Five years before Uma Musume existed, a browser game in 2011 tried to do the same premise but inverted.
As in: “The player is the horse” inverted.
So today I came across this tweet talking about how in “Umadonna” one of the characters has a name that’s a very interesting nod to Symboli Kris S. Her name is Kurisu Fujisawa, with “Fujisawa” being a possible reference to Kazuo Fujisawa, who trained amongst many others Symboli Kris(/Kurisu) S.
My reaction was essentially “That’s nea-… wait… What is Umadonna?”.
So uh… Umadonna was originally a browser game, a proper attempt by the JRA itself to have the cute girls market. EXCEPT instead of playing as a trainer that trains girls, or playing as a trainer that interacts with other trainers, the player was a horse, with the staff from trainers to jockeys being the girls in this equation.
The reasons for this game existing, as explained in this article (funnily enough celebrating 10 years of Umadonna in the same year that the Uma Musume game itself released) are super fascinating. Because for starters horse racing saw the double whammy of the “Lehman Shock” (the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers) AND the retirement of Deep Impact who basically carried the THIRD horse racing boom on his back (for those curious, the first was brought by Haiseiko and the second one by Oguri Cap).
Umadonna wasn’t the first attempt by the JRA to grab the attention of newer horse racing fans. Indeed, in 2010 they released a game called JAPAN WORLD CUP which was effectively betting on fictional horses but the horses were all fake and out there.
Of note is “Haribote Elegy” which is a horse composed of two men running in a disguise… unless you’re talking about Haribote Elegy 3.0 which is THREE men running in a costume.
I say “of note” because I only knew Haribote Elegy as this fanmade character in Uma Musume circles so imagine my surprise when it was an actual thing. Shout outs to user Kopperion in particular for that one.
Sadly, not even the panda and the elephant were enough to make a proper tick into that, and hey even if horse racing was out of a boom, Light Novels were starting to see one that still echoes to this day. And so, an idea was devised.
First, get character designs by Kouji Ogata from the Boogiepop series (eg: Boogiepop Phantom).
Next, get a scenario written by Sagu Aoyama of Rokyubu fame.
I’m not gonna lie, that combo is weirder than the premise of the game.
So… what happened?
Well, I’ve talked a lot in this blog about how Uma Musume didn’t seem to properly make the connection necessary for the franchise to thrive until after the game properly released, at which point you can notice massive revamps even comparing the game to the first season of the anime.
Now, let’s take that and extrapolate it further back.
Granted, Uma Musume was originally announced in a market that was already saturated with anthropomorphized things and during the peak of Kancolle having a boom no less, but even without these elements it already had a tough time hoping to click with people.
Now think about that and then make the premise tougher to get into by default by virtue of having a premise that feels like one of those insincere joke dating sims westerners make all the time… mind you I’m NOT saying it’s insincere because what little I can gleam of the game it looks like they believe in their premise fully.
Uma Musume bridged the world of anime fans and horse racing fans by selling both sides the tales of competition and passion that each other crave.
Umadonna required extra layers of “no no, we’re serious” before you even started. In fact there’s articles as far back as 2011 where users express their own reservations before giving it a try.
That’s my opinion at least.
Since I don’t know when I’ll talk about it again, here’s some extra fun details.
The short hair girl is a stablehand called Asuka Matsuda, she’s voiced by Aki Toyosaki.
For those that don’t know, Aki Toyosaki is Yui Hirasawa in K-On!
For those even less aware, K-On! was kind of a big deal still in 2011.
Her name is actually based on trainer Kunihide Matsuda and Daiwa Scarlet… which means there’s a precedent of people shortening her name to “Dasuka” since at least 2011.
The one with the hime cut and the big boobs is Kotobuki Yumeji and she’s your trainer. She’s voiced by Rina Sato, which, again, Rina Sato in 2011, kind of a big deal (One of her roles in 2011 was in Rokyubu incidentally).
Her name is based on Dream Journey (The Yumeji part) and then the Kotobuki part is based on trainer Yasutoshi Ikee… how exactly? Well, Yasutoshi is 泰寿 and Kotobuki is 寿.
Yeah
Big boobs, hime cut, disciplines you and is voiced by Rina Sato?
You know, this game had good taste, we cannot deny that.
I already talked about Kurisu Fujisawa (left) at the start, she’s the jockey of the cast and was voiced by Aya Endo, as in “Award Winning voice of Sheryl Nome from Macross Frontier” Aya Endo.
In 2 (The one I used as header) they also added Ruka Horii. Basically a mysterious girl that is added to the cast. She’s voiced by Ms Yuno Hidamari Sketch herself Kana Asumi.
Her name is actually the ukranian work for Vodka. горілка, Horilka, Horiruka. No two guesses as to what her name is based on. In case it wasn’t obvious, there was apparently an event in the game where the player gets a nosebleed that mirrors the nosebleed that Vodka got in real life to retire without running Arima Kinen in 2009.
They had faith in this project they were throwing money at top shelf voices.
All the event CGs and animations were made by Production IG
From what little I can gleam about the two games, the plot of the first one involved preparing for Arima Kinen while the plot of the second one has that goal thwarted by a nosebleed which pivots things into solving problems in the girls’ lives.
I love the title of the second one “ウマすぐKiss Me” because it’s basically the title of a Lindberg song.
Also researching this led me to learning that back in the day 競馬伝説Live (Keiba Densetsu Live) an online horse racing simulator made a bunch of famous mares into human girls.
Feel free to enter the official website for that and check for yourself how they interpreted some of the girls we have in Uma Musume nowadays.
Or wait until tomorrow when I do that for the next post.