Original posts here, here, and here.
Funnily enough “Haru Urara” is also the Japanese name of Ash Blossom and Joyous Spring.
Though in this case the “Haru” is a pun where it’s pronounced like “spring” but it’s written as 灰流 or “Ash Stream”.
But that leaves the question, where did Urara’s name come from?
It apparently comes from Urara Kawashima, the main character of the drama Ten Urara (天うらら). Ten Urara is a drama about a girl that decides to learn carpentry in order to help her grandparents’ business after her grandma is bedridden following a fracture.
According to Dai Muneishi (Urara’s trainer), horses are already hard to handle so he wanted to give her an easygoing name… and sadly Mary Jane was already taken by another horse.
There’s a timeline out there where I talk about “Mary Jane, the star of every loser” and that’s wild to think about.
There were at least seven songs made about Urara. Notably Mina Furuta, an enka singer, had released an unrelated song called “Haru Urara” (春うらら) in the year 2000 but re-released it in 2004 to capitalize on the Urara Boom.
This is more common than you think. David Hasselhoff is well-known in Germany for singing Looking For Freedom in honor of the Berlin Wall being torn down, but his version is actually a cover of a song performed by Marc Seaberg in 1979 which was covered by Tony Marshall later that same year, and both became hits in Germany before Hasselhoff covered them.
Back to Urara, there’s also at least eight books written about her, all of them released in 2004. I wanted to point to which one was the one promoted in that one race they literally named “Haru Urara Book Out On January” but as chance would have it, they released TWO that month.
Speaking of books, Urara actually has the honor of being TECHNICALLY the first adapted work of Uma Musume. All the way back in May of 2016 (Literally two months after the project was announced to be a thing that exist) “Haru Urara Do Your Best” (ハルウララがんばる!) was released on Cycomics.
It was a wild ride, and that’s not just from how it was illustrated by ZECO, but also it’s basically Urara’s biography outside of the academy which is fine, but if you compare it to say… Cinderella Gray’s early chapters it feels decidedly rough as an Uma Musume thing.
Which makes sense, it was literally released two months after Uma Musume was announced to exist and six months before Starting Gate. In fact, it’s extra interesting becauze ZECO’s body of work includes a lot of early Mecha Musume, the kind based around WW2 like in his manga Battleship Girl. Which is to say that Urara feels more like an original Haru Urara made for this manga instead of the Urara of the final product. Like a different THING that they put the Uma Musume name onto.
Which might be part of why it was removed from Cycomic’s website in 2022, and unlike Starting Gate it hasn’t been released in physical form yet.
That said, while there’s no hard confirmation, it does look like ZECO was involved in her final prototype.
Speaking of discontinued items, lingerie manufacturer Triumph once talked about making brassieres that contained strands of Urara’s real hair.
And it wasn’t the first attempt, other things like charms were attempted but they were criticized and then pulled out of market, for, you know, cutting hair from the real Urara.
There’s another discontinued Urara thing, though it isn’t as… egregious as the others.
She was on the first splash screen of the game when the app is loading (which has been updated once per anniversary).
What? Don’t see her?
She’s right there.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight there.
Something I’ve always liked about Urara’s racing outfit is that sort of… invisible implication about it.
Her racing outfit is basically her gym clothes but with a couple of flourishes like a different shirt, a different jersey, and some gloves for extra effect. It’s almost like she couldn’t get a proper racing outfit due to her racing record so she just… fashioned one out of stuff she found.
That’s not what it is though, it IS actually her properly designed racing outfit. According to her, she designed it based on the gym clothes she wore on her first race, she then goes on to explain that she didn’t win that race but her parents were very proud and gave her lots of compliments.
OH GOD THAT’S RIGHT I’VE FORGOTTEN TO MENTION SO FAR THAT EVERY GIRL’S RACING OUTFIT HAS PERSONAL MEANING AND STORY TO IT.
It’s fine… that’s just post material for a busy week, it’s fine…
Now, let’s talk about Urara’s relationships before I get sidetracked with the actual movie they made about her (no, not the documentary, an actual movie), or how both of Urara’s parents are descended from Beautiful Dreamer, an english Mare that became the biggest progenitor of mares in Japan after she was imported in 1908.
AHEM
The two most interesting relationships that Urara has, in my opinion, are with her roommate King Halo and with Rice Shower.
King Halo was descended from Dancing Brave and Goodbye Halo, “The strongest European horse” of the 1980s and a mare with seven G1 victories to her name respectively. Without getting too sidetracked (again), King Halo didn’t quite live to those expectations and fell into a losing streak riiiiiiiiiiiight about the time Special Week enters the scene.
Rice Shower, meanwhile became infamous for breaking Mejiro McQueen and Mihono Bourbon’s winning streak, giving the horse infamy as one that was out there to just be a villain and steal others’ dreams.
So as you might imagine, the girl that had everything to lose and the girl that was scorned for winning make an amazing pair with the girl that thrived despite never winning.
The first season of the anime actually implies that Urara has a rivalry with Yukino Bijin, and in there it’s a neat gag about how one is representing Kochi and the other is representing Iwate (so basically two famous mares from the countryside known more as celebrities).
The game hasn’t referenced this too much though. In part because Yukinon has other friends groups she frequents; and in part because from anime to game, Urara’s brain became smoother and smoother. So smooth that the idea of having a rival on her own volition would just slip and break something like Urara’s grandma in Ten Urara.
That’s a perfect way to close things, let’s not spoilt it with another tangent.