It’s that time that only comes every four years, when athletes who’ve been preparing their entire lives get to perform absurdly dangerous cold-weather stunts on international television: the Winter Olympics. From snowboarding to the fittingly named skeleton, where riders jettison their bodies down icy tracks at upwards of 80 mph, there’s plenty of superhuman feats to watch. Of these, one of the most outwardly graceful, eye-catching, and prestigious is figure skating.
Compared to many of the somewhat straightforward racing events featured at the Games, it can be tough to make sense of how figure skating actually works: There are many jump types, seemingly similar events that are actually quite different, and scoring specifics complicated enough to give professional judges headaches. There are also many misnomers about the sport, like how its elegant outward appearance implies a sort of athletic “daintiness,” when in reality, competitors risk broken bones and life-changing injuries every time they go on the ice.
There’s some good news, though. One of the best sports anime in recent years, Medalist, timed its return to coincide with this year’s Olympics. This is a big deal because the series is not only great at explaining the baseline rules of figure skating, but is also willing to dive deep into the weeds. It explains scoring, strategy, and the reasons why these competitors are willing to risk so much. It’s enough to make this year’s figure skating events, from free skates to rhythm dancing, much more rewarding as a spectator.
Medalist is based on the manga of the same name, and it began airing last January. It follows Inori Yuitsuka, who dreams of winning gold at the Olympics against all odds. As for why she’s counted out, she began competitive skating at age 11, which is considered four or five years after when “serious” skaters with any real shot begin training. While deeply socially anxious and hesitant in her regular life, she remains undeterred, teaming up with coach Tsukasa Akeuraji, a newbie instructor who also started late in the sport, to take the skating world by storm.
The choice to start the story at the beginning of Inori’s skating journey serves multiple purposes. Like many great sports dramas, she’s an underdog, which brings us in emotionally. However, another benefit is that by going from square one, the show has an in-world reason to explain the intricacies of the sport, something it does with nerdy relish as Tsukasa teaches Inori everything. We learn about the different types of jumps, with the series detailing the physics of why some are more difficult than others and how this correlates to their point values. We come to understand the components of a performance, and how a program consists of dancing, spins, regular jumps, and combination jumps, with the maximum and minimum amount of each aspect determined by the particulars of that event type. We see Japanese figure skating’s comprehensive badge system, where skaters need to pass exams on their ability to perform certain jumps and spins so they can qualify for the next level of competition. Each badge brings skaters closer to the ultimate goal, the Olympics.
And perhaps most interesting of all, we learn that while performers always have an initial plan they hope goes off without a hitch, they also prepare complex backup strategies. Basically, if a competitor messes up early or misses a combination, they may add more complicated jumps that weren’t initially planned to make up for lost points, adding an element of improvisation. Jumps in the second part of a performance are worth a 10% scoring bonus, but come with the increased risk of screwing up due to tired legs, creating an interesting risk-reward ratio.
While it’s not uncommon for live-action sports films or series to explain some of these particulars—a great example is how I, Tonya gets into the nitty-gritty of why Harding’s ability to perform a triple Axel was so exceptional—where Medalist differs is how deeply it’s willing to get into these particulars. Those who watch a lot of hobby-centric anime will be familiar with this type of informative presentation, something that is almost certainly an offshoot of “otaku” subculture, a Japanese term for people who become deeply invested in a particular pastime. Manga and anime fans’ receptiveness to these explainers is probably why this show and many like it are allowed to sneak in the kind of in-depth information you rarely see in live-action sports dramas.
However, Medalist also differs from a certain subset of sports anime because it’s quite grounded in reality. No one has borderline superpowers like in Kuroko’s Basketball or Prince Of Tennis. In fact, the performances are motion-captured from real-life skaters, particularly the former Olympian Akiko Suzuki and Japan Championships silver medalist Rika Hongo. If everything shown looks like something that a real person could do, it’s because they literally did to create the show.
Medalist demonstrates a clear reverence for figure skating, going beyond conveying the technical knowledge you’ll need to make the most of the Olympics to capture the life-consuming effort required for competitors to reach that level. Through Inori and her peers’ battles with injuries and crushing pressure, we see the resolve it takes to keep going in a sport that is time-consuming, dangerous, and expensive, resulting in a fleeting career at best, and nothing but bloodied noses and broken bones at worst. The series depicts the Olympic stage as a crowning achievement to a lifetime of dedication, a place where the most ambitious athletes hope to somehow come out on top over others who have single-mindedly pursued this same goal since they were literal children. If you want some context for the rules and human storylines behind Olympic figure skating, Medalist is an excellent place to start.
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