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At some point in the period covered in the first episode, between the Grand Prix Final and Yuri's return to Hasetsu, Yuri must have graduated from university.

  • At the Grand Prix Final, which is in December, Morooka speaks to Yuri and notes that he has not yet graduated.

  • Afterwards, when Yuri returns home in March of the next year, his mother apologises for not attending his graduation ceremony.1 Mari also notes that Yuri has a college degree, even if it took him an extra year.

Yuri also points out that he has not been back to Hasetsu in five years, and that he spent a period in Detroit:

I'm one of the dime-a-dozen top figure skaters certified by the JSF. I'm 23. My name makes me sound strong, but I finished last at my first Grand Prix Final. I still can't accept what happened! I even moved to a training facility in Detroit and worked hard to make the final.

Can we infer from this anything about where Yuri went to college? Perhaps he went to college in Detroit and graduated from a university there?

  1. Crunchyroll subtitles write the date as "March, One Year Later." However, based on what Yuri said about crashing through the rest of his skating season, it must only be a couple months after the GPF, rather than more than a year. The original text — 翌年3月 — appears to corroborate this.
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1 Answers1

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I am unfamiliar with how athletic clubs function, how serious competitive athletes who are studying at university manage their time, and how Japanese universities count credits, but here is an educated guess.

It appears that Yuuri was officially affiliated with a Japanese university, although I have no idea whether he put his studies on hold entirely while in Detroit or if he took classes while in Detroit and had his credits transferred. We also do not know when exactly Yuuri moved to Detroit.

In episode 1, Yuuri shows us his JSF page. One entry on the list of biographical is marked with 所属 and thus appears to give Yuuri's affiliation, which is with “紀伊学院大学," which is presumably the name of a fictional university in Japan. (大学 means university, and a search for "紀伊学院大学" does not give results for any educational institution.) In contrast, at the Chugoku, Shikoku, and Kyushu Championship in ep. 5 (past the 15:00 mark, before Yuuri's free skate), Yuuri's affiliation is noted to be "Ice Castle Hasetsu." From this, it is reasonable to infer that Yuuri attended 紀伊学院大学 in some capacity: I would think that someone affiliated with a university's skating club would be affiliated with the university itself, and that Yuuri's affiliation changes to Ice Castle Hasetsu after graduation suggests that his affiliation was tied to his enrolment.

Note also that Yuuri did not participate in any competitions after he crashed through Japanese Nationals at the beginning of the series and that Yuuri must have graduated at some point between December and March. Yuuri must have recently graduated when he returns home:

  • If he was thinking of taking a break and had no obligations, perhaps he would have returned sooner. (Yuuri notes in ep. 4 that he had not spoken to Celestino since after the GPF, and he is out-of-shape by the time Victor arrives.) That said, Yuuri could have simply avoided going home for a period.

  • A March graduation fits in with the Japanese academic calendar, which begins in April and ends in March. Mari's comment that Yuuri had to take an extra year also fits in with that, although it is not necessarily impossible to reconcile a March graduation with taking an extra year at an American university.

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