The first image is from the press conference on July 19th. That day, Hanyu later told us, was pitch black. The decision to step away from competition had matured in the preceding months, after years of questioning his future, longing to abandon a competitive circuit that was increasingly restricting him, yet still ensnaring him. There were medals to win, a nation to represent, a jump to conquer, the pride of always pursuing his own path. Until the moment he said enough.
What’s left of an athlete when he leaves his sport? Can he still call himself an athlete? And does he still have something to offer the public? Hanyu believed so. Deep down, he was convinced he still had so much left, and he wanted to share what was inside him with those who had followed his journey, but would his fans continue to follow him? He didn’t know that, he couldn’t know.
There had been signs. At the last Olympic Games, he had finished fourth. After eight years, he was no longer the reigning Olympic champion; after seven and a half years and 31 consecutive competitions—34 if we count team competitions—he had failed to reach the podium for the first time. Yet the fans hadn’t abandoned him; on the contrary, they had rallied around him even more. How would the fans react now? Would Hanyu see again those packed arenas where he had been a star during his competitive years? The sight of the packed Saitama Super Arena, just before the free skate that had won him his sixth national title, had brought him to tears. And now?
After the press conference and several interviews with specialized publications, Hanyu launched his YouTube channel, and the initial public response came from the hundreds of thousands of people who, within a very short time, began following his channel. A couple of short videos, one featuring three jumps and a spin, a training broadcast in front of the press and live online, with over 100,000 people watching. Then, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, skated for 24-hour TV, as per long-standing tradition, some television and entertainment engagements, and another video featuring two programs: Change, one of his classics, and Dreamy Aspiration, a new program choreographed by himself. And the announcement of his first solo show, Prologue.
His first solo show. I wondered how it was possible to put on a solo show. There certainly had to be a few minutes of intermission to allow him to change and catch his breath, probably a few minutes covered by video, but aside from imagining this solution, I had no idea what Hanyu could do. How he could sustain himself athletically for the length of a show. What could he say, all by himself, so that the show wasn’t just a succession of programs (even beautiful ones) disconnected from each other. How could he possibly think this was his first solo show? Why, did he intend to put on more? Really? What did he think he was doing? For me, it was a matter of waiting to find out. For him, it was different.
It was a gamble for him. Would the fans follow him? He booked two arenas, the Pia Arena in Yokohama and Flat Hachinohe. Two days in each city, although he later added a third show in Hachinohe because the demand for tickets was too high to accommodate all the fans. The Pia Arena is huge. How many shows don’t fill arenas with a capacity of a couple of thousand? He sold out both days with 7,900 people, but only because it wasn’t possible to let more people in, because many didn’t win tickets through the lottery he regularly uses to give everyone an equal chance of seeing one of his shows. The second doubt concerned his physical stamina. Hanyu always gives his all. Would he be able to make it through an hour-and-a-half show? Would he be able to do it in a much longer show like Gift? Because even if we didn’t know it, at the same time as Prologue he was working on Gift, and there were certainly many doubts running through his mind. Would viewers have appreciated the videos and the part where he stops to chat? And the six-minute warm-up?
I recently read an interview from the Continue with Wings era. It was 2018, he had just won his second Olympic gold medal, and to mark the occasion, he had decided to produce a celebratory show. Hanyu skated little, his ankle was still injured, and the performers were other skaters who had played a key role in his career in different ways. And, in an interview, Hanyu had stated that he would have liked to include a warm-up within a show. He would do so over four years later, but the idea was already there at the time. And who knows how long other ideas crossed his mind, and he toyed with them, reworking them, perhaps discarding them, or completely transforming them, before arriving at the formula we saw.
Looking back, Prologue seems like a simple show. But we only have this impression because after Prologue, Hanyu created Gift, Re_Pray, and Echoes of Life, shows that were all different, each a step forward on a journey that I hope will continue for many years to come.
Prologue is Hanyu’s story. I already commented the show at the time, although there’s so much more to say. The show begins with the press conference on July 19th. Then comes a step back, the reason why the press conference of an athlete bidding farewell to competition is so important: the second Olympic gold medal. Hanyu begins with the warm-up, because competitions began with the warm-up, and then presents the free program with which he wrote skating history. With that program, he had already destroyed the code of points in the fall of 2015. In 2018, he brought Seimei back to the Olympic Games and definitively established himself as the greatest skater of all time. Not only for the number of wins, but also for the way he won, for what he did on the rink. The Prologue version is slightly different; the program is a little shorter than the competition program and contains three triple axels, a deliberate violation of the Zayak rule, a declaration that he is no longer bound by the rules and that he alone is now the one who decides his own path. Only after presenting the two key turning points of his career does Hanyu return to the beginning and retrace his competitive history through a mix of programs performed on the ice and videos projected on the giant screen.
He spoke of some difficulties, the issues related to the rights to the music he used, working until the last minute to make the videos, the beginning of the collaboration with Mikiko and other professionals who would help him transform his projects into finished works. The tone is conversational, Hanyu and his fans, with whom he interacts via a luminous bracelet, but the technical content is important. And above all, what Prologue is is important. Prologue is a breaking point in many ways. It’s a new way of putting on an ice skating show. It’s not a path others can follow; there are no other skaters capable of filling arenas like Hanyu, and there are no other skaters capable of skating at such a high technical level for such a long time. But it demonstrates that you can create, you can do something new. You have to be a visionary and work like hell, but it’s possible. Prologue introduced the warm-up, the projections on the ice—real projections that interact with the athlete, not just colored spotlights—the unique story, the intertwining of video and live programs, the tension of the competitions that complements the artistic aspect, the role of the audience not as mere passive spectators but as part of the show. These are small seeds that will give life to the wonderful story that is unfolding in the Ice Stories.
Three years ago, Hanyu produced and performed an extraordinary show. Yet for him, it was only a prologue.
