I keep writing about Yamanin Zephyr without focusing on her, huh…
Despite being a very contemporary parallel to the real world, the Uma Musume world isn’t without its share of unique cultural nuances, from how there’s lanes in the street for running horse girls, to how “pony-chan” is tantamount to calling a horse girl “little kitten”.
Tails in particular have always had a special mysticism attached to them.
There’s mentions in things like the game’s glossary on how girls take pride in them and constantly take care of them. Even as far back as Starting Gate, there’s interludes in english alluding to this fact. This line is actually quoted in ENDLESS DREAM, where lyrics say 夢と希望と尻尾にかけ (dreams, hopes, and tails).
While evidently a nod to how you shouldn’t touch a horse’s tail so lightly lest you die, here it’s spun into something very intimate for the girl, something that’s both a pride as a girl and a pride as a horse girl in particular.
Which brings us to the topic of today.
Yamanin Zephyr is many things, one of them is affectionate without concern for personal space, the kind that sees nothing wrong in public casual displays of what others would consider “too much”.
One such thing, as it’s revealed, is a “tail hug” (尻尾ハグ) which is described as what happens when a girl intertwines her tail with someone else. Be it with another girl’s tail or in a human’s leg due to the lack of tail.
Part of what adds to it, is the knowledge of how horses tails actually work. They’re not really as movable as say… a cat tail, they’re more akin to a dog’s tail but one with long and thick hair on it. Honestly, part of what makes Uma Musume so fun is how you see artist need to adapt to horse-specific cues instead of generic cat-like kemonomimi (human with anima traits like animal ears) stuff.
Which is to say that for a girl to entangle her tail willingly with someone it takes the sort of motion that’s not… discreet.
There’s a very sneaky element to this on the part of the team too. One of the conditions that Uma Musume exists under is that explicit displays of romance cannot be shown in order to protect the interests of the rightholders of the real horses. That’s a whole topic for another day, but in short, that’s why everything in the franchise is so… chaste.
And then you realize that nowhere does it say anything about fictional, context-specific displays of affection.
Now, why did I bring this up today?
Well, yesterday (as of writing) the yearly June Bride event started and one of the girls that got an alt is Nishino Flower, who says this:
And I can assure you
I’ve been acting and feeling perfectly normal
In the last 24 hours
Pinky swear.