The Wish 

(This article contains major spoilers for Yuri!!! on Ice.)

When I started watchingYuri!!! on Ice,I thought I knew what I was getting into. I’ve been a fan of sports anime for years, and a fan of anime in general for longer. Sports anime makes up abroad and increasingly popular swathof anime offerings, and as with any genre, there are certain conventions I’ve come to expect: a loveable underdog making a surprising comeback, detailed explanations of a game’s rules and strategy that somehow get me to care about sports, teams learning to cooperate and developing their relationships both on and off the court.

This last feature of sports anime may be what makes it so profitable. Because sports anime tends to feature large casts of men and few (if any) female characters, and because the male characters’ interactions tend to be both physically and emotionally intense, the genre provides ample fodder foryaoifans. These fans are often (but not always) straight women who find the idea of male/male relationships compelling or titillating. Most yaoi fans don’t expect or even want these relationships to become canonical. Instead, the characters serve as inspiration for their own fantasies and fan-created content. However, sports anime also pulls in LGBT fans hoping for legitimate representation.

I was one of these fans.Free! introduced me to sports anime, and I’m a bit embarrassed to admit how long I held on to the belief that the same-gender relationships in the show would eventually become romantic. While I still enjoy sports anime —Haikyuu!!’s excellent 4th season got me through my last few months of COVID lockdown — I’ve learned not to expect more from sports anime when it comes to LGBT representation.