Fans can’t let this one go.
Summary:
- The Yuri on Ice movie was officially canceled last week.
- This has caused a strong reaction in the fandom.
- Fans feel that there were problematic reasons behind the cancellation.
Last week brought the Yuri on Ice fandom some disappointing news: the Ice Adolescence movie was canceled. It’s been seven years since the project was announced, so hopes of ever watching it were already bleak, but the news still broke the hearts of many fans.
Although Yuri on Ice is nowhere as popular as it used to be back in 2016 when it aired, there were still plenty of people waiting for the movie and thinking it was on its way.
The fact that there wasn’t even a proper explanation made fans even more upset: they want to know what really happened to the movie. All they got was vague “various circumstances” and this is just not enough. People are extremely unhappy and cannot contain their anger and disappointment.
Financial Struggles or Homophobia?
When official reasons aren’t revealed, fans start thinking of their own, and their minds may go to some dark places.
One idea is that the cancellation of the movie is connected to MAPPA’s finances. The studio’s CEO has previously admitted that Yuri on Ice wasn’t as successful as you might think and didn’t make the company as much money as expected.
However, this makes little sense considering that Ice Adolescence has presumably been in the works for seven years. Why make the decision to work on the movie in the first place then? And why wait so long to announce its cancellation?
That’s why a lot of fans are confident that the movie situation is connected to another reason: the BL themes of the series. Yuri on Ice wasn’t advertised as a BL anime, you won’t even find this tag on the series page on MyAnimeList. Officially, it’s just a sports anime.
The romance between Yuri and Victor was never right-in-your-face in the anime, it was more of a backstory in the series that focused most on figure skating.
Even when the two men shared a kiss, the anime made it look as ambiguous as possible. If you didn’t watch closely, you could fail to understand that there was a kiss at all.
That’s why fans are so sure that MAPPA just didn’t want to release a project like that. Yuri on Ice was treading on a fine line with its BL hints, and the studio surely understood that the only way to make the movie properly was to explore this topic. Which, fans think, they didn’t want to do.
Fandom Is Alive Again
The only positive thing the cancellation news has done is waking up the Yuri on Ice fandom. The series has been forgotten for quite some time, and now people just can’t stay silent about it.
It also caused a new wave of the most stunning fanarts, so now is the best time to browse X (formerly Twitter) and save all those cute Victor and Yuri pictures to use as your lock screen.