I took the cropped cover from this guide.
As I’ve retaken the research for the (nominally) current batch of posts, I remembered a curiosity about it that I feel deserves expanding into its own thing.
So for those just catching up (welcome all, by the by), last year I started a series of posts going through every chapter of the main story. I was about to get into Winning Ticket‘s chapter but her chapter is so focused on the prestige of the Nihon Derby that I kept getting sidetracked by explaining why it was a big deal until I decided to just make a whole post about it.
That post still hasn’t come out, last I tackled the topic I ended up explaining every other Triple Crown instead. But we’ll get there.
As I checked my notes, however, there was another curiosity worth pointing out.
In Winning Ticket’s chapter, it’s explained that she was inspired to race in the Nihon Derby by a certain, really emotionally charged victory. The intro makes it clear it was Ines Fujin’s Nihon Derby victory. In short, Ines Fujin’s victory in the 57th Nihon Derby (in 1990) is touted by many as “the day horseracing changed”. Ines Fujin was the first horse since Kaburaya O in 1975 that won the Derby by using a escape strategy.
The race became truly legendary when, after crossing the finish line and continuing to run for a bit not aware the race had ended, Eiji Nakano found the crowd giving him a standing ovation and shouting “Nakano! Nakano!”.
It wasn’t just a horse race where bets are set and a single horse won, it was a spectacle that captivated people and prompted the whole crowd to cheer for the jockey.
Back to the game, this causes some very interesting contradictions. Sirius’ former trainer (the one the player takes over after) is in an interview regarding THAT race where he expresses regrets that he wasn’t able to push the girl he was training beyond second place… comments that would imply the former Sirius trainer trained Mejiro Ryan (who was second in that Nihon Derby), which would imply that Ryan was part of Team Sirius when she wasn’t.
Now, one funny detail is that IN THEORY Winning Ticket could’ve seen that race in elementary school and then get into the academy, where Ines Fujin is a high schooler so the time gap is consistent (Winning Ticket’s Nihon Derby run was in 1993, three years later).
This is the part where I reveal to you that both Winning Ticket and Ines Fujin are high schoolers (As a quick reminder, the academy has both middle and high school) so that theory is not valid.
No, Ines Fujin running the Nihon Derby and a race where things similar to what Ines Fujin did exist at the same time and it’s not the first time it’s happened. In fact, it’s a very common ocurrence and thanks to the 10th training scenario now I have a good way to explain it.
But first let’s briefly go back to the 4th training scenario instead.
The main NPC of the scenario, Light Hello AKA My Wife That I Miss Dearly Every Day, brings back an old practice known as the “Grand Live” where instead of the first three places being given center stage in the Winning Live, everyone gets a chance to shine, a practice from her Grandma’s time. This connection between grandma and idols as well as other things implies that Hello’s grandma is Haiseiko.
Then 10th scenario The Twinkle Legends releases.
It features three legendary horsegirls including Speed Symboli (who was mentioned in a different scenario), St. Lite (first ever Triple Crown Winner), and… Haiseiko.
Haiseiko is a legendary Uma Musume idol, and one of Smart Falcon’s biggest in-game inspirations. Small sidenote, I love that her design is clearly made to bring to mind Showa-era idols to really sell that idea.
But hopefully by now you can see what I mean by “Haiseiko Paradox”.
In Uma Musume Light Hello’s grandma who is inferred to be Haiseiko and had a notoriety on par with the real horse, AND Haiseiko the on-screen legendary horsegirl that Falko saw as a kid co-exist without stepping each others’ feet.
An Ines Fujin-esque Nihon Derby victory exists while Ines Fujin hasn’t gone through that yet, Vodka can be close to her human dad and also be close to the girl that represents her real life father, Symboli Rudolf is a young girl while also being part of the same generation of Mejiro McQueen’s inferred grandma, and so on.
This phenomenon not only works well, but it’s arguably a necessity.
The reason it works well is because it’s never a source of contradictions. The former Sirius trainer doesn’t go “I’m sad Mejiro Ryan didn’t win”, he just goes “I’m sad my girl didn’t win” which leaves the fact that everything points to it being Mejiro Ryan as a curiosity that gives context as to the implied things that happened. And this sort of compromise is necessary when you consider the timegaps Uma Musume is working with.
St. Lite’s addition into this scenario means the cast includes, in some way, horses that go back to literally 1938. How do you reconcile a horse born in 1938 existing without being an ancient woman and not imply that the Twinkle Series (the name for horse racing in the game) is a recent development? You don’t. St. Lite the girl is a very legendary racer and somewhere in the past there’s another unnamed girl from the 1930s that had similar accolades that will not overlap.
And really, within the context of the story there’s zero conflict or plot holes. The only questions arise when you know about the real life context, and at that point it feels more like bait to make you look up how things were outside the fiction.
I also wrote another thing about how canon works in the franchise (from my perspective) if you want some further reading.