Martina

This article only scratches the surface. It's nice to see that the press was aware of the problem, but they've written far too little. Perhaps if they'd covered it more often and in more detail, we'd have more fair scores.

I'm happy that I'm not his mother, I would not have survived to some competitions. If you wants serenity, it's ok. We all have our own way of supporting him and receiving from him what we need. I prefer to know everything and be close to him in thought even in difficult times, but it's a personal choice. There's no one way better than another.

He relied on painkillers, as he did a lot of times during his competitive career. I'd prefer he didn't need them; I'm worried about the long-term effects of all these painkillers. If you're up for a long list, I can list quite a few physical issues Yuzu had to overcome over the years. Let me know if you want to read it. Painkillers aside, how could Yuzu go on like that? He is stubborn. When he wants to do something, he really does his best. Probably he has an high pain threshold, but mostly is stubbornness. No, he can't change the format of the performance. He loves to skate in an arena full of people who wants to see him. Take that away from him, and you take away what he loves most. A recorded show isn't the same. A video, as Ikue, is wonderful, but he wants to perform in front of the public. I saw him live two times. At the 2019 Grand Prix Final: short program, one official practice (the one in which he tried the 4A) and free skate, not the gala: that day I was at work. There were a lot of strong skaters in all the competitions. No one was comparable to him. He was magnetic, he was able to catch my eye even when he was at the side of the rink, drinking water, and at the same time one of the other skaters was doing a quad at the center of the rink. I learned in that competition how overwhelming his presence is. In 2022 he went pro. I saw all his solo show from my computer. Prologue only some time after the show, but for Gift, Re_Pray, Echoes of Life and Realive I bought the ticket for the livestream every time, this means 9 tickets. For the other shows, two times (Echoes day 2 and Realive day 1) I was able to watch them on Asahi in real time, I watched all the others when they were aired some times later. So I know what he did. I saw everything. I won the tickets for Echoes of Life in Chiba, both days (but I bought also my ticket for the international livestream, as a support for Yuzu). Chiba was the third city of the tour, so I already knew the story. This aided me a lot, because I was able to understand what was happening even whithout the English subtitles. And... it's totally different. From a screen, the shows are wonderful. From a cinema (two days later I went to a cinema in Kyoto and I watched the delayed viewing) they are even more beautiful, because you feel the atmosphere with the other fans. Inside the arena... it's totally different. The light are brighter. The colours more intense. The music wraps the people. There is a sensation of the space that you can't feel from a screen. You see Yuzu's speed, the beautiful transitions from one move to another that sometimes get lost when in the video there is a camera change. You feel to be part of the shows, because the lights often go over the public. You feel the emotions of the people sitting near you. It's totally different. Without the live performances, what Yuzu is doing would lose a big part of his meaning. The emotion would not be the same. Think to a detail: no one knows whether Yuzu will be able to skate a clean show or not. He too doesn't know it. And this feeling is an important part of the show. Really. When in Gift he started the six minutes of warm up, I was worried as I was worried the year before, when he was about to skate in Beijing. In a video... would he show a flawed performance, or would he skate again and again until he will do a perfect performance? There can't be the same tension in a recorded show. Another thing: he loves challenge. He could do easier shows. But he doesn't do them. He needs to be challenged, otherwise he would lose interest. At the 2017 Autumn Classic International he obtained 112.72 points in the short program. The Total Element Score, with three jump elements (one combination), three spins and one step sequence, was 64.17 points. For the free skate he decided to avoid the 4Lo and the 4Lz because he felt some pain to one knee. And he lost his concentration. He did countless mistakes. The Total Element Score for eight jump elements (three combinationa), three spins, one step sequence and one choreo sequence was 67.02 points. Less than three points more compared to the short program, but with a lot more of elements. Because on his mind he perceived the program as easy, since he had decided not to do the most difficult jumps, he was unable to concentrate and made mistakes that he normally does not make. When he doesn't feel challenged, he is not able to skate at his best. So we have to accept that sometimes he will be injured, and that, prayers aside, we can do nothing. To be his fans means, among all the beautiful things, also accepting this truth. From time to time, we will have a new trauma because we will discover something painful.

Same. We can't know when something wonderful will disappear. The only thing we can do was to wonder. Would his ankle heal? And would heal in time for the most important competitions? I'm happy that I was not a fanyu at the time of the 2014 Cup of China. The other injuries were devastating enough, that one would have been a nightmare. Anyone who doesn't follow Yuzu's career closely can't imagine how much criticism he's received, how many senseless accusations he's faced. But when we look at what not jealous people but others say, then he has received enormous praise, because everyone realizes what he does, how he does it, and who he is as a person. It was Yuzu who sprained his ankle. I don't know wether you saw the video of Yuzu walking in the backstage, at Notte stellata, with the ice on his ankle. And in Notte stellata he avoided the 3A and did only two 1A delayed, a 2T and a 3Lo. When he skated Requiem for the anniversary of the earthquake, the 3A was not so good. In Realive, for Otonal, he did only 3Lo, 3A, 3F+2T. His layout in his first senior season was more difficult, because then the combination was composed by two triple. We know that he wants to restore all his jumps, he was clear about it in Radio Members. But with his ankle is really difficult. We can only hope.

I, too, was sad to see that some people who had written so much in the past, produced analyses, videos, and texts... at a certain point stopped doing so. There could be many reasons for this, but it's still a treasure we're losing, because none of us can know everything, and by talking to each other, we learn so much. Years ago, I read some old forums, precisely to understand how people reacted in real time to episodes that, for me, were part of history. It helped me better understand the doubts and fears that so many had experienced. These doubts and fears haven't disappeared just because Yuzu is now a professional. In a recent interview, David Wilson stated that he was supposed to fly to Japan in January to choreograph Yae no sakura for Notte stellata, but that they had to abandon the project, and work with Zoom on a later date, due to yet another sprained ankle.

Chan had amazing skating skills and a wonderful 4T. His biggest flaw was the axel, he did a lot of mistakes on it. Fernandez has excellent skating skills and he was really good in connecting with the public. Uno's butt sticks a lot. And in order to raise his BV he cut transitions and skated a lot on two feet. He knew how to skate, but to be able to do more jumps, he simplified his skating. The judges should have noticed this and lowered his PCS scores, but they didn't. And his 4F was a really ugly jump. It was always cheated, but the judges gifted him huge scores. There are a lot of skaters better than Chen in spins, transitions and body movement. He learned to jump, and in his programs he did almost only jumps. But he was from US, and between the US press who praised him a lot and US federation who was able to influence the judges, the results were the ones we know.

Ci siamo ancora, ma sospetto che siamo altrove, su social media come Facebook o Twitter (mi rifiuto di chiamarlo X), o che scriviamo prevalentemente in inglese.

Me too struggle with English. I definitely make a lot of mistakes, and sometimes I worry I won't be able to get my point across or explain something properly. All we can do is do our best. Yes, I'm that Martina. I'm not special. I'm a fan as countless of other fans, so, thank you, but we are all equal. It doesn't matter what we do, or how long we've been following Yuzu. It doesn't even matter if we just follow him without doing anything in public or if we do something in a public space, visible to everyone. We're all equal. I wrote a lot of things. I hoped that the press would take an interest in the topic and would force the judges and the ISU to evaluate the competitions correctly. It didn't happen. Now I'm writing because I love to write, and I love to highlight how extraordinary is what Yuzu did in the past and how extraordinary is what he is doing now.

I'll touch on a few of the points you mentioned, but I'm not entirely exhaustive. Regarding the score, it's a long discussion. I remember the 2019 World Championships, the disappointment with the result, but also the lack of understanding. He'd missed a jump in the short program, but even so, I didn't understand how he could have lost. Then I started reading comments from people criticizing the result. Were they just disappointed fans, or was there some truth in what they were writing? I wanted to understand, so I started studying. It's true, he often made mistakes. No one denies that. But the score is made up of so many things. The base value, and Chen's was higher. The grade of execution, and the elements Yuzu performed correctly, were never comparable with Chen's. Most of Yuzu's elements, executed correctly, deserved a +5. Chen made few mistakes, but the quality wasn't great. His scores were too high. The same goes for the components. Yuzu always deserved top marks for quality and complexity. Even in his worst programs, he was still superior to the best Chen. The fact that the highest and lowest scores are excluded from the average slightly reduces the risk of a single judge manipulating the score, but even a single judge can be decisive when the gaps are small. And there are so many things that come into play and influence the judges, including the belief that Yuzu was "old" and therefore no longer in top condition. The +5/-5 system is much more manipulable than the +3/-3 system, and that played its part. As for 4A, Yuzurujenn already answered, it was a childhood dream of him, and immediately after winning in PyeongChang he said that was his goal, so the choice to focus on 4A had nothing to do with scores. He had already won everything, he just needed a new challenge, that's all. Yuzu has never been one to get discouraged by a negative result. Frustration, yes, a lot. But he always thought he could win; he just had to practice more, perfect his skating. Until he realized the scores were assigned arbitrarily, this was discouraging. The knowledge that, no matter what he did, they wouldn't allow him to win. Skating with this knowledge also increases tension, making it easier to make mistakes. There's a happy ending, if we want to see it. It's up to us. Yuzu is still the only skater to have won two Olympic gold medals in the men's event since 1952. In Beijing, he showed that we can be struck by bad luck—the hole in the ice and the sprained ankle—but we can still continue to do our best. We can still chase our dreams. And if we can't achieve what we dreamed of, we can set ourselves a new goal and work toward it, like Yuzu did when he skated a perfect Rondo during Gift.

Hi, I completely understand the difficulties of being a working mother. My daughters were born in 2006 and 2009, so I missed the first part of Yuzu's competitive career. The fandom is huge, and there are certainly people who follow him for his looks. But most of us follow him for what he can do on the ice—because we've never seen a skater like him—and for what he does off the ice. For his intelligence, his sensitivity, and the way he faces every challenge. He wrote his first biography when he was 17 because he wanted to help his rink, so much so that he always donated royalties to the rink, and this although at that time he had no sponsors, and training was very expensive, expecially when he moved to Canada. It's true, he made a lot of mistakes, but he always managed to learn from them. This is one of the characteristics that allowed him to win everything he won. He's truly grateful for everything. He certainly had an extraordinary character to begin with, and his parents certainly gave him a great upbringing, but I think the earthquake played a fundamental role. He knows he could have died at 16. He's never forgotten that. He's never forgotten the difficulties of that period, nor that, compared to many others, he was lucky because none of his loved ones died. This helps him put things in perspective: he can't take for granted that what he has now he'll still have in a few minutes, be it his house, destroyed by the earthquake, his rink, which he lost in 2004 and again in 2011, or anything else. So he's grateful for what he has. He's not just a role model for you. He is for so many other people. Age doesn't matter. I'm older than you, I've followed him for years, and I continue to be amazed and to admire him for what he does.

Hi, I bought the digital version of the book while I was in Japan. These are the photos mentioned in this passage. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v1GUo2AwhCt8-SjkHye9Vn9zfwN7ckBa/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YYbqfpka2z9vdShg6t9F6akfBhkxUwT_/view I have no idea if there are better ways to share images on this site. I haven't read the other messages yet, so I don't know how complete your translation is, but I can always take more screenshots if needed.

Me too try to read and keep all the articles. I was hoping there was something I missed, but I think you're right, with the New Year's Eve so close almost surely there was no media. If Yuzu doesn't bother to say the number some other time, those boxes will remain empty.

I don't write this very often, but I am one of the people who updates Wikipedia. My updates are mainly in Italian, and in fact Yuzu's Italian page is among the most complete, and every now and then I make some updates to the English version. There is one detail that I would like to add but I can't. Does anyone know how many spectators were present at the Hiroshima shows? I tried to look for the information but I couldn't find anything. If anyone knows a newspaper that published the data and can give me the link, it would be a great favor.

In the book there is also the image of the pendant:

Wonderful video. A huge thank you to everyone who worked to edit it. An article about Yuzu on the AIPS site: https://www.aipsmedia.com/aips/pages/articles/2024/36133.html

Thank you. Mine is just one of the possible interpretations. I left out many things because it is already a very long article, and I had to focus on videogames, it was my basis for being able to publish in that magazine. Aside from that, there are certainly countless things that I missed, and things that can be interpreted in another way. But I think it's important to write critical texts, to talk about Yuzu. We can help each other discover details, and we can contribute to Yuzu's fame. He is the genius, but if no one highlights it, his fame remains confined to those who already know him, whereas I would like ever greater recognition for him.

I published an article about Yuzu's solo shows. It is in Italian, but with the automatic translation into English it is understandable. If you want to read it, you can find it here: https://www.fantasymagazine.it/36238/i-videogiochi-come-rappresentazione-della-vita-il-tour-re-pray-di-yuzuru-hanyu

Today the Japanese National Championship began, and there is a real possibility that Uno will win his sixth title, joining Yuzu who has already won six titles. I explained why, even if Uno were to win their sixth title, their successes are not comparable. https://sportlandiamartina.link/2023/12/21/all-japan-figure-skating-championships/

I watched the video live. Congratulations to everyone for the beautiful messages, and thanks so much to all the people who worked on the editing. You've done an amazing job, and the beginning is brilliant.

I sent an email yesterday with a photo and a very simple message written on it.

I am speechless. I am devastated by this announcement.

Today I published my review of RE_PRAY on FantasyMagazine. The text is in Italian, so if you want to read it and you don't know my language you have to use an automatic translator. I still wanted to publish it there because, however small, FantasyMagazine is not a blog but a registered newspaper. To the extent of my possibilities, this is an attempt to talk about Yuzu in a context other than the sporting one, because Yuzu has now gone beyond sport and what he does is art. The review: https://www.fantasymagazine.it/35689/-

I didn't even consider going to Japan because of the costs and time needed to make that type of trip. But I took a train trip of almost 800 kilometers to watch RE_PRAY with two friends (one of whom traveled 250 kilometers). We wanted to share the experience. I only saw Yuzu live at the 2019 GPF. When he was on the ice he was magnetic. During the warm up, or the official practice on Friday, for me it was as if there was only him on the ice. It's not that I chose not to watch the other 5 skaters, I just didn't see them. Yuzu caught my eye. So I understand that your gaze was drawn to him, regardless of how wonderful what he had built was. As far as I'm concerned, RE_PRAY is a work of art.

Yes, several people took an intercontinental flight to be able to see RE_PRAY live. I didn't feel like it, congratulations to those who did it. And while the Japan Open gave away freely 4,000 tickets, Yuzu tickets were sold via lottery, with many people unable to attend the show live and having to settle for cinemas (over 100 halls) or Asahi/Beyond depending on the country they live in. But I can't put these people in the screenshots, I limited myself to the simplest comparison.

A month before RE_PRAY the Saitama Super Arena hosted the Japan Open. This is the audience in comparison: