While writing this set of posts, Calstone Light O’s Ibis Summer Dash record was finally beaten.
Puro Magic beat Calstone Light O’s record by 0.2 seconds. For a new record of 53.5. And if you’ll remember, Puro Magic was the one that MATCHED Calstone Light O’s record in 2025 down to the milisecond.
As I mentioned in the first post, that’s no easy feat, it also puts into perspective how hard to beat any record can be. Incidentally, reinforcing the point of the Ibis SD being won mainly by fillies, Puro Magic IS a filly.
But this actually turns it into a fun transition to talk about the core theme of Calstone’s career, and one that surprised me a little bit.
First, a quick explanation. I’ve written about them in the past for their scenario, but in the game the Three Goddesses you interact with are AIs (no not that kind) modelled after the Threee Goddesses which are implied to have been living Uma Musume. In fact, the ultimate point of Grand Masters as a scenario is the idea that improvement is an eternal struggle. The player and two NPCs whose scenarios had seemingly ended are being helped by foundational figures, except that being simulations even these foundational figures will improve thanks to their experiences with the trainers.
I love the scenario (as evidenced by how much I wrote about it all), and one of the most surprising things about Calstone’s scenario is that it feels like a bit of a love letter to it.
For starters while yes, Calstone Light O’s bloodline being related to Godolphin Barb is a point to highlight, they took care that it would make sense in the context of Grand Masters for Godolphin Barb to take an intereste in Calstone and her trainer. In the training scenario she latches herself to Kiryuuin and Happy Meek, with the core of their dynamic being that Kiryuuin is a very worrywart by-the-book trainer and Meek, despite being a pleasant girl, is so ideosyncratic in her running and such that she can be tricky to train.
Godolphin Barb in life was also a horse with very bad temperament that had a very rough life until he finally mellowed out when he was owned by Francis Godolphin, 2nd earl of Godolphin.
So is it any surprise that Godolphin would see this hard-to-handle girl and her immensely patient trainer that rolls with every single punch and goes “oh hey, I know that feeling”… or rather “oh hey, a certain girl once upon a time knew that feeling”.
The AIs speak of their time alive as if it happened to someone else, always in third person. And I didn’t realize until writing about this scenario that they do so because… yeah, they’re aware they’re not the real horsegirls but just simulacrum with their memories. I really like it though because it also makes them feel more divine, like “yeah that happened to a mortal, which I’m not”.
You know what else was Godolphin Barb known for?
Loving cats.
One of the few creatures that the real Godolphin Barb ever properly opened up to was a ranch cat named Grimalkin (old english for “gray-haired cat”), in fact, as the story goes Grimalkin died shortly after Godolphin Barb died (with an alternate telling saying it was the other way around and the horse died after the cat).
To contrast this, I couldn’t find anything about the real Calstone Light O being particularly fond of cats, which leads me to believe that Calstone in-game was made very deliberately to parallel and reflect on Godolphin Barb.
It doesn’t stop there, back when I wrote about Grand Masters I talked about its theme of standing in the shoulders of giants, and that’s pretty much the theme for Calstone’s campaign. Starts with getting the attention of Godolphin Barb, then she gets help from Bakushin and then from Tachyon, all of which provide her with different-but-compatible perspectives on how to achieve her goal of going really fast. One being effectively a senpai in the same racing path, and the other being a contemporary with similar interest in transcending physical limitations.
Even Calstone’s parents work off of this theme. A researcher and a lawyer, two fields that very specifically depend on the precedent set by generations past to accomplish new goals.
This all leads to the core question I’m trying to answer:
Why?
Why is this the specific theme they chose for Calstone? I mean, I just explained a bunch of reasons why it is, but I’m trying to get the rationale behind the decision. The element at the macro level that makes one go “yeah, there’s clearly this undercurrent”.
Well…
I’ll assume everyone reading this is familiar with videogame Speedrunning. But just in case you somehow aren’t, it’s the practice of playing games as fast as you can in ways that range from “completing the game normally” to “using frame-perfect tricks to break the code and skip to the ending”.
While I’m ambivalent to the practice itself (don’t hate it, don’t feel compelled to do it), I love speedrunning documentaries because they’re this tale of a group of people pooling all their knowledge in order to push each other to cut the time as low as it can get. It’s the sort of thing where game records growing stagnant because there’s nobody play against is as common an ocurrence as rivals cheering for each other on streams.
Sounds mighty familiar, doesn’t it?
Am I saying Calstone is a G*mer? I’m gonna be honest, I don’t think that girl can even sit down still in front of a TV. But her story is exclusively about perfecting the act of running really fast without a care for any other element involved in running and with the intent of being able to overpower any other element involved in running. If this was a different story, Calstone would be in something more similar to track and field sprints than regular horseracing tracks… but the fact that she tries to take the olympic athlete approach to the whole thing does add to the absurdity and ultimate catharsis of what she tries to do.
Speaking of absurdism, the scenario is kinda That. Every scenario is about running really fast and being better than the others, so this scenario just explores the idea to that logical extreme.
There’s also a fun meta element I couldn’t help but notice.
I know some people that don’t play the game much (or at all) read this so I’ll go into some detail but for the rest: Calstone feels like a commentary on the newbie player Speed Bakushin Strategy.
Okay, context for those that don’t know what I mean and refresher for everyone else. Sakura Bakushin O is one of the characters you get for free before you even pull your first free 10-roll, and as such she’s a very rookie-friendly character with an easy career to follow.
There’s a lot of balancing involved in training depending on proficiencies, and training mode, and even if you’re specializing for a specific race. But for newbies all of this is like hieroglyphs so they default to the strategy of training Bakushin with a focus on speed (that also boosts Power by happenstance) and Intelligence (that adds some speed) to maximize training time.
This strategy has plenty of flaws. The biggest one being that if you do it TOO well, you’ll cap on Speed early on and now you have to do other trainings without the proper resources to maximize the gains or keep doing Speed Training and lose on points that could be used elsewhere. You might forget to run which depending on the scenario and your own cards might not be something you can just forget about. And becoming a bit too braindead about which training to pick might lead you to not having developed the support cards’ gauges and might even lead to training when you have a high risk of failure because you weren’t paying attention.
As such at some point (particularly after Speed is near its limit) it’s recommended to spread out into things like Power to build up other stats because you can legitimately end up with stamina that’s too low even for sprints. Not to mention that Power is the stat that allows the character to reach maximum speed faster, Speed is just the maximum speed they can theoretically achieve.
SOUNDS MIGHTY FAMILIAR, DOESN’T IT?
The funny part about it is that just like how the trainer gets reassurance that they can overcome all other flaws with speed, that sort of laser-focused training has become easier with the way scenarios have been powercrept.
My wording in the last post was very deliberate, Calstone is the clown to surpass Metal Gear Bakushin. Not only does she surpass her in the story literally (in a race) and figuratively (being an even bigger clown), she’s also the Advanced Form of Speed Only Bakushin.
And just in case you lost track of the main point and think I just felt in the mood to slander Calstone by calling her a G*mer, let me take it all back to the main point.
This year Puro Magic beat a record that stood uncontested for 24 years. Not just in the Ibis SD, not just in Niigata, but in horseracing in general. But someone had to set the record, someone had to show the record was possible and it stands to reason that if the record is possible then it might be possible to break it.
Puro Magic already matched the record last year before her victory this year… and perhaps someone else in the future will beat it thanks to the knowledge that it was possible to beat it once.
New speed barriers will always be broken, and someone will always be there with that goal. And they’re there thanks to those that dared dream about going really fast to begin with.
That’s what Calstone’s scenario ultimately says in the midst of all the jokes.