Why I think a yoi prequel movie will actually be great
By now, you have probably seen a form of the new yoi movie news - that it’ll be called Ice Adolescence and will release sometime in 2019. You’ve also probably seen some form of this visual:
Which is my way of saying that you too, have also probably concluded that the yoi movie will be a prequel which will somehow feature Victor’s backstory.
I think all of us wanted to see a sequel because we obviously want to know what Yuuri and Victor are up to after the GPF in Barcelona, but remember: getting a prequel doesn’t close any doors for the future, and in fact - it opens them. Yes, it means we’ll have to wait even longer for a sequel, whether that would be again in movie form or in the form of a season 2 but I’m sure that Ice Adolescence will be in no way a waste of time.
Because the truth is, we need Victor’s backstory, badly.
Yes, we as a fandom have filled in all the gaps in Victor’s past based on a mix of deduction, interpretation and just logical reasoning based on what we saw in the TV anime. (And maybe some headcanons - I think we all have our assumptions about for eg. Victor’s family.)
But let’s face it - canonically-speaking, we know very little about Victor.
We know he’s the living legend of the figure skating world, we know he’s sacrificed his life and love for his career and that his loneliness really started to weigh on him in his mid to late twenties, and that Yuuri drunkenly asking him to be his coach was a catalyst for the change in his life and that’s… pretty much it. Sure, we may know his personality, we may know what sort of person he is and we know his relationship with Yuuri, but his past is one gaping hole.
And that is good in some way - it’s open to interpretation, so anyone can fill in the gaps with what they want.
But when it comes to exploring Victor’s character deeper, it’s a huge roadblock. Because how deep can you really go when you can’t say anything about a character’s past?
Does Victor have any traumas? Where are his parents? Did he enjoy skating as a teen? Did he have any close friends? Was he close with Chris or were they just acquaintances? Why did he cut his hair? What was his relationship with Yakov like before he got big enough to do what he wanted? How did Makkachin affect his life? They’re all important questions and the answers could help paint a better picture of Victor and flesh him out - make him more than just the miserable mystery that he seemed to be before Yuuri pole danced into his life.
Because if we want to see Yuuri’s and Victor’s future in St. Petersburg (or wherever else, but St. Petersburg would be key here), we need to understand Victor’s past and his feelings towards the city, his homerink, his rinkmates, figure skating in general and everything else. Only by seeing Victor’s past can we understand his feelings and his character development and truly appreciate it. Only by contextualizing Victor can we truly see him for what he is, and not by what we assume he is based on the few scraps of information we received.
Now, to address certain concerns in particular:
“If the movie will be about Victor’s past then it will be sad!”
Not necessarily, no. We know that Victor got tired of his career and really needed a break (and was likely depressed) by the time he was in his mid to late twenties, but who’s to say that he didn’t enjoy skating in his teens? Who’s to say he was miserable back then? Maybe that was when he still really enjoyed skating, maybe that was when he had the most fun? Sure, Yuuri might not be there but it’s not like Victor didn’t have other joys in his life, no matter how superficial.
Does that^ look like a miserable kid to you? Not to me.
“If the movie will be about Victor’s past then Yuuri - THE MAIN CHARACTER - won’t be there!”
We don’t know that yet. Maybe it’ll show the adolescence of all the older yoi characters? Like Chris and Yuuri and Phichit and others, especially Georgi, who always trained with Victor on the same rink under the same coach and who’s story could be really interesting. And wouldn’t that be interesting, just to know what they went through before they were the characters we knew in season 1?
“If the movie will be about Victor’s past then we won’t see what happened to Victor and Yuuri after the GPF in Barcelona!”
Again, we don’t know that. It may be a movie fully set in the past and it may be a movie which just uses heavy flashbacks but also shows us what the characters are up to now. Even if we don’t learn what happened to Victor and Yuuri during the movie, that leaves open doors for another season, especially that we’ll have a fully contextualized Victor by then which will be much easier to work with for another season.
I understand people’s concerns and doubts but please remember: we have literally just received ONE visual, the title and the date. Effectively, we still know nothing. Let’s all just wait and trust the people who gave us an amazing season 1 and have literally never disappointed us to deliver us the great content we know and love them for.
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