Thank GOD I can stop pretending I like the French.
So you know how I mentioned that “Yayoi” means “March” so the duo of Mei and the chairman is “March” and “May”? Northern Taste (the inspiration for the chairman) was actually born in March… but Dictus (Mei’s inspiration) was born… in April.
I guess they thought that they already had one super relevant Uzuki in another franchise, so no need for another one.
My theory is that “Mei” is not “May” the month but “May” as in “You may do it”. Her last name contains the kanji for Assist (佐) and Mountain Peak (岳). So I like to think that her name means basically “Helping you so you may reach the peak”.
Speaking of Mei, in the scenario she can appear in two different trainings during the same turn. On one hand this might be on purpose since, if you use her support card, you’re gonna get bonuses for training with her present so bumping the chances to 2/5 is certainly a boon… on the other, this has caused fans to claim Mei moves really fast between spots or is using Shadow Clone Jutsu.
In the Longchamp racecourse, we can see that the L’arc in Uma Musume is being organized by the “Qasr Racing Society”. In the real world, the L’arc is sponsored by Qatar. While there are many valid legal reasons to obfuscate this fact in the game, “Qasr” isn’t just a random word scramble.
Qasr is another spelling for the word Ksar, and if you’ll remember, Ksar was the French favorite during the second ever L’arc.
Here’s a fun one: In the first season of the anime, there’s a scene where, on the Japan Cup where Special Week is going to face Montjeau, she asks El how to tell all the French girls that she hopes they all have a nice time.
El proceeds to teach Special Week to say “La victoire est a moi”, “Victory is mine” with the subtitles basically translating it as “Don’t get cocky”.
So during the scenario, if you’re training Special Week and you’re training intelligence with El, the French that Spe-chan practices is that line.
And it only happens IF El is teaching Spe-chan French, any other combination will result in the normal result (though you will also ocassionally get the girl reciting Romeo and Juliet in French).
Actually, I said before that Venus Park is basically French Special Week and fittingly one of her voice clips is her saying “La victoire est a moi”. I love that voice clip just because the French in it sounds so convincing.
Speaking of El, she has many great moments in this scenario, one that comes to mind is her challenging Sirius to see who can plank for the longest time.
We stan an unnecessarily competitive musclehead queen.
As I explained before, in this scenario the girls go on an overseas expedition from July to October. So another neat detail the game has is that if you’re training a seasonal version of a girl whose seasonal element takes place in that timeframe, they they adjust the event so that it’s happening in Paris instead of wherever else.
As of now this includes Summer, Halloween, and Autumn Festival versions of girls. For example, Summer Maruzensky has one fixed event that happens during summer training, and since there’s no summer training and to jump from france to a beach in Japan would be jarring, they just made a new event.
A similar thing was adjusted for the Group cards. Team Sirius, Those Who Sit By The Throne (Rudolf, Tsuyoshi and Teio), and Ancestor And Guide have a similar event during Summer training and, again, there’s no summer training.
Of note is that the effect of the event in your stats remains the same, it’s the context that changes.
Here is a list of all the bad conditions you get and what “skill” you need to buy to overcome it:
- Unfamiliar Grass, fixed with “Foreign Grass Aptitude”
- Unknown Course, fixed with “Longchamp Course Aptitude”
- Jet Lag, fixed with “Daylife pace”
- Foreign Meals, fixed with “Nutrition Management”
- Language Barrier, fixed with “French Proficiency”
- Long Travel, fixed with “Overseas Expedition”
- Homesickness, fixed with “Strong Heart”
- Strong Tension, fixed with “Mental Strength”
- Jinxed, fixed with “L’arc’s Hope”
There’s something really charming in the idea of a girl not performing as well because I MISS HOME AND THE FOOD IS WEIRD AND EVERYONE SPEAKS FUNNY AND I’M TIRED FROM THE PLANE AND-
Project L’arc has the second most events out of all the training scenarios with 104 different ones. That said, while Make A New Track has way more at 175, they’re disjointed vignettes, like short stories too short for Support Cards that they wanted to put elsewhere. Meanwhile Project L’arc’s events are all directly connected to a central main plot.
The gallery says Grand Live has 128 as of this writing but that’s because each girl being in the last event is counted as a singular entry so the number will keep rising as more girls are added.
Speaking of adding girls, this scenario brought a whole batch of new, procedurally generated girls for races. You see,it’s France so that means the cast of Background Mob girls needs to expand because of it. They even have French-er outfits.
I said the scenario linked girls aren’t as relevant to he story, but there’s some really fun details to make note of.
El and Nakayama are the only ones that aren’t salty about the prospect. They’re also the only ones in the group to get to second place in their attempts. Meanwhile, Sirius Symboli lost big time in an European expedition that was already off to a rocky start with Rudolf wasn’t able to go due to sickness, so she’s the most salty and grumpy about the whole thing… which of course makes it extra funny when Nakayama teases her about it.
The rest make token comments about the matter, like how Satono Diamond makes a comment about being inspired by the Trainer’s tenacity due to her also being a rookie to the whole affair.
Funnily enough, Tap Dance City wasn’t implemented when the scenario happened so while she’s technically part of the group that challenged the L’arc, she’s limited to a couple of cameos and a couple of Scenario Link events if you have her Support Card. Otherwise, her prominence is very limited, even more so than the cast is already limited as-is.
This isn’t trivia necessarily but more of a random thought. I’ve always had this weird sense that Uma Musume is more Sakura Taisen than the recent New Sakura Taisen.
To me, the appeal of Sakura Taisen was always how aggressively Japanese it is. After all we’re talking about an alternate history where the Emperor Taisho didn’t die when he did in real life so the era has gone on for longer, and in this world Takarazuka Revue is actually a front for a demon-hunting government organization that fights with steampunk mecha.
New Sakura Taisen does away with the secret demon hunting, the Takarazuka Revue and moves the timeline to the 1940s. The result is a polished product, yes, but one that doesn’t really stand out that much all in all, especially not like the older entries.
It doesn’t even have the extensive repertoire of songs that the original Sakura Taisen games had.
You know what has a long repertoire of songs though? The franchise based around the idea of Japanese racehorses reliving their careers as schoolgirls in a sports academy where they perform musical numbers after every race.
Now, why do I bring this up here?
Because, having this opinion in mind, imagine my surprise when I see L’arc de Gloire, the live show at the end of Project L’arc, and it’s effectively Sakura Taisen 3: Is Paris Burning?’s opening song in style.
To be honest, the whole scenario feels like a love letter to that sort of Frenchboo…ness… that love for France by people enamored with the image it cultivated without actually stepping onto it.
Oh and if any of you are wondering why I’ve been calling it the L’arc instead of The Arc. It’s because I find it amusing when Definite Articles in one language are ignored because they mean nothing in another one. I love El Condor Pasa, but the fact that everyone calls her El is infinitely amusing to me given the fact that everyone basically calls her “The”.
No I’m not fixing my sense of humor, it’s gotten me this far in life, thank you.