I have thoughts on this as well. I just want to point out that we are left with a huge number of degrees of freedom for how we view Victor simply because he has very little backstory given (at the moment).
But Victor-as-playboy is an interpretation that is given to us by Minako when she is watching Victor skate. At this point, Minako hasnât actually met Victor. Sheâs basing her view of Victor-as-playboy on publicly available facts:
* he has millions of female fans
* he is flirty in public (for instance, Victor winking at the camera)
But we know that Victor is a performer. He instructs both Yuuri and Yuri how to perform, andâat least as far as coaching goes; his personal feelings are likely a different matterâis 100% fine with Yuuri performing Eros by thinking about katsudon.
We also know, canonically, that Minako is wrong about Victorâs motivations. Minako tells Yuuri in episode 2 that she thinks Victor is using coaching as an excuse to figure out what he wants to do next.
This image of playboy is projected onto Victor by people who donât know him.
These two projections as to Victorâs internal state are brilliant narrative strokes by Kubo, because they allows us (as viewers) to construct an explanation for behavior that makes absolutely no sense without Episode 10. Why is Victor flirting with this guy he barely knows? Why did he drop everything to come coach him?
The narrative of Episodes 1-4 is explicitly built to lie to the viewer about who Victor is, to heighten the drama of the Episode 10 reveal. Victor is set up as someone who has many passing affairs, few of which manage to hold his interest.
One of those narrativesâthat Victor is just using Yuuri as an excuse to figure out what heâs doingâis clearly false. The other one, IMO should be treated with extreme skepticism.
Given how little we know of Victor, I think anyone can legitimately headcanon Victor anywhere between actual playboy andâŠthe opposite of actual playboy, which is much more likely to be the case.
What we do know of Victorâthe part that comes directly from himselfâis that heâs spent more than twenty years having neither life nor love. You could probably squish a playboy-ish image into that, but⊠Not easily, I donât think.
If you start from that perspective, you see Victorâs actions in the first few episodes as fumblingâterrible fumblingâbecause he has absolutely no idea what heâs doing.
And hereâs where we get Kuboâs third brilliant narrative stroke. If you try to explain the way Victor tries to seduce Yuuri in the first few episodes, heâs absolutely off kilter. This is not how a seasoned playboy would approach a skittish ingenue. âHey, letâs sleep together to get to know each other better!â is actually really hilarious when viewed as an actual attempt to start a relationship.
The viewer reads all this as, essentially, fanservice in the first few episodes. We read it as a character overacting, over-exaggerating, to get those sexy frames in place. But these are coupled with things that donât quite fit the fanservice imageâVictor crying at night while hugging Makkachin, Victor looking away and sighing when Yuuri refuses to talk to him, Victor getting massively drunk when Yuuri says that katsudon is his eros.
Kubo uses and subverts the trope of fanservice. We think we know what weâre seeing. The reality? Again, open to interpretation, but my headcanon is that Victor is actually Bad At Seduction. He doesnât know what to do; heâs basically imitating fanservice because he has very little actual real world experience. (Whether you see this as Victor-as-sexually-inexperienced, or Victor-as-never-having-had-to-do-work-because-everyone-comes-to-him-first is again up for grabs).
From Victorâs perspective, Yuuri is the seasoned playboy, and he thinks that all he has to do is signal that heâs available. So he shows up, naked, and is likeâŠuh, how do we do this thing? I touch you, right? And ask you who youâre into? This is how we do it? No? Okay, well, letâs keep trying new things.
Victor knows heâs failing, but you donât land a quad flip by giving up on the first try. So he keeps trying. Okay, that didnât workâŠletâs go somewhere together! Letâs sleep together! Letâs go to the beach together!
It isnât until episode four that Yuuri and Victor sit down and Victor just flat out asks the equivalent of this: âYuuri, I have no idea how to human, HOW DO I DO THIS THING.â
And Yuuri tells him to be himself.
So, long story short, âVictor as playboyâ is IMO a construction that is built by Kubo based on testimony from highly unreliable narrators to heighten the drama of the episode 10 reveal.
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