The competitive figure skating-themed anime series "Yuri!!! on Ice" has become popular to anime fans lately, especially to fans who are considered as "fujoshi", a sub-category of female fans who are interested in watching and reading stories that contain "boys' love" or romantic relationships between men, especially in anime and manga. One scene in the anime series showed Russian coach Victor gently applied lip balm onto his Japanese student Yuri's lips.
According to RocketNews24, the lip balm used in the anime, says some of the Japanese fans, looked a lot like a product of French fashion company Chanel. Because of this, a lot of Japanese fans are interested in buying the product. One translated tweet stated:
"Hey, 'Yuri!!! on Ice' fans! Just how much Chanel lip balm are you buying?! Today I went to the Chanel booth in a department store. When I asked for some lip balm, the worker replied, 'Excuse me, did this product get really popular because of something? Today it's been selling really well.' I couldn't say anything..."
Because of the popularity of the product due to the anime fans, some Japanese customers of Chanel felt irritated, and others even felt disgusted by the latest lip balm craze. One annoyed Japanese net user ranted on Twitter:
"Chanel's lip balm isn't anime character merchandise and Chanel is not [anime specialty store] Animate , so otaku common sense doesn't apply here. If they want to use Chanel's lip balm, they should make a fresh start as girls who wouldn't seem strange carrying it around or using it!!! That's all!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Despite all this, fans of "Yuri!!! on Ice" continue to show love for the anime series. According to Kotaku, famous Russian figure skater Evgenia Medvedeva, who is also the 2016 World champion, 2016 European champion, 2015 Grand Prix Final champion and 2016 Russian national champion, is known to be a very huge fan of the anime show. It is even said that her Twitter is filled with posts about "Yuri!!! on Ice".
