Let’s start doing this when there’s some extra bit that I wanted to point out but would break the narrative of a post. Or just a note to myself for a topic that sounds interesting for later.
For starters, there’s the fact that while looking for screenshots in horizontal resolution for the post, I realized how little Suzuka has featured in other events outside of Grand Live and the main story so far, which is extra interesting when you consider that she’s the only one left out from the intial batch of characters. As in, if you check the Characters page of the official website (which seems to have some sort of approval chronology at play), Every character EXCEPT Suzuka up to Hishi Amazon has had an alt (which means they’re the focus of an event or noteworthy enough to warrant an alt like “Full Armor Fukukitaru”).
“天馬” also happens to be the nickname of Toushou Boy, who will become relevant whenever I write about Daiichi Ruby who just got implemented.
I didn’t illustrate the fracture properly. It wasn’t like a car who loses a tire and crashes. Rather, the fracture happens, the jockey can tell something is wrong and then try to save the situation. For example, when Toukai Teio broke his bones for the upteenth time, there wasn’t that kind of “stop the race” problem. This is why when you see recounts of the incident, Yutaka Take often says that he tried to let Suzuka run some more since they clearly wanted to, it was a sort of “the damage is already done, let’s make the best of what little is left” situation.
Also thanks to Twitter user NakayamaFesuta1 for reminding me the REALLY IMPORTANT DETAIL that to add to the drama, Jockey Yutaka Take was DEVASTATED, saying that was the first time in his life he ever got drunk.
Another fun detail that the game makes note of both in a comic and in Suzuka’s skillset was that Silence Suzuka had a really natural proclivity to run counterclockwise, to the point where apparently it was harder to make him run in clockwise courses. Apparently, after the real Suzuka was weaned (being fed something other than his mother’s milk), he started pacing counterclockwise on its stall to relieve the loneliness, and the habit just… stuck.
While I made a joke of how they shipped Suzuka overseas and how in kid shows that’s their way to kill a character off, the real Suzuka WAS intended to go on an overseas tour to America after that Tenno Sho. So they actually continued with those plans in a way. Suzuka comes back in the anime after Teio’s last race and in the game by the final chapter and those align with the idea of the year-long tour being done and coming back.
Finally, a detail that I’ll probably unpack on its own and that I’ll also probably elaborate on whenever I do a beat by beat breakdown of Suzuka, but Tachyon talks in her story about how Horse Girls “inherit feelings”. It’s made in the usual “plausibly deniable fantasy” tone of the rest of the series (like Tachyon saying that while running she feels like someone is pushing her forward and the player assumes she just means feeling the support of fans), but the way she talks about it makes it sound like she feels as if Suzuka going back into running is defying some sort of unknown law of physics of the world.
But she’s a mad scientist researcher so of course she loves the idea.
We’ll eventually unpack THAT box bit by bit, don’t worry.