This is one of those OH GOD WHERE TO EVEN BEGIN ones.
So, unlike wrestling and the like, the “narratives” people craft about horse racing are more of an emergent thing. It’s the result of the human ability to recognize patterns whether we want to or not, and similar goals (and the struggle for them) aligning.
The term I want to introduce to you today is “stable”, not the kind where horses are but the kind where wrestlers are.
Uh… let me explain.
A “Stable” is a “faction”, either a narrative faction (see: WCW’s New World Order) or a group of people that align with each other but are still more independent (see: Stardom’s Ooedo-tai or NJPW’s Los Ingobernables). In horse racing lore there usually end up being pocket rivalries that develop organically.
For example: Oguri Cap, Super Creek, and Inari One formed what’s known as the “Heisei Sankyo” (“Heisei’s three-strong”); Biwa Hayahide, Narita Taishin, and Winning Ticket formed what was called “BNW” (after their initials); Mayano Top Gun, Marvelous Sunday, and Sakura Laurel formed their own competitive trio also; as did Narita Top Road, T.M. Opera O, and Admire Vega (as seen in the newly-announced anime). There’s also “stables” that act more like an umbrella term for specific generations, like the so-called Golden Generation of Special Week, Grass Wonder, El Condor Pasa, King Halo, and Seiun Sky.
These aren’t exclusive or limited, however. To give a few examples, Opera O also had a well-known rivalry with Meishou Dotou, Oguri Cap had its own rivalry with Tamamo Cross before the latter retired, Mayano Top Gun had its own rivalry with Narita Brian, and so on…
There is a timeline out there in the multiverse where amongst these groups we would be able to count the legendary three-way rivalry of Daiwa Scarlet, Vodka, and Aston Machan.
Spoilers: We do NOT live in that timeline.
The Real Aston Machan’s name is a combination of Aston Martin and “Ma-chan”, Dr. Mayumi Tosa’s (Machan’s owner’s) college nickname.
Machan had a bumpy start with a second place at her debut, but immediately stood back up, earning first place after first place. Which made her the most popular horse of the Hanshin Juvenile Fillies (One of the earliest G1 races you can apply for), problem was: In that race there was another mare by the name of Vodka that stole first place away from her.
In fact, Regular Vodka’s unique skill’s effect (“If it’s the last 200m, you’re in the front, and there’s competition: Raise your speed”) is actually the exact iconic way that Vodka won against Machan in this race.
But no matter! She won her next race in the Fillies Review, the step right before the Ouka Sho. And indeed she headed into the Ouka Sho with high expectations, in fact she was second most popular pick after Vodka. The problem… is that Vodka had won her last race against another mare called Daiwa Scarlet, and Scarlet went in her revenge tour, winning the Ouka Sho against Vodka and igniting a rivalry that would define them until they retired.
Machan? She… ended up in 7th place.
Then 6th place in the Kitakyushu Kinen…
…then, to everyone’s surprise, first in the Sprinter Stakes! But then came 14th in the Swan Stakes… and 10th place in the Silk Road Stakes.
And then she got colitis and died of heart failure before trying the Takatsunomiya Kinen.
A footnote in the tale of two more illustrious contemporaries, a flash in the pan of history, always on the margin of the scene, trying to get into the frame, be seen by the cameras that are focusing on the “main characters” instead.
OH YEAH THAT’S LITERALLY HOW THEY FIRST INTRODUCED HER IN THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY SHORT ANIME BY THE WAY. There’s something morbidly slick in going from “hahah fourth wall breaking girl” to “wait, does this mean something?” to “OH MY GOD YOU BASTARDS” in the span of around 10 minutes.
And now they actually have to focus on her for the plot, how does that go?
OH GOD WHERE TO EVEN BEGIN.
So in case this context wasn’t enough of a punch in the gut, the first scene, the FIRST GOD DAMN SCENE of her training campaign is a flashback. Machan used to play near the hospital’s squares and gardens, according to her introduction, Machan’s mom is a doctor, which is a neat nod to the real Machan’s owner also being a doctor.
Machan used to talk a lot with many elderly patients who entertained her as much as she entertained them… and then Machan went again having grown up and the same patients now had signs of dementia or alzheimer’s or senility, or similar conditions and were slowly forgetting their memories with Machan until they forgot her altogether.
But they saw a mascot character plushie, and even in this advanced stage that mascot character seemed to trigger memories, not names, not faces, but memories and the feelings attached to them. That’s when Machan realized that if she became a mascot, people might not forget her.
During all this, Machan paints an analogy about life that becomes recurrent. You’re born in an estuary, you go downstream, then you end at the sea. This was always painted to her as matter of fact and not scary by the hospital staff, but this experience with the patients made her realize that when you end at the sea you might go too deep or too far, and then nobody will see you, they might even forget you.
I’m going to try and focus as much on the plot as I can because there’s a really insightful psychological element in the story that I wanna analyze at length. But let’s move on.
Machan’s trainer is… slightly excentric, in another element that I wanna explore in more depth later, the best way I can describe them is that if Machan is Key Visual Arts Main Heroine, then her Trainer is the Player Character. Seemingly the more normal one of the duo, but in truth, to indulge on Machan’s plans and be in the same wavelength as her, you have to be at least slightly weird yourself. They actually keep a journal of Machan’s exploits in the shape of 4koma comics posted on the same blog Machan manages.
It’s the sort of trainer that will put a Machan statue in the academy and wear a full Machan mascot suit to promote her. After all, Machan wants to be a mascot, an Ultra Super Mascot even, the best mascot there will ever be.
And so, her campaign goes in the trajectory we described earlier. She faces Vodka in the Hanshin JF, and even though the player can win, this doesn’t change much about Machan’s mental state aside from a couple of extra scenes.
When the Ouka Sho arrives, regardless of the result and without telling her trainer beforehand or consulting with them, Machan says goodbye to Scarlet and Vodka. She tells them that she feels like her calling is elsewhere (since this is the point where both of them move onto middle-distance races), but in truth she feels… like a third wheel. Scarlet and Vodka are her dearest friends and in the story you see her many times being the invisible hand that pushes them back together, but one element of Machan that I’m doing my best to not get sidetracked by, is that… it seems she doesn’t feel like she deserves love.
This isn’t just the third wheel element, when her trainer later on very passionately talks to her about not giving up, Machan’s reaction is one of confusion, of “why do you care so hard about me?”, likewise, it’s almost like she cannot comprehend why anyone would be sad that they’re not gonna race against her anymore or why her trainer might be sad she’s making all these choices on her own.
To go back to the river to the sea analogy, Machan sees life as you being in your own boat, drifting quietly into the sea. So things like training without eating one day should only be her problem… but Hishi Amazon finally drills it in her head that her trainer is her partner and she shouldn’t keep things from them.
So the Sprinter Stakes happens, she wins… and this, my friends, this is when things ramp up and go to a whole new level.
Her next objective is the Takatsunomiya Kinen, the race that the real Machan died before running.
So uh… let’s just list some of the stuff that happens.
After the Takatsunomiya Kinen, nobody pays attention to Machan, almost like she isn’t there. This is AFTER the people cheering for her don’t seem to say her name and only say “xxxxxxxx” instead.
Also she has a very ominous cough and at one point feels as if her eyes were “kidnapped”. And on the train ride back, while disappointed that nobody interviewed her, her trainer loses sight of Machan for a second until they call out her name, almost as if she suddenly vanished for a second.
She also starts admiring how beautiful and ephemeral the Sakura trees are, and you might think this is too on the nose… and it is, but it’s so on the nose that it shifts into worrying and eerily ominous. Almost like the game is TAUNTING YOU for knowing too much.
She is disappointed about not being able to go to the Fan Thanksgiving day but they accomodate for her, letting her greet people in video and letting them know she’s aiming for the next Sprinters S… and then she starts hearing the sound of the waves, wondering if she’s “close to the sea” now.
One day her trainer has a dream where they dream about waving someone in a boat goodbye except they want to help but can’t reach them… then they wake up trying to recall a girl they knew, a girl that’s really important to them, and then they see one of the many Machan plushies, the first one in fact, and her name comes back to them. They try to log into the blog only to be denied access, they call Machan only for the calls to not fall anywhere, they start asking people on the streets if they’ve seen the girl that looks like the plushie and nobody seems to know her.
Then finally late at night, the trainer finds Machan on the beach, facing the sea, where she speaks as if she’s going to just walk into it where she begs the trainer to just let go, the trainer remembers her, that’s enough, so long as one person remembers Machan then that’s enough…
But it isn’t! She promised her fans she’d be at the Sprinter S, HER GOALS OF BECOMING A MASCOT ARE SO SO CLOSE BY NOW, why is she stopping? The trainer insists and insists and Machan’s wish to give up is challenged until she relents that that’s not what she really wants.
And then, as if some spell was broken, Machan turns her back to the sea and dawn breaks. She’s changed her mind. She then comments about how, even if her boat has a leak, she will keep going.
A spell does seem to have been lifted at that moment because not only does Machan feel more upbeat about the upcoming Sprinters S, but the URA sends them an email telling her that her requests and proposals for merchandise are now up to review and they might be happening soon.
Oh yeah, also, there was probably nothing supernatural at play because as stated, Machan’s trainer is kinda weird and they were asking random people off the street if they knew Machan which… realistically, how many would, actually?
…or was there? More on that later.
The Sprinter Stakes happens and this makes Machan’s marketing wishes all the more enticing to companies, agreeing to make toys and assorted merch based off her like she wanted… to which Machan then comments that there might be a time where people will know about her without knowing that she even ran some races to begin with, and that she’s fine with that.
These scenes are clearly meant to mirror the result of the Takatsunomiya Kinen, where now Machan can hear her name and all eyes are on her and her alone. Also, interestingly, there’s currently zero girls in the current game that participated in the 2008 Sprinter Stakes, so at least in the context of the game Machan isn’t stealing anyone’s historical record.
At the end of the campaign, despite having official merchandise, the trainer still had Machan’s handmade plushie, and decides to keep it as a treasure. Then Machan tells them that in the distant future when the trainer is old, even if she’s buried below a sea of other memories, even if the trainer forgets her. Maybe that plushie will be the string that’s still connected to the memories of a girl that brings good memories and happiness even if you can’t remember her name or her face.
And then things end and I need to sit down and process what happened.
In that process I realize Machan’s trainer might actually have the really early stages of some memory condition and then remembered how this caused Machan so many emotional scars but also how her trainer fought against this forgetfulness in order to force Machan back into her memory…
Or maybe not? Tachyon already commented in Suzuka’s story how what she was trying to do sounded like an impossible feat for a Horse Girl. Maybe the name and memory of the real Machan was trying to enforce itself in the world and after the trainer insisted enough, the world decided to give Machan that chance she was pushing for.
Or maybe both plus it all just being an analogy for depression, creative ruts and feeling helpless. The story very smartly keeps all these options open, letting you see it however you want to see it, even all at the same time.
After all, allegory doesn’t mean “x actually means y” but “it is both x and y equally at the same time”.
It hits me how this all felt like some long lost sequel to a game like CLANNAD down to Machan having the same sort of quirks as a main heroine from one of those games, how meta it got when Machan commented that people might get attached to her and not know she ran races, how completely unleashed the story became after the point where the real Machan died and they had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted and they just went ham about wanting the legacy of this horse that once promised so much to be remembered and not buried in the sea.
It also hits me how they wrote Machan in a way where she might’ve been from the very beginning of the game’s launch but was off screen until she became playable. How her dynamic with Scarlet and Vodka highlights the fact that as much as they bicker they ARE good friends as shown when both of them put their animosity aside when near Machan.
The sheer guts to punch you in the stomach with something as heavy as “girl that grew up with elders that probably had alzheimers or dementia”, Machan’s analogies for depression that feel like the sort of thing someone that went through depression might have rather than the more cartoony sort of depression media depicts. And how Machan clearly can read and cares about people in her own dettached way.
While I wouldn’t say that there aren’t campaigns with insightful elements, this one is, by necessity, an insightful romp where a supposed footnote in history ruminates on the many facets that the concept of “being remembered” can take and the struggles that this brings with the ordeal of being known also.
Because even now as I replayed this story for this entry, it dawned on me how you can easily see the story as something for the game as a whole. How when it inevitably has to shut down in the future, hopefully all the memories of all the girls you read about will remain and it’ll live on in the collective hearts of the players.
The part about how people might really like the Machan merch without ever knowing the real Machan is already on the nose, so who’s to say it isn’t?
