Oguri’s last race finishes with her victory in Arima Kinen. And just when Sirius’ Trainer thinks their biggest problem is the pressure to be in charge of the team, the team is about to disband from many people leaving.
As in “Everyone but McQueen” many.
Yeah turns out that not everyone wants to go from being trained by a veteran of 30 years to a complete rookie even if the veteran trusts the rookie with the team. Tazuna even outright admits that this is the first time she’s seen this happening.
Cut to McQueen, the dignified McQueen, scion of pretigious family McQueen shouting everywhere to try and gather new members. Highlights of this include referring to the team as the “At Home Team” and opening a scene as if trying to sell cheap carrots only to basically go “now that I have your attention…!”.
It doesn’t work.
The Trainer, blessed with more than one braincell, proposes instead that if McQueen wins a race that will bring attention to the team so they aim for the Spring Tenno Sho.
The trainer shows their smarts not only in this, however. The advice they give to McQueen shows in general someone that despite not having been on a lead role has a lot of experience behind them.
Mejiro Ryan is introduced into the story and we actually get some more perspective into McQueen, Ryan is especially glad to see how well McQueen gets with her trainer, a trainer she speaks a lot about. She also explains why McQueen has been extra neurotic lately.
The Mejiro household puts high expectations based on each girl’s aptitude, Ryan was expected to participate in the Triple Crown and McQueen was always deemed a Stayer (long distance runner), not only that but the Tenno Sho specifically is a race that holds a lot of meaning for the Mejiro house. Add to that the woes of Team Sirius being reduced to single digits and McQueen has been pushing herself extra hard lately concerning everyone.
Ryan does point out that the overworking might be more how McQueen deals with the anxiety rather than thinking it’ll fix everything magically.
Tazuna finds the trainer and explains to them that the grace period for the disbanding was extended to six months, which relieves a lot of the pressure about the team disbanding before the Tenno Sho. Sadly the news don’t reach McQueen right on time and she collapses from overworking.
The Tenno Sho finally arrives and Ryan is there running against McQueen. Funnily enough, this is one case where the live show is McQueen plus two mob girls (standing in for Mister Adams and Osumi Shadai) singing Next Frontier (Ryan ended up 4th).
If the intent was to also make sure the team got new members it worked. This is actually where I highlight something interesting. While you never see them on screen, Team Sirius has a consistent cast of offscreen secondary characters giving the impression that the team is composed of more than just the named cast. Sure, we never see “droopy-eyed girl” or “bob cut girl” or “girl with bangs”, but they’re always there with the same voice on the sidelines. They even sound as you’d expect, with “Droopy-eyed girl” (“Droopy-eyed” is Tareme, for those more familiar with that term) having a very laidback voice.
In the midst of everyone showering McQueen with attention, the next named character makes an appearance: Gold Ship makes an entrance sneaking behind McQueen asking her if she wants some cake while other girls ask her about other stuff.
I love that McQueen describes her as “An acquintance… or rather, someone that I tend to hang out with for some reason”.
After this they go to a private Mejiro island for some training camp, they even add the music that plays during summer in training mode.
The next objective mentioned is… the Kyoto Daishouten. Historically the next race is meant to be the Takarazuka Kinen, which Mejiro Ryan wins, it’s basically implied it happened, with references being made to it. Regardless of which race is next, McQueen’s star keeps rising, to the point that little kids in the street are recognizing her and cheering for her.
McQueen is then interviewed about the Autumn Tenno Sho and there’s a reason I said “mentioned” in the earlier paragraph, because now the focus is the Autumn Tenno Sho and with this one they actually stick.
Please remember that my Japanese is still very slow so the confusion I convey about how it keeps skipping races might be less for a native, but I feel it was worth mentioning nonetheless.
And if everything feels like it’s going TOO well for McQueen, you’d be right because Autumn Tenno Sho 1991 is the one where even though McQueen ended up in first place, she was disqualified for obstructing another racer. The scene is actually set up really well because McQueen is so focused on what she did wrong at Takarazuka Kinen that you can believe she just ignored everything else and had a slip up.
After the race reporters are pestering McQueen, who completely snaps the moment that one of them implies that the disqualification was the result of instructions from her trainer. McQueen becomes very defensive insisting that she’s the one at fault but her trianer insists she leaves thing be.
After calming down a bit, McQueen tells her trainer that she wants to next run in the Japan Cup and in what’s the best case of unintentional comedic timing in the game, the scene cuts right after the announcer talks about McQueen ending up 4th in said Japan Cup.
After McQueen leaves in frustration in the aftermath, Oguri Cap finally gets into the scene, getting updated on what’s been going on.
Sidenote, this Oguri is too smart. Not that she’s smart in general, but compared to regular Oguri there’s too much going on in her brain (read: anything). It’s like Season 2 Bourbon, not bad just… weird to see.
McQueen is in the dumps and everyone decides to show her that they’ve got her back even if she goes through a rough patch, at the same time that she wants to apologize for not living up to the expectations of the team’s Ace.
One month later, McQueen goes to Arima Kinen, and loses in second place but a clear character growth has happened and she’s not as affected by it, heading to the Spring Tenno Sho with a good attitude and winning for the second year in a row. And I really like the narrative echo happening here, where a noticeable character growth happens on the same race that the story starts in and then closes by showing a second victory in the same race that brought the team back from disbanding.
It sure would be a shame if that streak was broken for a third year…
McQueen’s story ends with her singing Hajimari no Signal (Starting Signal/Signal to start). A very cheery song about pushing ahead with your dreams, not giving up when you’re feeling down, and holding onto memories of what got you there to begin with. It’s also a neat song as a start to a story in a way.
The first interesting thing in relation to real life is that McQueen doesn’t start in her Classic year. McQueen famously took the last race of the Triple Crown, the Kikuka Sho, on 1990 (the same year as the Arima Kinen where Oguri retired). This means that her story starts in 1991. It’s safe to assume from the weight of her name that she still won that in this continuity. That this is why she was chosen as the “Ace” long before the team was almost disbanded.
This is for a reason, put a pin on this, we’ll eventually get to it.
For those curious, The other Triple Crown winners of 1990 were Hakutaisei for the Satsuki Sho and Ines Fujin‘s legendary victory/revenge in the Nihon Derby.
No really, whenever I get Ines Fujin, that’s that horse’s big career victory and highlight.
When Ryan talks about McQueen, she refers to her saying that she’s “like a little sister and important rival” which does play into my theory that the Mejiro girls are more like a noble house that shares the same last name instead of actual siblings (unless explicitly stated as such).
For those that have seen Season 2 of the anime, the absence of Teio will be jarring. Long story short, the rivalry between Mejiro McQueen and Toukai Teio is mainly centered on the 1992 Spring Tenno Sho, and while that is where the story ends, adding a last minute rivalry on what’s supposed to be the ending would’ve been… clunky to say the least.
Speaking of season 2, I have a pet theory that this story was planned or produced long before season 2 was made. My basis for that? The absence of Mejiro Palmer.
Palmer is a very prominent part of season 2, she’s seen in many races that McQueen ran and the 1991 Spring Tenno Sho actually had Mejiro Palmer, McQueen, and Ryan participating. Ryan is front and center before and during the race, but Palmer is nowhere to be seen.
The Uma Musume character page seems to be sorted by some kind of order of approval by default. King Halo was one of the last additions by the time of season 1 (based on how she was the last profile added before they revamped the whole page) and Palmer comes after King Halo in it. Mejiro Dober is the only other Mejiro within that range and she does eventually show up in the story too.
This is a big claim, however consider how old archives of the Uma Musume website cut off at King Halo, or how some websites that have been around for a while like UmaMusumeMatome have articles from back when “King Halo announced as the 60th character” was news-worthy (and the subsequent post-2018 drought of content resulting in April Fool’s articles like “the admin revealed as the 61st Uma Musume”).
Palmer ended up 13th in that Spring Tenno Sho by the way.
Speaking of earlier iterations, while McQueen is shockingly consistent with her latter portrayal (she’s more down to clown than her Starting Gate version but less than her current iteration basically), Gold Ship of all people is the one that feels different.
How? Well, this Gold Ship actually has more than one moment of “things are serious let’s tone things down a bit” that AREN’T the prelude to the punchline “and the Gold Ship started pounding mochi while everyone else is acting serious”.
If I had to describe her, this Gold Ship is the middle ground between current game Gold Ship and anime Gold Ship. Less chaotic and dangerous, but more girly than her anime counterpart. The performance of the character is also more overall subdued.
Ryan and Dober also feel consistent but that’s more due to how they don’t have as many in-depth moments so the more superficial elements come through no problem.
Also Nice Nature is there.
No extra comments, that’s just nice.
Next time, my heavy handed foreshadowing pays off as we focus on Rice Shower’s chapter.