional thing that the Planet is set up to do? Or is it just a glitch? It's really disconcerting to press 'Submit' and see a whole post vanish like it never existed

@micaelis I read your post. While I'm not going to comment on obvious things about it that other satellites already have, I do have a question for you: why are you so obsessed with trying to figure who will be the Next Big Thing in men's singles skating? When I started coming to the Planet in 2018, you were all about Gogolev: first as a 'replacement' for Javi as Yuzu's training mate, then as the Next Big Thing. Now it's Malinin. And next year or the year after that it'll be some other skater. But why not just enjoy Yuzu's skating in the here and now, and leave the predictions to the fortune tellers? It really doesn't matter who's coming along to try and fill Yuzu's shoes, because they won't be able to.

Yuzu's been with Sekkisei for how long now? And yet I still 🤣 every time. Beauty blogger Yuzu was then and is still the very last thing I ever would have expected... the guy who once dried his skate blades and his face with the same towel... - please can we all just appreciate how his natural beauty always shines regardless... and how wondrous strange Yuzu's life can be sometimes

!!!!

Idk about all you but since Disney+ has GIFT until March 12, that's where I'm headed...

While we're on that topic: the way the hands are lit with green and then red as the SEIMEI music starts, makes them look like they're casting a spell, so at that point maybe they represent SEIMEI's hands, because he's an onmyouji. Really, they're very hardworking hands and I think they represent quite a lot of different things throughout the show. Also, if you look at the proportions of them - they're not random hands. I wonder if they were designed based on Yuzu's hands.

@Anni This part: "That is why, by making the story, and to have program viewed as a piece within that story, wondered what kind of things you all would receive. That was what I was thinking while configuring the show." from that interview stoood out to me. I really feel like Yuzu wove all those disparate progams into a complete and seamless whole that told a story of its own.

Amen!

I just finished another rewatch of GIFT (have to get them in while I can, only a few hours left!) and this time I only watched the Yuzu skating, dancers, and the band's live performances of LGC and the specially-written GIFT theme. What pops out: - The band was excellent. Really really excellent, and Takabe-san is clearly a star in his own right. - the dancers also did a fabulous job and someone put a lot of time and effort into their choreography, especially for the 'game over' sequence, where each dancer is doing something slightly different from the others. - focusing on the skating makes it really apparent just what a tremendous physical effort this was on Yuzu's part. That he got through all those programs with only a couple of cat-like saves on the jumps and a tiny handful of other minor slip-ups, is incredible. (Also, it wouldn't be a Yuzu program without a cat-like save or two.) He did a full competition-grade SP (Rondo) (would love to know what kind of score that would have got from fair, impartial judges), another SP slightly less seriously (LMEY), two full-length exhibition programs (Notte & HYK), two completely new show programs (the one all in flowy white - i forget the song name, and the red one, Ashura), a simplified version of his free skate POTO, segments of his free skate programs H&L and SEIMEI, a segment of Ballade, his original art piece A Fleeting Dream, a portion of Firebird, a six minute warm-up and a joyful 2 minute improv to thank the audience at the end. This man has stamina and he has it in spades.

No, I don't know. Even what I've already mentioned is from stuff Yuzu has already said in earlier interviews. I'd only be guessing at anything else. I do think that the starlight is supposed to represent his fans and supporters. He always mentions it while quoting typical fan comments and encouragements.