Yuri on Hooves

... What?

"You said you loathed anime with the burning passion of a million suns."

No, I said I loathed anime with the burning passion of a million suns as a genre, there are exceptions. Yuri on Ice isn't exactly Secret of NIMH, but I've got a weakness for yaoi and I'll give it a few points for all that animation during the ice skating sequences. Points which I will now immediately deduct because said sequences were all rotoscoped and Victor and Yuri didn't Blitzkrieg mit dem fleischgewehr. You may be able to pull the wool over the regular anime-goers' eyes, Japan, but I watched Ralph Bakshi's Fire and Ice, I know tracing when I see it. Also, I'm amazed they spent that much time rotoscoping the human form and still forgot how to adequately proportion humans throughout the rest of the anime. Granted it doesn't look bad, I'd rather watch that than a rigid bust bobbing around with inner dialogue, I just can't fathom the amount of praise this studio is receiving for literally tracing. They may be patient, but talented they are not. :'D

So I'm giving their points to Jerry Jewell (Russia's voice actor in Hetalia's English dub) and Christopher Sabat (guy who voiced that suffocatingly gay Swedish skater with the side-splitting lisp) for making that whole series completely worth it. Every time Victor Nikiforov opened his mouth I was waiting for him banish somone to the Siberian gulags, demand that workers own the means of production, or note how when he looks into all of the rival skaters' stupid faces he thinks of how much fun it will be to pound them into dust.

Going back to a weakness for yaoi, is anyone else like that? Occasionally a few of my meine kameraden will ask me some variant of the question "what is it with you and gay characters?" but I can't wrap my head around it either. Maybe it's because I cut my proverbial teeth on the stuff, I discovered yaoi at that age where most girls were discovering boys, I think I just imprinted on it and that's why straight couples don't really do anything for me. I've got to make a deliberate effort to get invested in a heterosexual couple. To be honest, when I see them making goo-goo eyes at each other my gut reaction is usually somewhere between mild irritation ("Oh come off it," I think "you pups won't last 3 years, let alone forever.") and anxiety (since because Misophonia, I don't want them to start kissing before I'm out of earshot) but somehow two dudes holding hands have got my undivided attention the moment they walk through the door.

No, I'm being sincere, I'm not virtue signalling for gay pride month. Trust me, my gallery has more swastikas than a Nuremberg rally, I don't virtue signal, I vice signal. :'D

It might also have something to do with me finding the whole evolutionary dead end thing particularly romantic, somehow it makes the relationship seem more pure. I think 90% of couples on Earth wouldn't be together if not for the instinct to procreate and societal pressure, although their conscious mind will tell them something different. I've spoken to and have heard people speak who have it in their heads that legacy is the end all and be all of a relationship, the man/woman, in their view, is essentially just a stepping stone toward this end and if they can't perform this task their value is either lost completely or greatly diminished. It would explain why so many marriages fall apart when the female is barren or why males will often cheat on their mates with a younger, more fertile female.

Actually, I read somewhere that about 65% of marriages in the US end somewhere around 8 to 12 years, which makes sense when you factor in how long humans used to live back in the caveman days and how quickly our offspring achieved independence.

Meanwhile gay men (unless they employ the services of a surrogate mother, but few pursue that option) will never reproduce (I'm sharing some of Jewell and Sabat's points with them for not contributing to overpopulation.) There's no point in crashing the custard truck out of a desire for progeny and bonestorming the same sex isn't going to make the folks quit asking for Enkelkinder, the only existing reason for them to stay with their partner is purely out of a desire to share each other's company. They've sawn off their branch of the family tree to make a raft and glide down the Mississpipi river into the sunset with Huck Finn all while blowing kisses to a pouty Mother Nature and a flustered Charles Darwin, and somehow that just gets me right in the feels every time.

_{Even when I'm watching an anime that has, like, 2 frames per minute and characters about as expressive as a Cyberman's left glute. Looking at you, Haru wo Daiteita.}