Zephyr deserves her own post, but this is just to highlight a fun detail.
Historical race records are important in Uma Musume. This sounds kinda obvious but what I mean is that one of the most important philosophies of the franchise is that everyone deserves to win. As such, by highlighting how everyone is the main character of their own story and making you invested in their journey, you get to celebrate their highs and cry for their lows with them.
Not to say that the franchise doesn’t have fun with this when it can. Silence Suzuka getting one last hurrah, Teio and Rudolph actually facing each other, Scarlet running in the Nihon Derby instead of the Oaks to run against Vodka, Special Week winning her retirement race… But this is a consequence of gameplay where obviously the player has to be able to win and alternate scenarios need to be present. But even in these cases, the objectives and the pace of the story is set by the real counterpart’s record.
The one I wanna highlight today is Yamanin Zephyr, her two last races, actually.
Historically, Zephyr won the Autumn Tenno Sho of 1993 with Sekitei Ryu O in second place. But then lost its last race in the 1993 Sprinter Stakes to Sakura Bakushin O. This loss against Bakushin is actually important for Bakushin’s story, since he lost the 1992 Sprinter S to Nishino Flower so the 1993 one was a comeback that continued into 1994 (where Biko Pegasus ended second, incidentally). But you can imagine how they might weave this into Zephyr’s story, this last second place telling her it’s time to call it a day.
Except… if you play through her campaign, it’s the opposite. First comes the Sprinter S and THEN comes the Autumn Tenno Sho, so Zephyr retires with her glory.
I’ll admit, when I read the real Zephyr’s story as I was playing the game (as I sometimes do to keep track of how things are adapted) I had to triple check that I wasn’t reading wrong or the game made this one exception.
I’ve played the game since… almost its launch and this made me second guess myself, but no, it’s the same it’s always been. The game didn’t change, real life did.
As mentioned, Zephyr’s last race was in 1993, and in that time, the Sprinter S happened around December, which would put it after the Autumn Tenno Sho around November, but starting from the year 2000 the Sprinter S was moved to around September or October, presumably to better group it together with other similar shorter distance races.
This is the schedule that Uma Musume uses in gameplay, and rather than being historic revisionism, it just so happens that by adapting Zephyr’s tale in the post 2000s world she was able to retire with one last victory instead.
While this is interesting by itself, there’s actually some other wild stuff related to this, there was a period from 1981 to 1989 where the Sprinter S was moved to Febraury or March and out of the currently-implemented characters, Bamboo Memory won the 1990 Sprinter S, meaning that the game avoided the bullet of an objective moved from March to October by one year.
And that’s not the only bullet avoided, before 1984 the aforementioned Autumn Tenno Sho was a 3200m race instead of a 2000m race, which puts it in a completely different category altogether (both IRL and in gameplay). Mr CB, who the game JUST implemented as of this writing was the 1984 winner. Again, another oddly specific bullet avoided by exactly one year.
But as the game gets more renown, and more historic horses get added to the material, there’s always the looming possibility that one of the many in those inconsistent times will pop up.
Sure, Zephyr got a happy ending from a reschedule, but if they ever implement Mejiro Titan (McQueen’s dad) suddenly there’s gonna be the question of that one Long Distance Autumn Tenno Sho.
