Duolingo released an April Fools’s Day video, featuring “Duo on Ice: The Multilingual Musical.” The teaser humorously featured the mascots’ graceful figure skating and unique lyrics about the app’s educational language courses. In case you didn’t know, Duolingo’s socials are known for having many pop-culture references, including animes such as Jujutsu Kaisen, Sailor Moon, and One Piece. That said, Yuri!!! on Ice anime fans were amused to be in on the fun again with Duolingo’s “Duo on Ice.”
When asked who taught him how to skate, the owl mascot Duo replied on one of the TikTok comments that he learned from the figure skating genius, Viktor Nikiforov. Duolingo later released another video with Yuri!!! on Ice‘s opening theme song “History Maker” by Dean Fujioka. See Duolingo’s video below:
The original singer, Dean Fujioka, also reposted the video on his own TikTok account. He added a video of himself singing the iconic theme song and playfully wrote the caption, “@Duolingo You skate, I sing? Let’s make history.” Duo commented again and affirmed the singer with a “We were born to make history, ” to which Fujioka later replied, “Yes we were Duo-kun.”
The Duo on Ice video also ends with a Yuri!!! on Ice visual but is instead edited with their mascot’s face all over the cast. Duo is very passionate about Yuri!!! on Ice, describing the anime as “life-changing” and with “the best opening theme.” On Twitter, Duo posted the edited Duo on Ice visual with the caption, “This is the closest we’ll get to a Yuri on Ice movie.” Fans of the anime are mostly entertained and nostalgic in the comment sections, especially after seeing the owl’s statement on how busy he is training for the Grand Prix.
The original Yuri!!! on Ice anime by MAPPA aired in October 2016 with a total of 12 episodes. A manga side story titled “Welcome to the Madness” was published in May 2017 alongside the final Blu-ray and OVA release. The upcoming Yuri!!! on ICE the Movie: ICE ADOLESCENCE movie was first announced in April 2017 and reaffirmed in November 2020 with a teaser trailer. According to a message from the staff in February 2022, the production is still ongoing and has no confirmed release date. Crunchyroll streams the original series and describes it as follows:
Yuri Katsuki carried the hope of all Japan on his shoulders in the Figure Skating Grand Prix, but suffered a crushing defeat in the finals. He returned to his hometown in Kyushu and hid away in his family’s home, half wanting to continue skating and half wanting to retire. That was when the five-time consecutive world champion, Victor Nikiforov, suddenly showed up with his teammate, Yuri Plisetsky, a young skater starting to surpass his seniors. And so the two Yuris and the Russian champion Viktor set out to compete in a Grand Prix like none the world has ever seen!
Duolingo is an educational learning app that offers courses on music, math, and language. A partnership with Crunchyroll was made in 2023 to promote learning the Japanese language, which added famous anime phrases into the learning course.
Source: Dean Fujioka’s TikTok, Duolingo’s TikTok
© Duolingo ©Yuri!!! on ICE Production Committee