Right, now that I’ve illustrated other points, let’s rewind and talk some things I skipped from driving other things home.
I mentioned that Special Week was raised by “two moms” both in real life and in the game. Aside from the fact that it’s all but explicit that “she has two moms” should be taken at face value with the many implications thrown that both her horse girl mom and her human mom had a History together, there’s a more sneaky detail at play.
In real life, the horse that raised Special Week was a Draft Horse, the sort of horse you use for heavy duty stuff. In Uma Musume, as mentioned before, Horses as in the quadruped don’t exist and all Horse Girls are implied to just be throughbreds. So the fact that Special Week’s mom is a farmhand of some kind does an amazing job in integrating both the “raised by a non-throughbred” part, and the “raised by someone that works in farm stuff” part.
In real life that draft horse that raised Special Week was noted to produce more milk than normal, this might sound like the cause of Special Week’s Gluttony, and there might be some truth into it, but the biggest factor is that in Real Life Special Week had a very sturdy constitution that was its biggest strength in many cases but also made it prone to gaining weight fast, with said weight being suspected as one of the reasons for its losses.
Did the different mother influence this constitution? Probably not, but it sure made it easier to feed a newborn Special Week from a distance while the mother got used to it.
A while back I said that Daring Tact was the only descendant from Special Week even announced so far, but that’s actually not quite the case. If we assume the theory that Little Cocoon from Aoharu Cup is based on Toho Jackal, then that would make Little Cocoon another Special Week descendant.
Speaking of bloodlines, I’ve talked in the past about how Special Week is Maruzensky’s Grandson and I’ve been building up to why being also descended from Sunday Silence is a Big Deal. But something I haven’t talked about is that Special Week’s maternal line comes from Shiraoki.
Shiraoki is a mare born in 1946 from which a lot of notorious lines were born out of. Descendants in the game with Shiraoki blood include also Machikane Fukukitaru and Vodka.
There’s… another one also, sorta, kinda, maybe.
Anyone remember The Godawful Trailer I’ve mentioned a couple of times before? That trailer features four girls that were also showcased with other characters during the initial 2016 announcement and were then absent in any and all subsequent material.
If you’re wondering WHY they’re absent that’s actually a topic for another post I have planned, but for now let’s go back to talking about these.
Assuming the fan theories are right (and as usual there’s little reason for them not to be), the four characters are, from left to right and top to bottom: Buena Vista, Deep Impact, Orfevre, and King Kamehameha.
Buena Vista is another descendant from Special Week, and is notorious for also winning the Japan Cup, which makes it the first father-daughter pair to win the Japan Cup (Teio and Rudlf share the same accolade but that’s a father-son pair).
Finally, I said in the earlier post how Special Week went from being the introduction to the story’s climax, and I need you to understand just the extent of that statement.
This is a video of the last Arima Kinen, let’s break it down.
Normally what happens is what you see from around 2:37 to 3:21. Grass Wonder goes full on hitman and steals the victory in the last second.
After that the video shows the What If scenario where Special Week wins, but let me explain to you how that happens.
When you pick the race, you’re asked to select a girl from your trained roster, saying that Special Week will inherit that girl’s feelings to help her in the race.
The condition to win? For the girl you chose to have the 日本一ウマ娘 (Japan’s Number One Uma Musume) skill.
Where do you get that skill? With Team Sirius’ support card, you know, the one named after the main story’s team.
And what happens when you use it?
So Special Week starts running in a field with shooting stars…
…and if you have her first 3 star, it looks like the same field where she first sees the same stars that give her her racing outfit.
Then many of those stars converge into a single point, giving her a path forward…
RIGHT AS THE GAME’S MAIN THEME GIRLS LEGEND U KICKS IN.
AND THEN SPECIAL WEEK GETS HER OWN COOL TEXT ON SCREEN BEFORE WINNING.
The text says “日本の総大将” or “Japan’s Supreme Commander” (Nihon no Soudaishou). Which was the title given to Special Week by announcers after the Japan Cup (the race before this one).
Oh yeah, in case the whole idea of “Special Week’s memories with her friends pushed her forwards” wasn’t going hard enough as-is, how many stars are converging into the path forwards?
And how many people did Team Sirius have again?
YEAH!
Another cool detail is that, historically, Grass Wonder’s victory was so CLOSE that the results took a long time to tally up. In real life the ending was a photo finish where Grass Wonder won by 4 CENTIMETERS, a difference that was there because Special Week lowered his head a bit too much. So when you see the results after the race no matter which one you get… you actually don’t see them, the two first places are left blank with the difference indicator just saying “photo”.
I need you to understand how emotional this moment makes me every time. It isn’t just the fact that it’s HYPE AS ALL HELL, it’s not just how climactic it is for both game and franchise as a whole, or even the amazing way they integrated it mechanically and narratively by making memories with the rest of the team. It’s also just such a… potent moment, even within the game we’ve gone from McQueen’s last race to the most metal you can get without actually being metal.
The What If Scenario even gives you a free 3 Star Special Week that basically represents that hypothetical Special Week that Won Everything as it were, with a design that feels as if it takes cues from the rest of the golden generation.
And how did the anime treat this whole race?
Thank You first season of Uma Musume: Pretty Derby, Very Cool.