Once upon a time there was a witch in a forest that wondered how she could use her powers if she was always all alone. Picture books she read made her curious about the outside world and she wondered if she could use her powers to make people happy.
As night turned to day, she stepped out of her forest and into the outside world.
McQueen‘s second victory in a row in Spring Tenno Sho has raised the prestige of Team Sirius, meaning training has redoubled. And into this training joins a girl called Rice Shower, who felt like she wasn’t getting good results and joined by McQueen’s suggestion.
Regarding those results, at this point Rice mentions that she ended up 8th on the Satsuki Sho and her last race and incidentally, Rice Shower did end up 8th twice in a row in the Satsuki Sho and NHK Cup so it’s safe to assume that this is where the story starts. She does get praised because despite not being able to keep up with McQueen until the end, she WAS able to keep up right until the last 50 meters which is no mean feat.
Rice is actually shocked when the trainer suggests she try the next step in the Triple Crown and try for the Nihon Derby.
The next chapter actually opens with a short introduction to how Rice joined the team, where she’s shown stalking McQueen’s training before running off like a scared rabbit and declaring with tears in her eyes that she loves running and wants to win.
Back to the present, Rice feels like she’s not good enough for the Derby but she relents when everyone reiterates their support. And the first method of training is for Rice to try and keep up with McQueen. The rationale is that McQueen and Rice have similar running styles so if Rice is able to keep up with McQueen, the Nihon Derby should be no problem.
She takes it literally and this is the debut of Rice’s iconic “ついていく…ついていく…” in which she outright follows McQueen to her room.
Oh yeah, I’ve forgotten to mention it, but these chapters tend to have races through it where you pick a girl you’ve trained before in training mode (with bonuses being provided for a specific girl, incentivizing following along with the story) and try to win to continue, though “win” tends to be more “clear an objective” than “win the race”.
Case in point, Rice has to go through the Nihon Derby but regardless of results Bourbon wins by the time of the next section.
Despite this, the trainer reserves a small amusement park that Rice is still really excited about for a whole day hoping to cheer her up, and while riding the Ferris Wheel, Rice confesses to the trainer that being able to even get to second place in the Nihon Derby felt good, but she still wants to beat Bourbon.
While training, however, McQueen gets injured and has to give up on the next Takarazuka Kinen. And of course, more importantly for Rice, it means that she doesn’t have her training partner.
Her next race is the Kyoto Shinbun Hai, where she hopes to win against Bourbon. We see the race and we see Rice applying the strategy of stalking her prey in real time. And even though she ends up second, something more important happens: Bourbon has taken notice of her.
The next section opens up with a bunch of people asking Bourbon to sign things and then Gold Ship asks her to sign her omurice with some ketchup… a task that Bourbon agrees to without blinking an eye.
Bourbon gets called to Rudolf’s office, who just wants to have a word with her since she’s so close to achieving the Triple Crown. Bourbon then admits that she feels like it’s going to only get harder because whenever she tries the Triple Crown, Rice is there and getting better and better.
She also asks Rudolf how to deal with everyone asking for autographs and such, and Rudolf admits that even she doesn’t have an answer to that.
The time for the Kikuka Sho, the last triple crown race arrives and it becomes a stage solely centered on Rice and Bourbon. Rice has gotten so good at focusing on her target that she can tell Bourbon is starting to push herself.
Rice wins, a victory so thorough that even Bourbon congratulates her about it. But that’s not what the air surrounding the victory in the crowd conveys.
When the witch arrived to the outside world she was amazed by all the people in it, excited about how she could help, she told everyone that she could make their wishes come true… but people feared her for her magic.
She then thought that maybe people just needed a demonstration and used her magic to fly through the sky, but this only made people even more afraid.
Alone in the world, the witch then wondered why she even had magic to begin with…
The live show is a shit show, everyone is angry that Bourbon didn’t win, and not even Team Sirius’ efforts in cheering for Rice seem to make a dent in the crowd.
Obviously Rice ends up in a big slump afterwards that shows up even in her training, and this is when McQueen requests something out of the trainer:
She wants Rice to race against her in her third Spring Tenno Sho attempt. McQueen wants her teammate to not let the Kikuka Sho fiasco get to her and she’s willing to put her own historical record on the line for it.
Rice is reluctant to this, but then Mihono Bourbon joins her to train for a day. Bourbon is apalled at the Rice that she’s practicing against, who is so different from the Rice Shower hungry for victory that defeated her.
This makes her remember that moment near the start where she tearfully told the trainer how much she wanted to win. Resulting in Rice and Bourbon having a mock race that leaves both of them exhausted on the floor.
The day of the Spring Tenno Sho finally arrives. Rice uses everything she’s learned so far and snatches the last win away from McQueen.
The live show is thankfully less of a fiasco as more voices cheer for one hell of a race. McQueen also pushes Rice ahead so that she can finally move past the Kikuka Sho incident.
But late at night, when alone with her trainer, McQueen breaks down in tears, sad, angry, dissapointed that that third Spring Tenno Sho escaped her grasp.
One day a boy approached the witch and told her that he wanted to be able to fly like a bird. The witch happily obliged and more and more people started to approach her. But eventually, she exhausted herself so much that she couldn’t use magic.
The people that were afraid of her, realizing that all this time she didn’t mean to hurt anyone, started to come around about her.
McQueen announces her retirement and puts the role of ace onto Rice… but then the story jumps a whole year to the Kyoto Kinen, marking a period where Rice has been in a massive slump, with some voices complaining about how this is the girl that “stole” Bourbon and McQueen’s accolades. That said, Rice keeps pushing forward and those voices eventually concede that Rice is persistent and doesn’t give up.
Eventually the decision is made: Rice is going to challenge the Spring Tenno Sho again. In preparation for it the whole team is involved in her practices and even Bourbon joins in once again.
Before the race, Rice tells her trainer that if she wins, she wants to go to the same same amusement park they went to in the aftermath of the Nihon Derby.
Rice wins, and for the first time everyone is cheering for her, they’re chanting her name, they’re celebrating her victory with her. For once she didn’t “steal” something from someone, this is her rightful victory as all other should’ve been.
Rice’s story closes with Sasayaka na Inori (Silent/Whispered Prayer), a melancholic ballad about trying to find your way back when you lose sight of your goal.
Before the story closes, Rice asks for one more reward. Story books always inspired her, and now she wants to write a storybook that can do the same for others as it did for her.
One day the skies were trembling with a scary storm, and just when everyone was praying for the storm to go away, the Witch appeared and dispelled the storm, blue skies washing over everything.
“This is what my power was for” the witch declared as everyone welcomed her with open arms.
The real Rice Shower famously died in the 1995 Takarazuka Kinen, the race after that last Spring Tenno Sho. Rice Shower was actually set to retire after the Spring Tenno Sho but popular vote made him qualify for the Takarazuka Kinen.
It’s easy to forget how attached staff from Jockeys to Stablehands grow to every horse they care for. Normally deceased racehorse horseshoes are saved in the training center, but this wasn’t possible with Rice Shower because Koji Iizuka, Rice Shower’s manager at the training center refused to give them away and has commented (in admittedly joking tones) that they’re gonna have to bury him with them when he dies.
By the way, Biwa Hayahide was the winner of the Spring Tenno Sho between both of Rice’s attempts at the race.
I think the way this chapter and the last one play off makes it clear what makes the “Main Story” format different. For those that weren’t there, This and McQueen’s chapter were there on release, the next one wouldn’t come until around the first anniversary.
Back to the main point, notice how between this and last chapter you have a lot of both build up and narrative echoing. Between both chapters a lot of weight is put in the Spring Tenno Sho, Rice is a “dark” counterpart to McQueen (one was set for greatness by expectation, the other rose to greatness despite expectations), and the cast is slowly building up.
You can tell just from pace alone how much building up the roster for the team has done, and here’s a spoiler: That’s not stopping anytime soon.
Something that helps in this matter is that you HAVE to play McQueen’s chapter to get to Rice’s, so there’s no concern about someone being lost, the format allows the story to build up things instead of remaining strictly standalone.
Within my personal theoretical timeline of production, I do believe this chapter came to be way later than McQueen’s. This comes partially from the narrative having a more clear voice/identity but also from the 3D races being more ambitious than with McQueen. Even if it’s as simple as more screen effects, that’s more than McQueen’s had and you can tell there must’ve been some experience built up between each.
Rice and Bourbon made a brief cameo in the BNW OVAs by the way. So at the very least from around Season one of the anime.
McQueen makes a few mentions in the last stretch of the story about the “scenery” (景色, keshiki) she saw at the race thanks to Rice.
That word will be important in a future chapter, so it’s nice that they set that up here.
Watching season 2 and then playing through this story has the same overall effect as watching an anime and then reading the manga or light novel that it was all based on. In particular those cases where whole volumes are adapted into single chapters.
I wouldn’t say that Rice’s arc in season 2 was bad, in fact I’d still use adjectives like “powerful” and “effective” to describe it and it’s easily my favorite moment of that season (second being Turbo’s hijacked race, third being Teio’s last race), but it’s the small things adding up that make this arguably more a complement than a replacement.
Getting the last triple crown away from Bourbon feels more meaningful when you give the goal time to blossom. Getting the third Spring Tenno Sho away from McQueen is also more meaningful when Rice is a beloved teammate that has been trying to keep up with McQueen and finally did, and the fact that these moments that should be so meaningful between the girls get spoiled by the public perception of Rice as a villain is what makes the tragedy all the more palpable.
Despite that last point, I actually prefer what Rice became afterwards over this version. It’s a similar story to what happened with Silence Suzuka, where the character was clearly meant to be a tragic figure at the start.
Current Rice Shower is a gentle girl, she’s not innocent to the point of obliviousness but she’s someone that will willingly default to the more innocent perspective on matters still. The sort of girl that acts slightly ashamed at being a big eater blisfully unaware she’s competing with Special Week and Oguri Cap in that subject. The kind of girl that will thank the sun by name when it decides to come out after it rains.
And simply put, all those elements tend to be overshadowed when the focus lies more on the tragic heroine scorned by the world aspect of her story. It’s especially notable because if your gimmick is how you try not to cry about stuff you feel the slightest bit about, that’s actually gonna feel redundant when the upcoming chapter protagonist’s thing is that she cries about the mere idea of crying.
Again, it’s a bit like Suzuka, a character that clearly needs that early characterization but that needs to move on from it afterwards or else all the character development is wasted.
Also, Rice’s iconic “ヒールじゃない、ヒーローだ！” is more in character for latter Rice than it is for earlier Rice.
Speaking of Twin Turbo, Rice Shower was in the race that was shown in season 2 where Twin Turbo won and pushed Teio out of retiring. This race (the 1993 All-comers) is in the period that the story skips right after the Spring Tenno sho.
One fun detail here is that in the first chapter you can hear Sasayaka na Inori on an acoustic version as BGM, With McQueen the BGM was always the regular ones for the game so it really made it feel like this part of the story was even more personal to Rice.
Since last post I was able to pinpoint why Gold Ship’s voice in these chapters feels so subdued. Normally Gold Ship LOVES to give different affectations to her voice at a pace of like 5 per minute, which is something that you can notice if you put Gold Ship on the home screen and tap on her three times.
Yes I know how math works, that wasn’t a typo.
So hearing Gold Ship in these early chapters still have that denpa cadence to herself but also keep a singular voice makes her sound level and stable in a way that she usually isn’t.
Unlike with the game, you won’t have to wait one year for the next chapter.
Next time we’re exploring the W in BNW with Winning Ticket.