The cheeky people at Cygames kept secret that the new scenario actually focuses on the NPCs from the other scenarios and I can’t even be mad, the surprise was great.
In the last post I made a point of how the scenario sells its concept on many levels, one of which involves how even characters whose arc ended can still improve.
Before I get to that, though. Let’s refresh who we’re talking about.
In the game’s first scenario, URA Finals, the player meets Aoi Kiryuuin. While she comes from a renowned family of trainers she’s still a rookie that does many things by-the-book. This causes some issues with the girl she’s training, Happy Meek, who is a really absentminded and quiet girl. The point of their story is for Meek to reach out more to her trainer, and for Kiryuuin to play things by ear more.
Quick tangent: Before the game implemented a mechanic where Meek can be stronger by challenging the player (or if the player avoids said mechanic), Meek’s stats all sit in C Rank which is a cheeky way to reflect how Kiryuuin obsessed over “balanced training”.
The second scenario, Aoharu Cup, is more involved story-wise. A retired trainer, Riko Kashimoto (AKA Riko-chan that was scared of touching a cow) is appointed Deputy Chairman of the academy and tries to enforce a more strict training program instead of the more liberal goal-oriented program that the academy currently implements. The titular Aoharu Cup is set as the battlefield to determine which method is better. But as the story progresses, not only does Riko-chan realize that trying to impose that on everyone isn’t the solution she thought it was, but everyone else realizes she’s not as hostile as she initially seemed.
One of Riko-chan’s accomplishments and signs of her Trainer skills was managing a team of 15 girls (whereas even in the Main Story a team tends to be composed of trainers and sub-trainers with a single girl). Amongst them there were Bitter Glacé and Little Cocoon, two problem children that were only able to shine thanks to Riko-chan methods. And despite having retired, Riko-chan decides to still take Little Cocoon and Bitter Glacé under her wing after the Aoharu Cup is complete.
So you’d think by the end of both these scenarios, their tales would be done, right?
As stated earlier, explaining why not is the point of this post.
So the start of the scenario is straightforward enough. The player is there to test the VR training, and then the other characters volunteer too. And the first surprising thing isn’t just evident from the outset, but the fact that it’s so evident is really good: The characters are continuing exactly where they left off.
The biggest trapping of any sequel of any kind, is the idea that a character needs to take some steps back in their development to have a plot going on, this is a fallacy where usually the writer tends to focus so much of the character’s personality in the plot’s struggle that naturally if that plot ends the character doesn’t have any other way to grow.
But the characters we see here are exactly where they were the moment you last see them in their scenarios. And nowhere is this more evident than with Little Cocoon.
To give some context: In Aoharu Cup, Little Cocoon was a really hostile rival to the player’s team. In her backstory she was someone that HATED having her pace be set by anyone. One particular story that sticks out was when everyone wanted matching running shoes and she protested that she didn’t see the point of that, likewise she didn’t appreciate needing to be held down because the others couldn’t keep up with her in training or otherwise. When Riko-chan offered her a spot on Team First, she accepted because Riko-chan promised her that she was going to do all the managing so she doesn’t even have to interact with the rest of the team if she didn’t want to.
And wouldn’t you know it? When you let someone be themselves and not admonish them for how they are, they actually grow really attached to you. While she was still a loner, Cocoon was really protective of her team, her hostility towards the player was born out of a sense that they were just “playing games”. This even leads to a simple mix-up with a water bottle involving Rice Shower resulting in a one on one race where Cocoon finally has to admit she might’ve been wrong in that assumption. By the end of the campaign, the last thing the player sees of her, she’s sincerely commending the player and their team on their accomplishments.
THIS is the Cocoon the player is greeted by in Grand Masters. She didn’t skip back into her caustic persona, she has an ego, but she’s much nicer to everyone. She’s still a loner that prefers to do things at her own pace but it’s someone that cares deeply about Glacé, her trainer, and quickly takes to Meek and her trainer too. This sort of free-spirited fierceness makes the Darley Arabian AI take quite the liking to her.
This is actually another interesting element of the narrative. Each of the AI Goddesses take a liking to one of the girls, in a way that reflects what each one stands for.
In Meek’s plotline she goes out of her way to train on her own, which results in some minor injuries that concern Kiryuuin a LOT. Not only from the injury side but because it’s very unlike Meek to train without any guidance from her trainer. This isn’t only the moment where Kiryuuin learns Meeks can still surprise her, but the reason Meek did so was because even though she was happy training at her own pace, was from seeing Bitter Glacé give her trainer a victory and be jealous that she couldn’t do the same.
Godolphin Barb is the one narratively assigned to both of them. Her own backstory of a moody horsegirl that was only able to shine with the dedication and care of a gentle, loving trainer, making her take to Kiryuuin and Meek’s struggle.
This scenario actually reveals more of how Meek and Kiryuuin met. Nobody cared much about Meek in practice races, she wasn’t as flashy as the others, but Kiryuuin saw something else, she saw how Meek was able to keep a consistent running pace no matter what and she saw potential in this.
They all get backstories like this, actually. Cocoon’s was already mentioned in her scenario but this one frames it from a more personal side.
Like I mentioned, Meek gets jealous of Glacé’s victory, but this is because she and Glacé actually develop a very unlikely rivalry, to the point that when describing her motivations, after the injury, Meek refers to Riko-chan’s group as “Glacé-tachi” or “Glacé and her group”.
In her backstory (that gets spotlighted here similarly) Glacé was a horsegirl OBSESSED with training. She’s so obsessed that even as the last match of Aoharu Cup ends she’s more concerned with how she did time-wise than on whether she won or not. This attitude made her a really tough teammate to have, and like Cocoon she was rejected because of it until Riko-chan came in and offered her a team where she would be able to train as much as she wanted.
This attitude still remains in this scenario, and in her efforts to train harder we actually see how much Riko-chan has improved as a person. In her scenario, Riko-chan’s main concern was based around her experience with a horsegirl she trained that injured herself training and had to retire early. But in this one we see a Riko-chan that trusts Glacé enough to push her harder than she’d usually be confortable with because Glacé WANTS to improve more.
And all of this makes Byerley Turk take a liking to them, with Turk and Riko-chan’s training-oriented personalities resulting in a really interesting dynamic… and also it means we have Mitsuki Saiga and Romi Park in the same scene which makes it hurt even more those scenes aren’t as fully-voiced.
Actually, the fact that Kiryuuin and Riko-chan are in the same scenario already makes for really fun scenes. While they’ve been shown together before (Mainly in the Make A New Track scenario), this one actually puts focus on that. One scene that stands out is the one where Riko-chan learns of Meek’s injury and gets slightly alarmed being reminded of her own past failure.
Like I mentioned earlier, Darley Arabian takes a liking to Cocoon, and while part of the gameplay (I’ll dedicate a post to the gameplay, don’t worry) is how the player can end up with preference by any of the Three Goddesses, it’s not hard to see Darley being the one that stands by the player’s side in this situation.
This isn’t just elimination process, but it fits thematically. Darley Arabian is all about independence and freedom. In the Aoharu scenario, Riko-chan’s more strict training structure is meant to be the contrast to the player’s more freeform training, said freeform training is an acknowledgement of how due to the same mechanics that make the game fun, the player’s choices might seem erratic to an outsider. But that adaptability to what’s given to you is what Darley stands for.
It wasn’t until after the scenario ended that something very interesting dawned on me: This is the first narrative-heavy scenario to not depend on the existing cast.
URA Finals only has Kiryuuin and Meek, but it was also a more thin framing device for the gameplay, and Make a New Track has Otonashi Etsuko the reporter, but her story is more the bookend that frames what’s going on.
In Aoharu Cup the player’s side is filled by default with Taiki Shuttle, Rice Shower, Haru Urara, and Machikane Fukukitaru. In Grand Live Light Hello is being assisted by Smart Falcon, Agnes Tachyon, Mihono Bourbon and Silence Suzuka.
But this is the first scenario with a heavy focus in narrative (as it’s probably evident by now) where the story doesn’t have any of the regular cast. The Goddesses are technically based on real horses, but they’re not playable characters the player would’ve been familiar with before, and the rest of the cast is also NPCs.
There’s something… commendably bold about that choice. It’s easy to wonder with how much Uma Musume lifts from real life as inspiration that it’s all a crutch, some might even wonder if the stories would be as good if the girls weren’t named after the real horses and had to craft their own tales. It’s certainly a question I’ve had myself, having been burnt by the Fate franchise shifting so hard into heroic spirits that it starts to feel like they’re depending more on the recognition of a historic figure than the story they can craft by themselves.
This is more like what happened with the Original Generation sub-series of Super Robot Wars, where they’re taking advantage of the cast they’ve developed over so long.
So the fact that not only are they all original non-playable characters, but that it’s also a sequel story to said characters where they’re ending on an even further point compared to their original stories is, to me, a sign of both confidence and expertise on the side of the staff. A show that even if it wasn’t evident with everything else, the writing merits are of their own making.
Not only that, but it makes the attachment put into the characters feel like a safer bet, like you can have peace of mind that if Happy Meek shows up again it won’t be a waste or something regretful, but something you can look forward to.
And as a writer, and more than that, a writer that finds in Uma Musume both something with the same priorities as me but also something I deeply enjoy, all of these displays of well-earned confidence are really important. This blog’s existence is me daring to leave a more tangible imprint for the passion I feel for a thing that resonates with me in a way that very few thing have both personally and creatively. I constantly worry of the day where that will change, more specifically the possibility that the separation won’t be in good terms. So all of these displays of narrative mastery that probably only I care about to this extent are really important in reinforcing to me that I’m not wrong for opening my heart to a game this way.
