These Japanese Olympic Skaters Performed to Music From the Gay Skating Anime ‘Yuri on Ice’

If you’re a skating fan, you probably already know about Yuri!!! On Ice. Honestly, even if you don’t care a whit for ice skating, you should know about it — the show is that great. And it’s been getting endorsement from skaters world-wide. And now, it’s a Yuri On Ice Olympics — Japan’s skaters performed to music from the show.

Japan’s Miu Suzaki and Ryuichi Kihara performed a routine to “Yuri On Ice,” the instrumental song from the anime of the same name. The anime itself follows Yuri, a championship-level ice skater who is coached by Viktor, a Russian champion, and the two fall in love. In the show, the song “Yuri On Ice” is written especially for Yuri to skate to. So it’s only fitting for the song to actually make it to the Olympics in the real world.

Unfortunately, the International Olympic Committee has blocked footage of their performance from appearing online. Seriously, it’s maddening; every time you think you find it, you get a statement saying “This video contains content from International Olympic Committee, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.” Way to promote the sport.

Thankfully, however, the duo have performed this routine before — so while we can’t show you the specific Yuri On Ice Olympics performance, you can still get a feel of what it’s like.

(Not the) Yuri On Ice Olympics performance:

Twitter was agog at seeing Yuri On Ice actually make it to the Olympics. As @tigersplaygrnd said, “‘Yuri On Ice’ is really a beautiful song. [It] just shows how much thought the creators put into the music of Yuri On Ice. They wanted to make a song that an actual skater would use, and friends, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THEY MADE.”

A few made jokes about how NBC actually had to talk about anime during the Olympics coverage. But, seriously — considering that Johnny Weir was one of their commentators, that shouldn’t be surprising. In fact, it’s probably more difficult to get Weir not to talk about Yuri On Ice.

Johnny Weir on Yuri On Ice:

As the theme song says, Miu Suzaki and Ryuichi Kihara: You were born to make history.