There’s two main questions that immediately arise in this topic: “Why does Uma Musume need a “main story”?” and “Is this related to Sirius Symboli?”
To answer the latter: Yes and no. Team Sirius and Fuccboi (Female) Sirius Symboli are both named after a star.
Sirius (whose name means “glowing” or “scorcher”) is part of the Winter Triangle alongside Betelgeuse and Procyon and also the brightest star of the night sky, something clearly seen in how there’s at least 50 different names for it across many different cultures.
As far as names for a team go it’s… the most basic name one could come up with.
For those not aware: Teams in Uma Musume are named after stars, with the name carrying some meaning that’s more oblique but representative of the team itself. As an example for those that have only seen the anime, Team Spica (part of the Spring Triangle incidentally) is named after a binary star which is very fitting for a team whose dynamic revolves around everyone having a girlfriend rival.
So calling your team Sirius, the brightest star of the night is as basic as it gets. It’s like many things in the early steps of Uma Musume: It works, it’s fine, they got better at it though.
With that answered comes the first question, though: Why does Uma Musume need a “Main Story?” Don’t I spend thousands of words talking about a girl’s story?
It’s all about format. Uma Musume the game has three distinct story formats that it uses.
The first is the training story. These focus entirely on a single girl and act as the framing for the main gameplay loop of the game.
The second is events. These forego all the historical elements and efforts to adapt specific chapters of Japanese horseracing and focus entirely on having fun. It’s where you get Mihono Bourbon feeling useless because she can’t help on Halloween, or Mihono Bourbon helping others make Valentine Day’s chocolate, or Mihono Bourbon participating in the sports festival.
Someone in the staff really likes Mihono Bourbon.
Finally there’s the Main Story. It is not “main” from its relevance or canonicity, but rather because it’s where the game pivots into a more longform narrative, where even if the focus is on one girl it can cut off at any point they deem useful and other girls can cross into it with equal relevance.
Not only that, but it’s where a lot of story budget tends to go. Every line is voiced, the camera moves around more, the motions are clearly made more deliberately instead of using the same set of generic motions of regular gameplay. There’s also full on 3D cinematics in many of the chapters
If you want to get really specific, there’s also the girls’ “Bond Story” (the introductory chapters that you can see and unlock when the bond gauge goes up) but I consider those more of an extension of the Training mode but with voices since they’re directly tied to them narratively and don’t really do anything super fancy with camera and such.
Back to the main topic, in the next few days I’ll be detailing the chapters of Team Sirius’ story. They’re going to be different from how I usually focus on story, for one I won’t be going into too much detail about the real life counterpart of a girl (though I WILL talk about it still) and will mainly go through the story itself, highlighting any special moments, with all the assorted notes about each chapter by the end of it.
And how does that story start?
It opens up with the retirement race of Oguri Cap, Team Sirius’ long time Ace. Oguri’s trainer is the then-Main trainer of Team Sirius of whom the player is a protegee and “sub trainer” (assistant trainer basically). After Oguri retires, her trainer decides to do the same and hands the reins of the team to the player, who assigns Mejiro McQueen as the new Ace of the team.
Next time let’s talk about the scion of the illustruous house of Mejiro, Mejiro McQueen.