Medalist Review

Inori Yuitsuka is eleven, which in competitive figure skating is late enough to be disqualifying, and her mother has already refused once. Tsukasa Akeuraji is a former ice dancer whose career ended without a result and who has never coached anybody. The series pairs two people with no margin and then makes the reader learn the sport properly: badge tests, then the Meikoh Cup, then blocks, then the All Japans, every rung drawn with its real rules and paperwork.

Tsurumaikada draws skating better than anyone currently doing it. A jump is built from the entry edge rather than from the landing pose, spins carry a sense of axis, and the panelling times a programme the way music does, holding on a face for a bar and then letting go. The research shows in details nobody would invent: how a blade sounds on bad ice, what a coach watches during a warm up, who pays for a costume.

The other strength is that the rivals are people. Hikaru Kamisaki, the prodigy Inori cannot catch, gets her own pressure and her own coach rather than a villain's role, and losses are allowed to mean something. Fifteen volumes in, the series went on indefinite hiatus in September 2026, which leaves the best sports manga of the decade paused mid climb.