So I need you to get in the right mindset for a moment. If you haven’t read the first post of this series please do so.
I want you to imagine for a moment having gone through Still’s story, in fact, having gone through Still’s story multiple times. It’s been months, there’s ostentibly been no more Still In Love stuff out since then, so for all we know she did vanish, she did go to the onsen.
Then finally.
Still is back.
First crumb since that fateful day.
…
…and what scene awaits us in this reunion?
To this day, words cannot convey the sound my mouth made when I saw this.
Babygirl is back from the True End Onsen and she’s blowing a conch horn.
The girl on the left is Kiseki (who shares the same voice as Riamu Yumemi by the by so there’s a funny denpa meets menhera element) and this is an event in her training story. What this means is that it’s disconnected, but given the timeline in the real world it’s hard not to see this as something on purpose, I love it.
They’re together in this scene because Kiseki and Still In Love where the first classic-aged G1 male and female horses Shimokoube Farm had.
The scene itself is fun. Still hasn’t updated her social media in forever (probably because she was lost with her trainer) and wanted to post… something to let her fans know she’s still alive, but being the way she is, she didn’t know what.
Speaking of relationships, Still In love has a few scenes with Hokko Tarumae.
Quick refresher for those not familiar with her: Hokko Tarumae’s main thing is that she’s a local idol, not a regular kind of idol though, she’s more a spokeswoman for Tomakomai in Hokkaido (lovely place by the way) and she takes being a spokeswoman very seriously, practicing her stage presence and such and having those details always in mind.
They tend to talk about sweets, and one of my favorite scenes with them together is one where Taru asks Still how she manages to have such a natural smile. But Still’s reaction is to meekly admit she doesn’t know and get flustered that Taru is staring so intently at her, at which point Taru gets impressed by the sheer appeal of flustered Still.
Anyway, they’re together because they’re both horses that Hideaki Miyuki rode (Though with Hokko Tarumae he got replaced a couple of times but he was there for 99% of it).
By the way, I don’t know where to add this later since they don’t have any scenes together that I remember, but Still In Love actually had the same real life trainer as Toukai Teio, Shouichi Matsumoto.
Still loves sweets, in fact she loves sweets so much that when Cygames made a character calendar based on her, EVERY DAY was annotated with which sweets she had that day… you know, aside from the one day where Crimson had Opinions. Fun fact: October 19th 2003 is the date of the 2003 Shuuka Sho.
Sidenote, I love that the lettering is light gray, it gives the idea of Still being so delicate with the pencil that it almost doesn’t show.
ANYWAY, this trait is actually inherited from our friend Hideaki Miyuki, who has a kinda infamous sweet tooth. One anecdote I’ve read about that I sadly cannot find the source for is that one time Yutaka Take came into the resting area and he had a basket of treats sent to him and found it being devoured by Hideaki who looked up and went “……..you need this?”
These bits double as a preamble to a point that I’ve made in the past but bears repeating: While I obviously focus on the drama and how they grab a horse’s career and adapt it into a cohesive story, about 80% of what makes that so compelling is that you get to know these girls OUTSIDE of whatever trials and tribulations their main story conveys, often long before their scenarios are implemented (see: Biko Pegasus, Dear God, Biko Pegasus).
That’s why ages ago I went out of my way to also describe how Machan was in general and Still is just as charming on her daily life. When her trainer describes her as looking as if the slightest breeze could blow her away they weren’t exaggerating. Still is a girl that’s also a baby that must be protected, she’s the very definition of a babygirl and will be referred to as such moving forwards.
She eats very VERY slowly, in fact one of her mood down events is just “I was eating a nice ice cream and it melted :(“, she loves sweets as stated, she doesn’t like raising her voice so it tends to be a while before waiters serve her, she’s so unassuming that automatic doors fail to detect her, she enjoys just… feeling the breeze and whistling on nice weather. You can see how she wouldn’t know what to post to her fans in social media because she’s 100% the type to be like “favorite music? I just… like music…” “I ate some sweets today but why would anyone care about that?”.
It’s weird to say considering everything else, but Still is arguably the most normal girl in the cast, honestly.
She’s also just a kind individual on the whole. There’s an event where her classroom believes there’s a fairy that magically finds things and puts them in their desks, waters the plants, and cleans corners others miss, which prompts random claims of “Thank you fairy-san!” from the students, and Rob Roy is the one that catches on that Still is the fairy and keeps her secret (reinforcing that Still is unassuming as much naturally as she is deliberately). I like the scene also because it’s a fun nod to how all the Sunday Silence descendants in the game seem to just… get each other on an instinctual level.
By the way, if you want an idea of the powerlevels, Still can slip by Digitan.
And all of this is why she’s such a good compliment with her trainer. The ice cream melts? The trainer will be there with tissues and a new ice cream. No waiters notice her? They’ll be the ones calling for service. Training ended a little bit too late? The trainer will personally escort her to the dorms before parting ways. Still’s trainer is so gallant that this has to be one of the few scenarios (hell, the ONLY scenario) where the FACELESS TRAINER THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE THE PLAYER had me like “damn, I need me someone like that tho……..”.
One limitation of this blog format is that I can’t properly convey at the start how familiar you become with the characters on an intimate level (both through having scenes and vignettes a plenty, and through sheer repetition and exposure) and how this connection makes the story hit harder upon replay. When I was gathering footage for these posts I was long beyond the initial shock of when I first played the story, but it hit harder because I know these characters better.
By now I know how much of a delicate flower Still is which makes Crimson’s behavior all the more shocking and her crying scenes more harrowing. I know how much of a (and I mean this in the most gender neutral way possible) gentleman her trainer is and how much they care for each other in the subtlest of ways which makes Still’s fears that she’s harming her trainer and her trainer’s sanity slippage hit all the hardest.
This isn’t exclusive for Still mind you, and it’s why people grow crazier about the characters as time goes on instead of them fading (every character having their spotlight refreshed once contemporaries are added helps, though).
On that note, one detail I find fascinating is that the arc with Still’s trainer works because the trainer is ultimately enabling Still rather than pushing their own agenda.
Let’s take the Blue Sky short story as a counterpoint. The reason why the trainer in that story still makes me sick to the stomach is that they’re basically doing the guy thing of “I want this but I’m gonna push it into you as if it’s something you want”. Everyone’s clearly miserable, things improve a shitton once they’re out of the picture briefly, and yet you’re supposed to feel bad for them somehow.
Compared to this, Still’s trainer cares about Still and their madness consists on being an enabler for Crimson. The thing they want is what Still wants, they’re just giving her the wrong type of encouragement in the process.
The key difference thus is that Still’s autonomy isn’t taken away by the trainer. In fact it works because the trainer talks often about how beautiful Still’s running is, so there is a precedent for them wanting to see her run, as such they end up as reflections of each other.
The trainer is always looking after Still and wanting the best for her because they only want to see her happy, it just so happens that the things that makes Still happy also make her trainer happy. They’re perfect for each other… in fact, they remain perfect for each other once their sanities slip, they just go from “demure lady and gallant protector” to “beast and beast admirer”.
FUCK ME THEY’RE SO GOOD.
While we’re talking about themes, Love is the big one here and they do very interesting things with it.
Still and Aroove start in similar points, wanting someone that will support them, be there to share in the glory and the shame. The only difference between them is that Still found someone before Aroove did, had the roles been reversed it’s not impossible that Crimson would’ve been the one that says she doesn’t need anyone just like how by the end she outright exclaims she doesn’t need a future anyways.
…can you imagine if that’s what they go for once Admire Groove is implemented? Maybe Still is obsessed with Aroove because she’s all she can cling to.
Anyway, as their stories progress the roles shift around because Aroove found her support network but because it didn’t land on her the way Still’s trainer did and because she was so reluctant at the start to even have one, she doesn’t take it for granted like Crimson does. Also, Air Groove is more maternal in nature which shifts their dynamic. Air Groove makes sure Aroove eats while training and Still’s trainer basically makes both of them train long after meal times.
Another fun subtle detail is that in the last Queen Elizabeth Cup, Aroove explains that the stakes for her are that if Still wins that basically proves that their toxic cycle is good and she cannot stand the idea. There’s hints through the story that Aroove was jealous of Still and her Trainer, and part of me wonders if part of the resentment she had towards Air Groove was that she wasn’t what she hoped would find her in that situation.
In that same race, Crimson talks about how Aroove’s words pain her and she must win to make the pain stop. At this point even the deranged Crimson knows that Aroove is right and she’s been in a very self-destructive cycle. If we believe that the Still in the onsen scenario is Crimson (and honestly their body and speech patterns are so distinct I’m willing to bet it’s her) it would make sense why even Crimson saw reason at that point if Aroove’s words hit her that hard.
Also, this is why Ramone describes Crimson as a “self-loving beast”. By that point in the story there’s no longer the healthy back and forth support from early, it’s just Crimson pushing what she wants to the point she doesn’t realize how it affects her trainer.
The whole “biting and draining something from the trainer” part isn’t just vampiric teasing, it’s the perfect allegory for relationships where one sides becomes the most draining in the pair, literally growing stronger as they suck your soul out while you willingly offer your neck to continue the process even as you become sicker and weaker.
One fun detail about Crimson that’s kinda subtle on the whole in the story is that, given that she’s all of Still’s repressed emotions, the things she finds “ugly” about herself, the fact that Crimson is so self-centered really gives you a clearer picture of Still’s inner world, of wanting things for herself for a change but thinking that’s not proper and thus all of her selfishness becomes concentrated in Crimson. It also gives you a better idea of why she became so smitten with her trainer, because suddenly there was one person that not only looked after her, but was so in tune she didn’t even need to ask about that stuff out loud, they just knew.
For those curious, they do give a nod to the moment where Hideaki wanted to elope with Still In Love.
You gotta lose the Tulip Sho to see it, which is extra fun because it’s not even a mandatory race. You need to go out of your way to participate in it knowing there’s an even and then LOSE.
It’s what you’d expect, though the pressure isn’t meeting a strict trainer but having to face your fans after defeat, and it’s Still who suggests running away.
Perhaps the weirdest connection I made this time around on replay was to Wagner’s Der Ring Des Nibelungen.
I’ve never seen the opera itself but I’ve read a lot on it in the past, in waves of sorts. First because I like Valkyrie Profile, then because I like Odin Sphere and finally to try and understand what the ever living FUCK they tried to do with Ring the PC game.
You know the one.
ANYWAY, one of the bits that I remember absorbing in the process was that Wagner originally wanted the play to speak of the power of love over ambition as an answer to how plutocratic (societies where the wealthy hold the power) 19th century Europe became. However, as time went on the themes shifted and he explored how love too can be a self-destructive force and you need a balance, a certain level of dettachment, to really prosper.
Which sounds oddly familiar to Still’s scenario. It opens with Still and Aroove being the extremes of Love and a rejection of love for the sake of ambition. But as it goes along Still reaches the deep ends of love that would inspire someone like Brunhilde to jump into Siegfried’s funeral pyre feeding the flames to the point they burn Valhalla itself. Meanwhile, Aroove has achieved the aforementioned more neutral clarity that allows her to prosper more long-term instead of burning early.
…it would mean that in this context Aroove starts as Alberich, but let’s not think too hard about it. I’m already overthinking it enough.
By the way, since I don’t know when the fuck this specific topic will become relevant again (watch me be wrong within a year) one fun extra detail I didn’t know until my latest dive into the topic when I had strep throat recently was that Wagner’s depiction of the norse pantheon is full of fusions and reinterpretations.
For example: Loge isn’t just a weird spelling of Loki, he’s meant to be a fusion of Loki AND Logi. Likewise, Wotan and Fricka are more like Zeus and Hera than their originals.
Speaking of characters, I love how this scenario has Mejiro Ramone and Air Groove in the same place.
For those not familiar, early Air Groove was more similar to what Ramone is right now than her current iteration, this is still true around Season 1 of the anime. In fact, it’s no exaggeration to say that Season 1/Umayon Air Groove wouldn’t be the kind to look after Aroove like she does and would be more like how Ramone acts here down to spending more time with Rudolf.
Their presence also makes sense: Air Groove is Admire Groove’s mother and Mejiro Ramone is the horse that held the Triple Tiara before Still In Love. And one detail I didn’t notice until the prep for these posts is that Ramone is basically acting as a distant mentor to Still through the story. She only intervenes in a major way twice: To make her stop holding back Crimson, and then to help her get some clarity back after Crimson has taken over. It’s not just fitting for how Ramone is, but also it’s the only sort of mentorship that would’ve reached Still in those circumstances.
By the way, Ramone makes a comment that Still reminds her of “another beast” and the implication is that Still reminds her of Rudolf. I haven’t posted about Rudolf that much, but through all the media there’s this implication that in her running days Rudolf was a scary opponent and even Cinderella Gray implies that just the act of remembering her running days is enough to leave Rudolf sweating and hyperventilating like she’s holding back something.
Would you be surprised if I told you the whole deal with Crimson is a historical nod?
Still In Love had a lot of Hail to Reason in her bloodline, 3×3 to be specific. What those numbers mean is that in the great-grandfather generation (the parents are 1, grandparents 2 and so forth) Hail to reason shows up twice (so it’s a 3 twice, a 3×3).
Aside from the usual risks that inbreeding brings like immunodeficiency and the like, racehorse breeding is all about refining characteristics, and the stronger a bloodline is in a horse the more that a past generation’s strengths AND weaknesses are. 3×3 in particular is seen as a very risky combination to have as an overlap so early in the chart. Incidentally, as a contrast, a 4×3 or 3×4 is seen as a “golden ratio” and an ideal level of repetition (see: Daring Tact having Sunday Silence blood in that ratio).
Hail To Reason had one of the most ironic names in the sport because the horse was very fast but also very aggressive. If you’ll remember, Still In Love is descended from Sunday Silence who bit like a motherfucker, and then he was descended from Halo who was outright dubbed a “man-eating horse” and HE was descended from Hail To Reason.
Now grab that Hail To Reason madness plus one.
The theory is that the rebellious streak and physical improvement that Still In Love had was that as she grew older the Hail To Reason genes with all the good and the bad asserted themselves
This is why the story has an element of madness growing as time goes and arguably also why there’s an element of blood, and transferring corrupted blood and the like in the story.
UNDENIABLY it’s why she bites. That, and because it’s hot.
Sidenote, Tokino Minoru actually had that 3×4 Ratio from The Tetrach and it’s apparently what brought attention of the Golden Ratio to Japan.
You might be wondering where Admire Groove’s trainer is in this scenario and the answer is: Don’t worry about it.
Literally don’t worry about it.
There’s some logistics with how other girls’ trainers are never mentioned because to acknowledge them from a third person perspective would compromise the illusion when you’re in said trainer’s shoes later, but the short of it is that the absence doesn’t make the plot worse so don’t worry about it.
By the way, the illustration above reminds me that according to Hachauma/Party Dash, Still likes to play chess but can never find someone to play with.
I wonder if she eats the pieces…
I mentioned in an earlier post that Still wasn’t a Yandere. This is only half-true… kinda.
For those that don’t know, Yandere is part of the now-kinda-obsolete suite of -dere archetypes. Specifically this one is a compund of “Yami” (not like in darkess -fitting as that would be- but 病み or “sickness”) and “Deredere” (lovey-dovey). It’s basically used for homicidally love-crazed characters.
Well, I say obsolete, I feel like it’s more precise to say those -dere archetypes are now -dere adjectives instead.
ANYWAYS…
First I feel like we need to establish a proper baseline: “Yandere” isn’t an umbrella term for “homicidal girl/boy”. The whole gist of a Yandere character is an explosive display of emotion, someone who becomes really intense about love, so intense that eventually it becomes too much and things get homicidal.
There’s two problems with applying this to Still: The first is that Still isn’t jealous, in fact the only time she shows any sort of Yandere-adjacent emotions albeit briefly is when Ramone implies she’ll steal her trainer and at that point that’s literally another bitch trying to steal your significant other. Even if Still had these tendencies, her trainer is so loyal to her that it would never be a problem in practice, it’s hard to get jealous when the source of your jealousy only has eyes for you anyways.
There IS one event where someone bumps into her trainer and Still loses it briefly, but again, less jealousy, more “omg bitch you almost hurt my precious trainer, look where you’re heckin’ walking!”. However, as a contrast, there’s an event where a “blue haired girl” approaches her trainer because she admires Still and wants to be scouted by her trainer when her racing days come, and Still isn’t bothered at all by it.
Remember this, it will be important by the end of this post.
The other thing is that the explosive emotions only come from Crimson, and Crimson is more hedonistic. If anything, it’s the trainer that should get jealous from how Crimson talks about other girls she wants to prey on and devour.
However, Still was most definitely made with Yandere aesthetics in mind. She has the same fragile and demure demeanor, the same empty-looking eyes, the same love obsession, and her voice is clearly evoking both ends of this sort of scale.
In short, Still is a Yandere the same way that Daiwa Scarlet is a Tsundere. In practice once their characters are out and about they’re most definitely not fitting the mold, but they were built calling back to those aesthetics and aren’t above homaging them from time to time.
Speaking of voice, Saki Miyashita’s acting as Still might literally be my favorite performance in the entire game.
The main thing is that Still and Crimson are completely opposite and she’s basically shifting characters… sometimes mid-sentence. But more importantly she doesn’t give them different registers, it’s not like Still is high pitched and she goes down two octaves for Crimson, it’s ALL character-based.
Still is quiet, her voice is almost a whisper, when her emotions fly she sounds in pain. Meanwhile Crimson sounds CONSTANTLY on the verge of climax even when she’s saying something in a neutral tone, not to mention that where Still’s voice is level even when she cries, Crimson is constantly loud or jumping between quiet and shouting.
I’m not exaggerating, if you grabbed the audio from her first kizuna episode when she’s laughing while running, and put it out of context, you’d be really hard pressed to know she was running and not riding.
There’s a scene that despicts this contrast perfectly.
It’s some Gollum-level stuff, lemme tell you.
You might be wondering if this is lost in training where there’s no line-by-line voice acting and the answer is a joyful NO!
They made Still’s idle animations between her regular self and Crimson so diametrically opposite from each other that they can emulate a similar mid-sentence change without a single voice line.
Good stuff.
The most terrifying detail for me was actually the way the real Still In Love died, intussusception.
You see, my grandparents (mom’s side) had a firstborn that died from it and there’s actually a small shoebox-sized grave on the family lot in the graveyard. Then my uncle also suffered it and I’ve heard the tales of the lead up to it but also my uncle has a nasty scar because… basically the doctors were in “we did what we could, we don’t see how he’ll survive, let’s just close him up” mode.
He survived by a literal miracle, my uncle says a lady that everyone believes was the Coromoto Virgin herself showed up and handed him a piece of candy and he actually started recovering afterwards.
At the moment they threw away the candy though, lord knows what it had.
Anyway, the point of sharing such a family story is that seeing what the real Still died of might be the most visceral reaction I’ve ever gotten writing this blog which is saying something, honestly.
Still In Love was the first North Hills Farm horse to TECHNICALLY be revealed but last to be implemented.
So first things first: North Hills is one of the many racehorse-owning entities that had been oddly absent as they filled in the roster, and to everyone’s surprise they outright revealed THREE North Hills horses during the 3rd anniversary Paka Live in 2024: Still In Love, Transcend, and No Reason.
In order of implementation first was Transcend which to this day is SHOCKING how fast she got added, just 20-something days after announcement, beating Neo Universe in that department. Turns out it’s because she was added (March 12th, 2024) one day after the anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake (March 11th) which is a plot point in her story.
Next was No Reason around March of 2025.
Still wasn’t added until the 4.5th anniversary celebrations around August of 2025, and considering how many crazy things they added to her scenario it’s understandable but it was shocking because she was there in the same stream, she was in Hachauma/Party Dash which actually leads me to the main point.
Hachauma was announced all the way back in the Nintendo Direct of June 21st 2023. And that logo? That’s Still In Love right there, over half a year before she was revealed on stream, little over one year before she showed up in the Hachauma release, and basically TWO YEARS before she was added proper.
…
Okay if we’re gonna start drowning in technicalities, Transcend was implied to exist as far back as Wonder Acute’s scenario (implemented on November 17th, 2022) as “Uma Musume T”, accompanied by Uma Musume F(urioso) and Uma Musume E(spoir City) which were all incidentally revealed in the same Paka Live but at that point we’re splitting hairs.
Still’s profile says her specialties are bobbin lace (y’know, weaving strings like the strings of fate and such) and making jam with red fruits (y’know, she likes sweetsand blood and such). And that her weaknesses (as in things she’s not good at) are big mirrors, strongs smells, and full moons.
No she’s not a vampire, if I started staking people through the heart because they find the smell of garlic overwhelming all my autistic friends would be dead and I love them too much. Still is just a delicate babygirl.
Except the moon bit, we know that makes Crimson come out.
Now, the bit I wanna hone in on is that her profile also mentions that she loves to talk about history with her dad. With this and considering that No Reason’s whole thing is how she’s a history nerd. This tells me that there’s SOMETHING history-related with North Hills Farm… but WHAT?
Well, after learning more about Koji Maeda than I expected starting this post, I found out this article. In it the interviewer points out how many historic things North Hills Farm has done and the reply is that Maeda-san wants to keep making history for 100 years, for 150 years, and so on.
So basically they’re giving a nod to how historic North Hills Farm has been in the sport by giving the North Hills horses some affinity for history. Transcend doesn’t have this specifically, but her love for gadgets can be seen as an extension of how Koji Maeda’s main business, ITEC, is all about infrastructure.
By the way, that post above has him say that he and Susumu Fujita are friends and that he tends to care about Fujita’s horses like if they were his own.
I actually wonder if this trust is the reason why they allowed this scenario to be so heavy. Hell, it’s easy to forget with their appearances but Transcend and No Reason’s scenarios are also heavy. Transcend’s outright references the 2011 earthquake and that’s still a taboo topic nobody takes lightly to this day.
Still’s white dress on the flower field is something that hasn’t happened before or since.
What I mean is that every girl is implemented with the same sort of costume economy. For starters there’s a pool of costumes that grows from time to time but applies to everyone as a global thing, for example recently they added pajamas, also the winter uniforms weren’t implemented until later so girls were out in the cold seasons without jackets.
Aside from those, each girl has their racing costume and eventually they get alt costumes.
Still is an anomaly in that her white dress is none of this. It’s not an alt, it’s not a race costume, it’s not a generic costume like uniforms either. They really went out of their way to give her, and her alone a white dress that’s not playable in any way.
Now, it’s not uncommon for alts to be teased in scenarios. It’s a proud tradition by now that training scenarios will have a scene where one of the girls has a new dress and that’s added as an alt later. I wanna say the first one was Gorushi’s black dress in Project L’arc, but I do remember Smart Falcon’s first alt was added when Grand Live was implemented though I don’t think she shows up with it there (then again I only remember my wife who I miss very dearly), there’s also Full Armor Fukukitaru around the Aoharu Cup days before Falko. For the sake of being thorough, another exception is that one of Narita Brian’s alts was teased in her Main Story chapter.
Even if June this year rolls around and Still gets her white dress as a proper alt there, however, that would still make her the first one to get a seasonal alt teased in her training scenario and kizuna chapters, let alone an alt in general teased that way.
MODEST.
Fuck me I knew I was forgetting one adjective. I kept using Demure but half the time I was thinking Modest.
Regular Still is very modest and Crimson is not.
Okay so let’s pretend this mental slip didn’t happen by bringing up Still’s racing outfit.
According to her, her racing outfit was originally gonna be more similar to her regular outfit and be more white…
It was Crimson that kept insisting MORE RED, LESS FABRIC, LET US FEEL THE WIND IN OUR SKIN AS WE DEVOUR OUR PREY. The scene is actually kinda interesting because even though Still admits the outfit isn’t something she’d wear for herself, it’s almost like a show of goodwill she gave Crimson.
Extra points because notice how in the screenshot above (which takes place before she got the outfit) Crimson is in her school uniform, which means that it IS essentially the embodiment of Crimson (which IS consistent with all of her appearances).
…
…
…wait.
Her original outfit was meant to be more modest…
…and similar to her street clothes…
…and pure white…
SON OF A BITCH MOTHERFUCKER THEY GOT ME AGAIN THEY CAN’T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS.
IT BASICALLY SHOWS WHAT PURIFIED STILL IS LIKE, WHAT HER RACING OUTFIT WOULD’VE BEEN IF NOT FOR CRIMSON.
I AM SO MAD RIGHT NOW.
I’ve not mentioned them much but each girl when they release get a character song.
Still’s is called 愛舞い、喰らい (Ai Mai, Kurai/ Love Dance, Eat) and it’s great because it is constantly and schizophrenically jumping between a ballad and death metal, and the longer it goes on the more it stops jumping between each other, like both sides are just blending.
Here’s the funny thing: It features over-the top tunes, purposefully off-tune bits, a frantic pace, and borderline nonsensical lyrics. Meaning that Still’s character song could, in fact, be considered a Denpa song. A non-electronic one but one that carries the spirit of the genre nonetheless.
I don’t know how I’d rate it as a standalone song for my own personal tastes (given that I’m attached to the character), but as a character piece it is 100/10.
By the way, apparently Saki Miyashita needed three energy drinks to be able to sing that the first time around (it is advised to only drink two lest your heart beat like a hummingbird’s).
I haven’t had much chance to bring this up specifically, but the bodies of the Uma Musume girls are actually meant to be a reflection of the real horse’s physique.
You do get the general idea just at a glance, but in short: Height equals how big the horse was, and then curves are relative to how muscular the horse was. I bring this up because both in and out of the game Still In Love stands out as being the least physically impressive Triple Tiara winner.
This isn’t always quite to proportion with how the real horses looked all the time, but you do get the impression that they’re deliberately making Still to look the most svelte of that specific club (which includes Daring Tact, but can’t add her to the Live Show prep screen). For those curious she has one of the smallest busts at 72cm (on par with Suzuka and the more child-like girls), and has a waist of 50cm and the only ones that beat her there are like one head shorter than her.
Still actually had an apprearance in No Reason’s ending.
The ending of No Reason’s training campaign is a nod to the fact that the real No Reason became a horse used in the Soma Nomaoi Festival. This is a festival celebrated in Minamisoma in Fukushima, it’s… not quite a war reenactment but more a display of what horseback samurai battles would’ve entailed. Still says during this ending that a “relative” of hers is interested in the Soma Nomaoi and asks No Reason to look after her.
I put “relative” in quotations because Still refers to her fans as “family” so a “relative” in this context is most likely a fan of hers, though considering her profile talks about talking about history with her dad, the chance that it’s a blood relative is non-zero. It also would make sense for Still to be in the festival when you consider that.
Back to the festival, according to this post there’s a 1000 meter race, then a competition where they try to capture flags thrown in the air, and finally a ceremony where young men try to capture a horse barehanded. The kicker is that all of this is happening while everyone has Samurai gear on, from full armor to war banners.
But the real… reason that Still shows up in No Reason’s ending because the real Still In Love’s son, Judah, became a Soma Nomaoi horse right after retirement and-…
…
…wait.
…WAIT.
THAT CONCH.
SON OF A BITCH MOTHERFUCKER THEY GOT ME AGAIN THEY CAN’T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS.
Five… minutes…
CAN I WRITE IN PEACE FOR FIVE MINUTES WITHOUT MAKING SEVEN DIFFERENT SUDDEN CONNECTIONS PLEASE.
I’m so tired, paranoia is tiring…
WAIT I JUST REMEMBERED ROB ROY HAD ISSUES WITH AUTOMATIC DOORS TOO.
So Zenno Rob Roy had the bad luck of running in-between TM Opera O and Deep Impact’s runs, right after a decline but before a boom, what this means is that Zenno Rob Roy’s accomplishments came at a time where they weren’t making that much of a boom.
Just like how Still In Love wasn’t properly appreciated as a Triple Tiara winner both from the timeframe when she ran and from not being the favorite…
…
Okay, that one is more fun than madness-inducing.
Still’s support card depicts her on what’s likely her Ouka Sho victory, the text is basically Crimson tempting her with going ape shit because her beloved will still say they love her even if she does.
The events in the card start with Rob Roy recommending Still a book called “Vampire of the Red Castle”, where the protagonist is a vampire that can barely contain their bloodlust, she even mentions that Sweep Toushou herself also recommends it, that she loved it, completely moved by how nobody got the protagonist’s struggles.
After this scene we see Sweepy tailing Still for some reason. Sweepy comments that whatever she was following turned into fog and when confronted by Still she runs away insisting there’s nothing wrong (because Still assumed maybe she did something that angered Sweepy). Of course seeing Sweepy run away stirs Crimson ever so slightly.
At night Still has one of her episodes where the moon stirs Crimson up and Sweepy from a distance confirms her suspicions that Still had been hiding something… that she’s A VAMPIRE!
In the next event Still is holding back while seeing Ramone do a practice run. Afterwards turns out Sweepy keeps stalking Still, and Still (bless her heart) is just worried because she thinks maybe Sweepy is mad at her and if so she wants to know what to apologize for.
You get a choice here and it’s hilarious because they are “Make a space where they can all talk”, “Make it so Sweepy can’t escape”, and “Wait for Sweepy to tell you herself” and if you pick the last one YOU DON’T GET ANYMORE EVENTS BECAUSE OF COURSE THE SILLY GIRL WOULD NEVER SPEAK DIRECTLY UNLESS PROMPTED.
Once they talk directly Sweepy is like “You’re thirsty, aren’t you?”, “You’re holding back something, aren’t you?”, “You were looking for prey, weren’t you?”. So of course Still is like “Oh my God this girl saw right through me” not aware that Sweepy thinks she’s a vampire. Sweepy leaves declaring that she will fix Still’s thirst which of course makes Still EVEN MORE CONCERNED that she might be forced to unleash something on someone else
Next event Sweep declares to Still that Sweepy has prepared the best prey ever for Still… TOMATO JUICE, or Cranberry juice, you can pick which one. They give different stats.
Because Still was thirsty.
Yeah…
Despite having two completely different conversations that the POV trainer dares not point out, it all came out fine in the end.
Even the game is in on that joke. It’s great.
By the way, the real Sweep Toushou actually won a Takarazuka Kinen against Still in Love, but this was in 2005, one year after where the game ends Still’s career.
There’s one story I left until now on purpose because it’s the perfect wrap up.
As mentioned originally, not only did the real Still In Love lose the Queen Elizabeth II Cup twice, but it was basically the start of the rut she wouldn’t get out of.
Well, back in 2021 Hideaki Miyuki finally got that victory for the first time.
And it was all thanks to a descendant of Kizuna (Bond).
It’s name?
Akai Ito