Echoes of Life Tour

The Echoes of Life Tour (full title 'Yuzuru Hanyu Ice Story 3rd Echoes of Life Tour') is a solo ice show tour by Japanese figure skater and two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu, organized by TV Asahi, CIC Co., Ltd., and Team Sirius. The tour had three stops from December 2024 to February 2025 at Saitama Super Arena in Saitama City, at Hiroshima Green Arena in Hiroshima, and LaLa Arena Tokyo-Bay in Funabashi, completing a total of seven performances.

The Echoes of Life Tour is the third main chapter of the Yuzuru Hanyu Ice Story series, produced and directed by Yuzuru Hanyu in collaboration with Japanese choreographer Mikiko. Each performance had a duration of 140 minutes and featured 15 different skating programs—a new record for solo ice shows. For Echoes of Life, Hanyu wrote the script in the form of a storybook that was released in advance in Japanese and English.

The programs were woven into a story spun through a futuristic staging that included light effects and elaborated videos created with 3D computer graphics, which were combined with figure skating programs performed by Hanyu, with some of them accompanied from the stage by the dance troupe Elevenplay. Hanyu plays the protagonist Nova, a being born through genetic engineering who seeks meaning in his own existence while searching for hope in a devastated world. The story touches on pressing contemporary issues such as war, education, and care work, offering a vision of entertainment that pushes beyond the traditional boundaries of ice shows. Hanyu wrote in the show’s pamphlet, “I wanted philosophy to be the theme of the show,” reflecting his long interest in philosophical questions around the meaning of life and living, one's role in society, and the meaning of bioethics.

On the third day of the Saitama tour stop, Hanyu performed a clean skate of his winning short program Ballade No. 1 from the 2018 Winter Olympics and successfully executed multiple quadruple jumps among others. On the final day of the tour, in Chiba, Hanyu delivered a complete clean performance of all 15 programs, including the encore.

The Saitama performance was sold out on all three days with a total attendance of 42,000 spectators. The Chiba performance was also sold out, with the arena filled to capacity with 8,300 people each day. Selected shows were screened live at cinemas in Japan and overseas, aired live on the subscription channel CS TV Asahi, and streamed live on SMG Great Sports in China and on Beyond Live worldwide. The tour is sponsored by Tōwa Pharmaceutical, Phiten, Kosé, and Telasa.