Mayano Top Gun was the first girl in the game I wrote about proper and in that one I didn’t cover her secrets or what her outfit means. So let’s fix that!
It’s all actually tied together, as it turns out.
As you might expect from her name, Mayano has a big aviation theme going on, it turns out her father is a pilot, and ever since she got to ride with him in a jet she’s been enamored with flying and the sky.
That’s where the design from her racing outfit comes from. As explained in her post, Mayano is obsessed with being more “mature” without… actually acting mature, so her outfit is basically a combination of a kid trying to dress more adult-like (or what she thinks it’s “adult-like”) plus an aviation motif. The event where she shows her racing outfit has a message from her dad commenting that she reminds him of himself when younger with it.
Sidenote, Mayano also showed the outfit to her trainer first before her parents, and then sent a photo of both of them to her parents which I thought was a cute detail that also fed into Mayano using her trainer as a sort of “practice relationship” of sorts, introducing to parents and all.
Incidentally, the design of the Jacket was adjusted a few months after release (Images from this website reporting on it). Probably to make it easier to import into the Korean and Chinese versions.
Appropiately, Top Gun Maverick had a small controversy regarding patches in Tom Cruise’s jacket in the trailer.
Even more appropiate, when Top Gun Maverick started making the rounds, there was a collab with Uma Musume where Mayano would promote the movie.
EXTRA extra funny is that one of the promotional videos for the movie has a conversation between Mayano and Narita Brian.
Narita Brian’s in-game nickname is MAVERICK by the way.
Mayano’s two secrets are all related to this. One is that she can make paper planes with any kind of paper, and the other is that she’s very picky about action movies.
Given that Top Gun is considered one of the best action movies to ever come out to this day, it’s pretty straightforward stuff.
It’s amusing to this day that they did this. Cygames is famous for its off the walls collabs and when the game launched everyone wondered what their first collab would be. G Gundam has a horse, Hokuto no Ken has a horse, Midori no Makibao saw a resurgence since Uma Musume released, even Evangelion has been in collabs with other horseracing games…
Cut to an actual movie tie-in that is as surprising as it is appropiate.
So with all of this in mind, what’s the “Mayano” part of her name even from?
That would be Mt. Maya in Kobe, where the real Mayano’s owner played as a kid.
Also, if you’ve wondered why I haven’t written about Mayano’s races proper yet… basically it’s gonna be a back and forth between Narita Brian, Sakura Laurel, and Marvelous Sunday. Her career is so tied to others that the original post covers the basics of her that will inevitably cross over when I talk about the others.