Vulnavia

I think it is, because I can see the video of the free but not the short. So either they're unblocking some videos that were supposed to stay blocked, or not unblocking all of the videos that could be unblocked...in other words, it's all running super smoothly in typical ISU fashion.

It's weird, I'm in the US and I can see a bunch of videos of performances from SCI, but not all of them, and only a few from SkAm. I have no idea how they're deciding what gets unblocked and where and when, but of the ones that I can see Yuzu's free skate has the most views by far.

Yuzu's free skate from SCI is unblocked on the ISU's youtube channel, and it's already at 90k views

My problem is more with stuff like them stating that Yuzu hates Shoma as if it's a fact when it's actually completely made up nonsense, or constantly trying to start rumors that there's tension and drama in Yuzu's relationships with his coaches when, again, there's no evidence of that whatsoever.

I do think there's an outside chance that someone at the ISU may have started to wake up to who their biggest and most marketable star actually is. I like to imagine them watching the Simone Biles mania at the recent gymnastics world championships and going 'man, I wish we had one of those GOATs...hey, wait a second, we do!' I mean, once again the crowds tell the tale. SkAm wasn't even close to sold out despite being in a fun location like Vegas, while SCI was basically a packed house Yuzucon in Kelowna, BC. And I think we all know that if Yuzu was the headlining skater at SkAm rather than Nathan, that venue would have been packed too. Maybe some of the powers that be are beginning to clue in too, but that also might be far too optimistic, we'll just have to wait and see.

Speaking of Great Moments In Fanyu Cheering, Olympic Seimei is almost at six million views

I fully support referring to that spin as the Hanyu spin all the time, Yuzu deserves some elements named after him.

I'm not sure USFS got what they bargained for with this "social experiment"

So, I realize that Nathan is the current world champion and can request any GPs that he wants, but to request not only your own home GP but also the current silver medalist's (and reigning Olympic champion's) home GP as well? That's...a choice, and I'll just say that personally I'm glad that NHK picked Yuzu.

If they actually think this.......well, I'll be polite and just say that it's a severe miscalculation. Zhou (and Chen, for that matter) couldn't even sell $20 tickets to Stars on Ice in their home country this spring after both medaled at Worlds. And in Japan, not only do they already have numerous skaters of their own across all categories (currently competing skaters, retired skaters, and young skaters on the rise) with more star quality than Vincent, they also have Olympic medalists and highly accomplished and popular skaters from around the world lining up to compete and perform in Japan. Vincent in particular is also a uniquely bad choice because many of the skating fans who dislike him feel that way not just because he's a mediocre skater being propped up with inflated scores thanks to fed politicking, but also because of things that he has said and done off the ice, which is a lot harder to counter with manufactured PR narratives. Basically, I have no idea what they're thinking with this choice, unless someone at Kinoshita owed Mie Hamada a favor or something.

The comment from John Bayless on her blog post is really sweet. I love the circle of inspiration here where they ended up meeting because he was so excited that she used his music at the Olympics, he invited her to one of his recitals, and she heard another arrangement of his that she loved enough to want to skate to

Apparently there's a rumor going around that Tom Z is leaving, but I haven't seen official confirmation anywhere yet.

If Shoma doesn't go to Chicago this year, I wonder if that will affect the level of gushing over him from the B.ESP guys. But more importantly, I wonder where else he could be going and if there's any chance that it could be TCC, and not in the 'everyone should go to TCC!' sense but just in terms of places that have a good jump specialist in residence.

Looks like Camden Pulkinen has left Tom Z, which I think is a good move. I always thought it was so weird that Tom would be posting videos on instagram of Camden working on the 4A in a harness and talking about his "4A journey" when he doesn't even have a reliable and stable 4T or 4S yet.

I think some of this also comes down to personal preference in terms of commentary styles. Personally, someone like Ambesi is much more my style because he tells it like it is, isn't interested in PR nonsense from the big feds, and isn't afraid to call out bad or unfair judging as it's happening and even highlight the bias of judges from certain countries. And he can back up all of his opinions with technical knowledge, he's not mean or snarky just for the sake of 'entertainment' like Tara & Johnny. So, he's not going to search for positives to highlight about Nathan just because he won while ignoring the negatives, but he's also not going to be like 'Nathan sucks and only won because he's American'. He just explains in a clear and straightforward way that while Nathan won because he made fewer mistakes, Yuzu is still the GOAT and a much better skater overall and that it's a major problem that the scoring isn't reflecting that properly.

I think you're exactly right about this. And if someone like Jason Brown had been doing even just a 4T and 4S for the past few seasons, Nathan never would have risen to the US #1 spot in the first place, there would be a huge PCS gap between Jason and Nathan, and the whole narrative in the American media would be about Jason being the total package and Nathan needing to work harder on his artistry.

I don't have any specific comments to add right now, just wanted to express my approval of Scott Hamilton being the first person mentioned in this thread. I'm not exaggerating when I say that some of his disrespectful antics have literally made me feel ashamed to be American, he's that bad.

Yuzu's Olympic Seimei video is only 20k views away from five million

I know I'm biased because I really really love Satoko, but for me, every time I watched Evgenia's tango this season it just made me want to go back and watch Satoko's tango again, and I'm sure Evgenia's Memoirs of a Geisha will just make me want to watch Satoko's from last season. I'm sure the overlap is coincidental but for me it's not a good comparison to keep highlighting. (Of course, the judges will keep giving Evgenia higher PCS anyway even though it's not deserved, so I guess it doesn't matter.) I also think that given the history of Memoirs of a Geisha, it's the last thing I would choose if my intention was to pay tribute and show respect to Japanese people and culture. And speaking of Satoko, I would love to see her work with a new choreographer too, not because her programs have been bad but just because I'd love to see her experiment creatively.

The way that I boil it down is that to me, Yuzu is someone who has a lot that he wants to say with his skating and a clear sense of who he is artistically and what he wants to convey with each performance, while Nathan doesn't particularly have anything that he wants to say or convey, he just views skating as a sport where you go out there and do only what you need to do to rack up the points that you need to win.

I think the two most important questions with the donation are first, of course, where to donate. And second, what's the best way to go about it? Is there a good way to collect the donations into a fund and then make one big donation to whatever organization we choose? Or, do we donate individually and then come up with a system to track how much everyone donated so that we can announce a total? Many organizations allow donations to be made in someone's name, so this is something to consider. I don't have experience with a group donation scenario exactly like this, but I'm happy to help with researching options.

Just wanted to bring this thread back to life because I think we ended up in a state of thanks to having too many good ideas. Maybe we should consider stuff like the book to be longer term projects, and also continue to research the charity idea, but also come up with something simpler that we could do during this off season. Planet Hanyu merch care package? Gift with a planet theme? We've seen Yuzu use towels that were gifts from fans during practices, so maybe a custom Planet towel?

In this sense, I'm really looking forward to post-retirement Yuzu, because I believe that he's going to fully blossom and develop even further artistically when he can focus on that aspect of his skating without the restrictions of judging and the scoring system.

At first glance before reading the caption I assumed that they were purposely imitating Satoko's opening pose from her tango...

I think you're onto something there. When you're just starting out with Japanese, being able to recognize basic sentences like "みなさん、こんにちは。羽生結弦です" is really fun. If he ever released a Learn Japanese With Yuzu series I think he'd have a lot of takers