You ever think about how hard it is to sell yourself on your looks? Online or otherwise.
It involves a higher-than-normal awareness of one’s body and looks, knowledge of the best angles and lighting to an instinctive level, and a commitment to it that borders on obsessive. Any broad can lift her shirt, but those that rise above the rest show a commitment to the craft that is undeniable.
This side of this is very underrepresented and you wouldn’t believe where you can find a cool example of all places…
One day, a Trainer dozes off remembering one time they helped a lost horse girl in an amusement park, the girl who was crying her eyes out a second ago was now suddenly and unnaturally calm.
Back in the real world, a new girl is transferring to Tresen. A Limousine stops to drop “Curren”. According to many of the girls gathered in the entrance she’s a “selfie goddess”, an influencer with over 3 million followers in “Umasta” (basically Instagram).
This “Curren” takes a single look at the trainer and decides on the spot they’re now her trainer. Closing the gap even faster by taking to calling them Oniichan/Oneechan.
Not long after this happens, a “Pretty Grand Prix” takes place and Curren decides on her own to participate. While she performs well on the more social parts of this improvised pageant, when the time comes to race her horseshoes (oh yeah, every girl races with shoes with horseshoes by the way) are loose and she loses form. She still makes it to the finals from the other parts of the pageant, but her performance in the race is less than ideal.
Those that think she’s only a pretty face with no place in racing see this as validation.
Her fans are disappointed in seeing her like this.
But nobody takes it harder than Curren herself, who for the first time breaks her unwavering smile and is so distraught she makes herself scarce very quickly.
Next thing you know, Curren has gone to a deserted island in order to train, a fact that her trainer discovers by going full ARG deciphering her last Umasta post. In that island the trainer finds Curren reciting something like a sutra while under a waterfall.
This is when Curren tells her story. According to her, her real sibling told her as a child how her cuteness made everyone happy, and as such she decided at age 3 that her goal in life would be to be the cutest.
And this is the second time she breaks her unbreakable smile, as she recounts how if being cute brings people happiness she will be the cutest, and moreover the fact that she had such a poor display on the Grand Prix and disappointed others goes against her ideal of cuteness and is unforgiveable.
The Grand Prix final round happens, Curren makes up for her poor performance last time around and afterwards she meets with her trainer in the rooftop, where she finally reveals that she was that small horse girl the trainer met, and that Curren still remembered how when she told them her dream of being the cutest they didn’t laugh. So she felt like them being there as soo as she transferred was destiny.
So let’s recap really quickly…
Mysterious transfer student that takes an immediate liking to the POV character and shakes their world up, only to be revealed that they had a fateful meeting in the past that she’s making good on.
Anyone that has played any visual novel should be familiar with this character type. In fact, you don’t even need to go to catalogs of Softhouse-seal or May-be Soft and the like to find this. If you’ve come in contact with Danganronpa in any way, Sayaka Maizono fits this archetype, by extension Sayaka Maizono from Tokyo Majin fits this also.
The fact that Curren calls her trainer Oniichan/Oneechan is a cue to a more specific type of character that she takes after. The title of the post is “Secret Route Heroine” because it’s very common for visual novels (especially those of the more romantic variety) to have a “little sister” character that’s usually out of the player’s reach until certain harder specific conditions are met.
And even if they aren’t, the little sister character tends to end up in a Magical Girl spin-off of some sort.
However, this is Uma Musume, and this recognizable archetype is ultimately a means for the narrative to have a shorthand that is used to pivot into something else, and the key word with Curren is: Perfectionism.
Her introductory chapters make it obvious that she’s the type of person hat will strive to be perfect in anything she does, and it just so happens that what she chose to be was an e-girl influencer.
And this perfectionism can be unsettling in a way that no other character manages usually. Uma Musume is a franchise where emotions and passions fly all over the place constantly, but Curren is notable because her dedication to cuteness is impassive, the only moments where she breaks this mask are when her commitment to cuteness are put into doubt… and when Admire Vega is involved. But otherwise she’s completely unreadable, as seen with how she’ll go from crying to smiling in a blink.
And this is, of course, a quality that the real horse had in its racing career.
The best example was when Curren participated in the Hong Kong Sprint. During transportation the plane moving her suffered a turbine failure which had Curren stuck in her container for over 24 hours where she managed to remain calm.
Let me repeat that.
A fucking horse, an animal that as Lord Mandalore once said is “A sofa with anxiety issues” was stuck for over 24 hours in the transport container of a plane and managed to stay calm until she was able to be taken out. And despite the cold and the fatigue that it involved, she still managed to make it to fifth place.
Even the influencer part has a foot (hoof?) in reality. Out of 17 races that Curren Chan raced, she was the most popular pick in nine of them, 2nd most popular in four, third most popular in two, and lower than that in the rest.
Of course, race popularity is based around the perceived odds that a horse will win… but that is still a popularity contest in practice, so the idea of integrating “A horse that was consistently the most popular” into an e-girl online influencer is honestly genius.
But what type of racer is Curren Chan? A sprinter, and a very good one at that.
How good? In her early career she won many times against Lord Kanaloa, and while I haven’t talked about him much yet (mainly because he hasn’t become relevant to the game that much) Lord Kanaloa is considered to this day by many horse racing aficionados to be the best sprinter in history, having surpassed Sakura Bakushin O for that same crowd (and fittingly, Lord Kanaloa was the first horse since Sakura Bakushin Oh to win the Sprinter Stakes two years in a row).
If what you want is numbers, Lord Kanaloa was the second most booked horse of its time right after Deep Impact, a horse so notorious that he basically carried a whole horse racing boom on his back.
Curren won against THAT. Though being part of the same ranch meant that both camps were in amicable terms overall. In fact, it’s notorious that between Lord Kanaloa and Deep Impact, Curren Chan was only able (as in: give birth and remain alive) to have an offspring with Lord Kanaloa. Said child is called Curren Moe and has retired by now too.
Speaking of bloodlines, Curren Chan’s father is Kurofune, a horse that became famous for how montrous its performance became after they switched his races to dirt races instead of turf. Interestingly, Sodashi, a very recent “idol filly” that was making the rounds thanks to both her performance and beautiful all-white hair, is also descended from Kurofune.
While we’re talking about bloodlines, Curren’s maternal side includes both Tony Bin and Maruzensky. Winnign Ticket is the only other horse in the cast that can claim to have both Tony Bin and Maruzensky as ancestors.
This has no bearing to in anything in particular, I just find it amusing.
In terms of career parallels, we actually see one right from the get-go.
Thanks to the history of her dad Kurofune, Curren Chan debuted in a dirt race where she ended up second despite being the most popular… not unlike how in her introduction she had a less than ideal Grand Prix.
In the real world she debuted in dirt and then ran in the 3-year Undefeated race before changing to the Moegi Award, marking her shift into turf instead of dirt… but in the game this would be very mechanically tricky to enforce, especially considering how her character is designed to be overspecialized as a sprinter in turf. So after her debut her first objective was changed to “Gather 3000 fans” which can reasonably be done by running two races of your own choice.
I’m so mad the game doesn’t make it a point for the girl obsessed with cuteness to run the “Moegi Award”.
Both lines converge again at the Fillies Review, which is the “trial race” for the Ouka Sho. The intent was for Curren Chan to chase the Triple Tiara. In the real world, Curren Chan ended up 8th place which made her camp reconsider and make her into a full sprinter (since the Triple Tiara races would only get longer) but in the game this is an interesting point.
I described ages ago how in Uma Musume, because they’re all girls, the normal real world divides of fillies-only or colt-only races don’t exist and it’s more a matter of… branding basically. So for Curren, the girl dedicated to an obsessive degree with being “the cutest” to give up on the idea of the Triple Tiara for the sake of shining brighter in her own category, shows a depth to that commitment that might not have been obvious before.
Both sides then race in the Aoi Stakes but then we have another divergence.
In the game, after the Aoi Stakes the next objective is the Hakodate Sprint Stakes, but in the real world, in that space of time Curren Chan raced in the Shiosai Special (1st place), the Fushimi Stakes (3rd place), the Yamashiro Stakes (1st place), and the Hanshin Himba Stakes (1st place).
In the game, there’s literally two turns between these two objectives. It’s already impossible to race three turns in a row without risk, it’s even more impossible to cram four races in two turns.
There is another minor divergence at this point. In the game the next objective would the the Sprinter Stakes, but in the real world, Curren Chan ran in the Keeneland Cup in-between. In-game the reason is that at this point it’s the Summer Training period and allowing the player to participate in it in full would ease the difficulty.
Keep the Keeneland Cup in mind, however.
Now, the next objective is the Ocean Stakes, which gives the player plenty of time to train (from late September to early March, so about 10 turns), but in the real world Curren Chan ended up 5th in the Hong Kong Sprint. This is where the incident in the plane mentioned earlier took place.
After the Ocean Stakes, comes the Takatsunomiya Kinen on both sides. If you’ll remember, that one was the race that fans always speculated if Sakura Bakushin O could’ve won and the game lets you run with her.
This is where the game does something fun, however.
The next objective afterwards is the Sprinter Stakes, a Sprinter Stakes that Curren Chan lost to Lord Kanaloa in a revenge match. Meanwhile, in the real world, there’s the Centaur Stakes before that.
So, remember the Keeneland Cup? This is actually where we take that pin out.
The scenario has a secondary unmarked (though very clearly announced, mind you) objective. To prepare for the Sprinter Stakes, chairman Akikawa suggests Curren run the Summer Sprint Series. This includes the Hakodate Sprint Stakes, the Keeneland Cup, and then the Centaur Stakes.
What makes this objective tricky is the fact that not only are you giving up Summer Training turns for it, but if you participate in the Keeneland Cup and the Centaur Stakes, then by the time you participate in the Sprinter Stakes again you’ll get the exhaustion warning of racing three turns in a row.
It’s a secondary, voluntary difficulty curve that also reflects the busy schedule Curren Chan had in real life and I really like it when the game sneaks in details like those.
Now, I’ve been looking up what meaning that Hakodate Sprint Stakes might have. The Keeneland Cup is the one race the player hasn’t run from Curren Chan’s real career and the Centaur Stakes is appropiate to the time period, but that second Hakodate run doesn’t seem to have symbolism to it beyond the fact that it’s a notorious summer sprint.
Regardless, after this Summer Series, Curren races and wins the Sprinter Stakes. In the real world this is a race she lost to Lord Kanaloa who would go on to win the next year and be the first horse to do so since Sakura Bakushin O… so the lack of Lord Kanaloa is meant to paint this alternate scenario where Curren Chan was the one to take that title and as a Filly no less.
In the real world Curren Chan would race in the Hong Kong Sprint again only to lose to Lord Kanaloa again, but the lack of Hong Kong Sprint in Uma Musume is one of those details worth its own post.
In the end, Curren’s story is one of the nature of perfectionism, and how a true perfectionist doesn’t have to fit others’ molds. You can be an e-girl influencer and still take racing seriously, you can strive to be the cutest and not aim for a Triple Tiara.
This is best exemplified, I think, when she explains her goals to the player. She talks about how people always told her her smile made them happy, she then talks about how impressed she always was by the horse girls running on TV, but how she found them scary with the face they had at the end of the race, covered in sweat and dirt.
And so, she wants to be strives to be someone that can bring joy on both sides, being a fierce racer that nonetheless remains cute all the way through.
Even if social media as a concept becomes unrecognizable in a few years, and even if the idea of an influencer becomes very different, Curren has such a strong personality and ideals that you could uproot the trendy e-girl influencer part off it and still find something to fit the exact same goals and convictions onto.
She just wants to be the cutest, and cuteness is timeless.