So this was basically one bit of trivia that got out of hand really fast.
First, let me set up the stage, as it were.
A while back I explained Kanmei, that recurrent name that horses have and that you see in a bunch of examples in the game.
For example, “Sakura” (Laurel, Chiyo-chan, Bakushin) is treated as a coincidence where it’s said that girls with Sakura in their name are destined to be part of the “Victory club” (an extracurricular pre-school basically), in contrast to this we have Hishi (Amazon, Miracle, Akebono) who don’t share anything explicitly but do have a love for food and cooking in common. There’s also a big contrast with “Narita”, where it’s kinda like… a recurrent last name and by coincidence all the girls have scary sides to themselves.
Those last are as of now, mind you. New detail can always crop up.
The biggest and most explicit of these is the Mejiro house… though as you’ll see in short, “House of Mejiro” is probably more appropiate. All the Mejiro girls treat each other like sisters, but notably not all of them call each other sister. Ryan is called such by Bright and Dober, and Ardan refers to Ramone as such, but other than those they tend to refer to each other by name.
The image it paints (this isn’t explicit mind you) is that of a big numerous family, where they’re all cousins of varying separation and closeness to the matriarch.
Now, until recently, “Symboli” was kinda vague as to its nature. We know that Rudolf and Sirius have known each other most of their lives, but Kris S seems to be treated more like “Oh the foreign girl shares our name how curious, maybe she’s a distant relative”.
Until recently because L’arc very casually drops a LOT of lore on this front all of a sudden.
It starts when Rudolf tries to tell Sirius that she can surely conquer the world with the Symboli name, only for Sirius to be Sirius and tell her that she’s not doing that “For Speed Symboli or any old men”.
The scenario paints Speed Symboli’s first step into challenging the L’arc as a big deal. It’s simultaneously “a bridge built with the rest of the world” and a “stain” a defeat for someone that was the trailblazer of the Symboli name.
We never see Speed Symboli but she does send Mei a letter and her legacy as the “first one” echoes through the story.
There’s another element at play though.
We know that Rudolph has a close relationship with her grandpa, heck, ages ago I wrote about Robroy and there’s a scene where Rudolf shares some coffe her grandpa made with Kris S.
Turns out, that grandpa is actually married to the Mejiro household.
There’s a scene where Ramone tells Rudolf that “The Mejiro and Symboli houses are no longer tied together”. And we know that the Mejiro girls all have the same grandma, which we see in the second season.
On a sidenote, I wonder if it’s the same “Madam” that Tsubaki talks to in the first chapter of Star Blossom.
The point is that this scenario drops the bomb that at some point these two Big Names got married. These two are actually often seen with Mei, who seems very fond of them… and puts some questions about how old Mei is exactly.
And you know what the funniest part is?
This is something that happened in real life.
Rudolf’s real life father (before I claimed Speed Symboli was, I was wrong, Speed Symboli is her real life maternal grandfather however) is Partholon. Partholon was a joint purchase by Tomohiro Wada of the Symboli Ranch and Toyokichi Kitano of the Mejiro Farm.
Partholon would go on to sire Mejiro Asama, McQueen’s real life grandma and the horse that people theorize is her grandma in the anime. To be more specific, the theory is that she’s both Mejiro Asama AND Miya Kitano who took up the ranch after the death of her husband Toyokichi and was popularly known amongst racing fans as “The Mejiro Grandma” (メジロのおばあちゃん)… which means, yes, that would make McQueen’s grandma Mejiro (Oba)Asama.
In a bit of “don’t think too hard about it”, Symboli Rudolf was Partholon’s representative piece, meaning that Rudolf is of the same generation as her grandpa… again, don’t think about it. Time in Uma Musume is just a suggestion.
Interestingly, Partholon also sired Sakura Shiori, who would give birth to the tragic Sakura Star Oh (Which I mentioned briefly in another post). Sakura Shiori is also the mother of Samson Big who debuted not too long ago in the Star Blossom manga.
The scenario actually leaves us with one extra mystery and one extra bit of expectation.
The mystery is the identity of the Chairman before Akikawa. It’s known that she WASN’T the chairman while Mei was still peddling her dream for Project L’arc.
Related to that, the expectation is the fact that the scenario reveals that both Ramone and Rudolf want to be the next chairman after graduation. A conflict that Ramone positively looks forward to and even describes as Romantic.
Next time let’s finally wrap up this scenario with all the shorter trivia I couldn’t fit elsewhere.