April Fools! Let’s finally talk about the funny horse manga.
Midori no Makibao was published in Shonen Jump from 1994 to 1998. It is a madcap sports comedy about a horse that looks like a small hippo creature.
It was made by Masaaki Tsuno, AKA Tsunomaru. Here he is in the inner sleeves of the manga volumes.
We’re in good hands.
Midori no Makibao opens at the moment of Makibao’s birth… after which he tries to get back into his mother’s womb.
This will be the tone of the series so get used to it.
Well… there’s already an issue. You see, Makibao wasn’t born with a name and when he first got one it wasn’t even that one. I won’t do a play by play because there’s moments I wouldn’t dare spoil and it’s also 16 fucking volumes, but the first volume sets a very good example for the series starting out.
There was a mare called Midoriko, she was bred with a stallion called Tamakin and there were very VERY high expectations for the foal resulting from this… but when he was born he was cowardly and hated running and were it not for Midoriko he would be bullied by everyone else.
…which became a problem when Midoriko was taken as collateral for a debt.
Unable to stand life without his mom, the weird small creature embarked in an adventure where he was attacked by a wolf. A wild mouse called Chuubei saw him defend himself by shitting into the wolf’s mouth and named him “Unkotarezou” (“Pooping elephant”) or Tarezou for short.
Chuubei tags alongside Tarezou and they find Midoriko…. with another child. Midoriko acts like she doesn’t know Tarezou, saying she would never have such a crybaby child. This makes Tarezou run off but Chuubei notices the tears in Midoriko’s eyes as she says this.
Then Tarezou tries to hang himself.
It’s fine, he sees a squirrel bully another one and tries to intervene but eats shit in the process (I must clarify: Not literally). Tarezou apologizes to Midoriko and promises he’ll become a really strong horse.
Eventually Tarezou returns to the farm where the owner takes A While to realize Midoriko’s child is back even after seeing him face to face. The horses begin their training and Chuubei decides to jockey Tarezou ala Ratatoille 13 years before Ratatoille, letting Tarezou show a scary amount of speed.
Sadly they can’t register “Unkotarezou” so they decided on “a variant of the manga’s name”.
Thus Makibao, or should I say Midori Makibao gets his name (Midori Makiba O, “King of the Green Pasture”).
While I said this wouldn’t be a play by play, there’s some characters you need to know about because they sell you even further on the story.
The first is Cascade, Makibao’s main rival. He’s an edgelord, his mother was called Hiropon and defeated Makibao’s mom Midoriko until the latter retired but Hiropon died in childbirth, so the first thing Cascade ever saw was his mother’s corpse.
Then there’s Amago Vaccine. Impressive horse and the brother of Triple Crown contender Peter II, which leads him to having a lot of complexes about his own skills.
These three will be your Power Trio for the manga.
Makibao also has a lost sister called Makibako.
Now, this is the part where I explain that while I described it as a madcap comedy… and it is, it’s more precise to say that it’s an intense sports drama that exists in a madcap world. The sort of thing where out of context you’ll see a man uppercut a mouse with a tiny vest, but while reading you only see Makibao’s owner slapping some sense into Chuubei.
Like man, when Nitronics is the first horse ever to treat Makibao like a serious rival looking forward to their next race together… that’s the good stuff.
But this is still a manga where obstructions go unadressed and Makibao runs most of a race blindfolded to get over his anxieties, goes to train with mongolians, fights against wolves. There’s a horse called Bare Knuckle who arrives with harpoons on his back because he couldn’t afford a plane ticket so he swam to his overseas expedition, also his servants are a bunch of cats that stand on their hindlegs…
It’s not bothered by being loyal to the rules of the sport or even reality.
Speaking of reality, one of my favorite details is how Tsunomaru draws the crowds as the same naked mob guy to save on the effort. And speaking of art, the style isn’t just expressive (which is an immediate plus for me) but when you see Midoriko and Cascade and the like, you get the immediate impression that while the more “vulgar” character designs are there for the comedic tone, they’re also there to convey that feeling of “unwashed masses” as it were.
Though as the manga goes along he starts to show himself more comfortable in drawing people with more normal proportions, still in the realm of the cartoony mind you, but refined.
Also yeah, in case the origin of Makibao’s first name didn’t clue you into this (and the hanging and…), this is a kinda vulgar manga, not in a raunchy way mind you, also not in any explicit way, but it has a lot of toilet humor among other things. Though I’ll add that as someone with zero tolerance for toilet humor this one didn’t have any amount that I found upsetting.
Now, perhaps the most interesting thing about Midori no Makibao is its position historically.
Dunno about you but I remember that weird period when Naruto and Bleach had ended and Shonen Jump was basically scrambling to get their next big thing to fill in the ranks, which led to them giving space to less common things for the magazine like Promised Neverland.
Well, it’s not the first time this has happened. In fact, Midori no Makibao was in publication during a very turbulent time for the magazine economically. It’s two biggest hitters: Dragon Ball and Slam Dunk (AYYYY) had ended in 1995 and 1996 respectively and while the magazine trucked along, its position as a market leader was more and more compromised. In fact, Around 1997 Weekly Shonen Magazine (Love Hina, Kindaichi Case Files, etc) actually surpassed it on sales.
Speaking of historical, let’s talk about our main trio for a moment.
Our boy Makibao has long been since associated with Tamamo Cross and it’s hard not to see how. Being a diminutive white horse from a debt-ridden farm with a very hungry spirit to himself. However, even if we ignore the loose historical record, Makibao also has a lot of Winning Ticket in him. Just look at his childhood name of (Unko)Tarezou which sounds like ticket’s Chikezo, not to mention his dad is Tamakin (Tony Bin) and his maternal grandpa (the one Tsunomaru dresses like) is Marzenisky (Maruzensky). The Winning Ticket association also fits since he’s the part of an early 90s power trio that won the Nihon Derby (the manga released the year after Winning Ticket’s victory, in fact).
Amago Vaccine is our Biwa Hayahide (being the Kikuka Sho winner). Except he has elements of Narita Brian (picking up the legacy/expectations of an injured sibling), and said sibling is basically Toukai Teio (winning 2 out of 3 Triple Crown races, missing Kikuka Sho specifically out of injury). Funnily enough his name is meant to pair with Cascade’s since Cascade is a type of computer virus and so we have its (Amago) Vaccine.
Finally there’s Cascade. A black horse directly descended from Sunday Sidence (No I didn’t misspell that) with all the tellings of Fuji Kiseki, but with a rise to power that mirrors Symboli Rudolf‘s and winning the Satsuki Sho (which would make him the Narita Taishin of the trio), but also having nicknames Rice Shower got. Curiously enough, more than any of these, Cascade actually takes a lot from Joe Yabuki of Ashita no Joe. Down to having an arc where he trained so hard he ended up with visible ribs.
I should consider Ashita no Joe for next year so you all can see how far back the thematic DNA goes…
Funnily enough, Cascade would’ve been born in 1993 and the rock band CASCADE of Sexy Sexy from Gakkou no Kaidan fame was founded on 1993.
Honestly, I could keep going. I haven’t even talked about how the human characters have names that sound out of the Sengoku era and how there’s a very Sengoku-esque undertone. through all of it. Or all the other horses I haven’t mentioned for that matter.
There’s a reason why when I listed all the available Uma Musume media a while back I said you should all read Makibao. If you like Uma Musume you’ll like Midori no Makibao and it’s not even about the horseracing but about the way emotions are conveyed and balanced with a slightly surreal world.
…and wouldn’t you know it, right as I’m writing this the madlads at Cygames go and make an actual proper collab for April Fools where all the girls with “Oh” in their name recreate Midori no Makibao’s opening in a shockingly high effort shitpost. Like, not only did they replicate the film race but they even replaced the radio at the start with a phone!
AND THEN AS I’M EDITING THIS THEY RELEASE MORE.
God bless these madlads.