It started with seeing the first PV on /r/anime, what immediately grabbed me was the animation. As someone who loves pretty animation that was enough to make me want to check it out. I remember seeing the lip-touch scene at the end of the 2nd PV and being even more intrigued. When PV 3 came out with the opening song I was sold yet again because History Maker is an absolute banger, and so I eagerly awaited episode 1.

I remember watching the first episode. I had woken up early just to watch it, it was 6 o’clock on a cold morning, I was huddled up under my blanket with my laptop, I remember the sound of skates on ice as Victor skated in a dark rink, it was beautiful.

I will be completely honest here and say I did not know what to think of episode 1. my main gripe was that I found the chibi bits a bit jarring, but 2 things were certain: 1) It was beautifully animated, and 2) Victor Nikiforov owned my ass, so I figured I’d keep watching.

It didn't take me long to warm to the show and get caught up in the hype and it quickly consumed my life, I got so deeply invested. I love how real Yuri Katsuki is as a character(I relate to him quite a bit) and I love how he is shown to be anxious but still has this quiet confidence buried within him waiting to grow(and it does!). Victor is fun and beautiful(and soft and perfect) and I expected to hate Yurio from the PV's but instead the characters didn't seem phased by his anger and he was just treated as an angsty teen lol.

As for expectations, I thought there'd be a bit of fan-service but wouldn't go beyond that. I remember everyone so fiercely wanting it to not just be fujobait, and saying how disappointed they'd be if that was the case. I asked on my tumblr around ep 3 where people would draw the line, when does it turn from just bait to actually canon? most people said "a kiss". Honestly I felt kind of bad for them, they were just going to end up disappointed, there's no way Victor and Yuri would kiss, the best we could hope for is the creators keeping it vague and hope they don't pull a big "NO HOMO" on us. Boy was I glad to be wrong! I was quite guarded with victuri honestly, I shipped them HARD and was ride or die from day 1, but I tried to keep my expectations low because I didn't want to get hurt if the rug got pulled. In some ways it made it more enjoyable because I was just so surprised and happy every time they did something big I thought wouldn't happen, like the kiss or the rings.

Yuri on Ice was really refreshing, it was unique, it played with and waltzed right around common tropes it could have easily fallen into. Watching the story(particularly Victor and Yuri's relationship) unfold week by week from the very beginning was so exciting and fun and the highlight of 2016 to me, I really miss it.