Apparently YOI got cancelled bc Mappa wanted to retcon Victuri into only having a platonic relationship…

So I've been a Yuri on ice fan since the anime was still ongoing and extremely active in the fandom back when it was still ongoing but had to force myself to leave the fandom in 2018 bc of movie cancellation rumours getting partially confirmed when we first found out what the movie was about which gave me severe anxiety attacks every time I tried to rewatch YOI from that moment onwards (only now I became physically able again to rewatch YOI without losing my ability to breathe)

So now that being said, let's go to the topic of this post lol

A few days ago I found a twitter thread with an anonymous insider who gave us insider behind the scenes information of what was going on during the movie making process and why YOI was really cancelled.

The thing you need to understand here is that none, absolutely NONE of the official information Mappa gave us makes any sense!

AND thr whole theory about it being related to the current situation with IRL Russia I've seen popping up in this subreddit makes no sense either considering the facts that;

a) There's an anime about Russian girls being broadcasted in Japan right now during this very anime season

b) Yuri on ice is an anime original which means that they could have adjusted the plot to prevent any glorification of russia without turning any of the already established characters into villains.

The stuff I've seen the anonymous insider claim on the other hand not only makes perfect sense but is backed up by literally EVERYTHING that was going on in terms of YOI from 2016 to 2018, so even tho there is a possibility of it being fake, as someone who was VERY active in the Yuri on ice fandom and religiously stalked any even remotely YOI related news from 2016 to 2018, I 100% believe everything in that thread to be real and I'll explain here why

Before explaining why I believe the insider info to be real, here's a summary of what the insider info was.

According to that insider info Mappa originally intended to milk YOI the same way it's milking AOT right now, which is the reason why Mappa isn't giving YOI away to another animation studio.

MAPPA DOES ACTUALLY WANT TO MAKE MORE YURI ON ICE CONTENT AND DOES WANT TO MILK THE SHIT OUT OF IT!!!!

So… Why aren't they?

That's because Mappa desperately wants Victuri to be rectonned into a completely platonic relationship that had never been romantic in any way shape or form.

And obviously Kubo and Sayo don't want to allow that to happen.

Apparently the YOI movie was originally supposed to contain a story that takes place after the first season but the script was declined by Mappa bc it contains LGBTQ+ stuff.

As a compromise bc Mappa wanted Victuri to be platonic while the creators of YOI wanted Victuri to be romantic, it was decided to make the movie about Victor growing up with the entirety of the movie set in the past.

And then a new conflict came to be because there was a new character who was supposed to get introduced who had "something LGBTQ+ related" going on with Victor but apparently wasn't Victors ex ^{that's as much info as we get, personally I assume it was either a crush or victor finding out he's gay without getting into a relationship but these two are just my personal theories, all we know is that they never dated but there was something "LGBTQ+ related" going on with the two of them}

Mappa wanted any LGBTQ+ representation gone, the creators insisted on keeping it, and since this time a compromise could not be found the movie got cancelled.

There's the link to the full thread I just summarised; https://x.com/sad_yoi_fan/status/1781446247921918223?t=l0TBt-7MaOPyP7WM786oFQ&s=19

So now to why I believe all of this to be 100% real;

I don't remember anymore if it was in late 2016 or early 2017, but very soon after YOI ended, during one of the very first interviews, Kubo mentioned that Yuri on ice got almost cancelled due to Victuri being canon and that they had to heavily censor the relationship between Victor and Yuri to prevent cancellation. It was to bad that the TV originally refused to broadcast episode 7 despite having already had broadcasted some YOI episodes. In the end they decided to give in and broadcast it after all.

When the DVDs released in Japan the entire fandom was keeping track on how well the DVDs sold inside of Japan through OFFICIAL SOURCES and the DVD sales were record breaking. YOI had better sales than you could even expect from a mainstream shounen Anime, so even if Mappa had gotten a bad deal they still would've made enough bank to be worth making many more seasons.

To throw this into perspective; YOI made in DVD sales alone the type of money that mainstream animes usually make with DVD and merch sales combined.

And they did that when only like half of the DVD volumes had been released. (I don't remember at which volume we were at when the fandom celebrated that according to the official sales numbers the franchise had made as much money as mainstream animes normally male from DVD and merch sales combined, but I know that it was before the last 2 DVD volumes came out in Japan. ^{I ordered all Japanese volumes on the very day they were released in Japan through a proxy shopping service}

Then in 2017, people noticed 2 things:

A) It was extremely rare for any official art or merch to have the engagement rings

B) the creators who happily described everything going on behind the scenes in extreme detail, suddenly went more or less silent.

There were rumours going around in 2017 that the official art was drawn with the engagement rings at first but whenever Mappa noticed the rings they demanded them to be removed. Every time a new piece of official art or merch with engagement rings was dropped people were celebrating the fact that "Mappa execs didn't notice the rings ahead of time". As of right now I don't know if these rumours got ever confirmed or debunked.

Also in 2017, there were rumours going around that in 2017 Mappa banned the creators from mentioning anything about Victuri being canon, these rumours got confirmed by Japanese fans who met them in person to be true, but there's no proof other than "trust me bro". Due to the sheer amount of fans who made those claims and the lack of anyone claiming otherwise; I personally still consider it to be confirmed tho.

Then some time after the YOI movie got announced but a long time before we got any official information on what the movie would be about, rumours started spreading that the movie was on the verge of cancellation because mappa and the writers disagreed with each other on how Victuri should be handled moving forward.

The very same rumours also mentioned a compromise being in the talks about making it a movie about Victors childhood.

^{These are the rumours that got partially confirmed after we got some more info on what the movie would be about and the rumour which gave me those anxiety attacks}

So this is all I have on the topic for now lol