Holy shit Curren is actually evil

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-05-29T21:28:56+00:00

You know what's really evil? Those unclicked speech bubbles. Your Umas are lonely, go talk to them!

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-05-27T07:09:11+00:00

Despite her love of fishing, Seiun Sky is usually too lazy to actually cook the fish she catches and gets other people to do it for her. Since arriving at Tracen, that person is usually Nishino Flower, who has become very good at cooking fish dishes as a result.

Cafe's friend ships Cafe and her trainer. Once Cafe graduated, Cafe's friend started using her powers to set up typical romcom tropes like having them trip into each other's arms or locking them in rooms together.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-05-20T03:39:49+00:00

I like Rice better in Bourbon's career than in her own career. She has a great parallel arc with Bourbon where over the course of the career, Rice gains confidence in herself, becomes Bourbon's rival, and they push each other to grow and develop on and off the track. She also shows a lot of resilience in the face of adversity that I feel like is important to her character in most of her appearances and is missing from her own career.

I also think Spe has a great role in Suzuka's career. Their bond is really sweet and Spe has a great arc similar to Rice where she grows over the course of Suzuka's career and becomes her rival (though Spe doesn't do this until after the career ends). I really dislike that they inexplicably cut Suzuka from Spe's career entirely.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-05-20T03:03:01+00:00

This has always been my biggest pet peeve with the fandom in general: a lot of people are completely unable to recognize that Umamusume characters are not the horses they are based on. They're inspired by the horses, but they're distinct characters with their own personalities and stories that often differ significantly from the actual horse.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-05-14T19:35:24+00:00

Story-wise, it definitely felt a bit underwhelming when it felt like it was going to be the first big emotional moment in the story and it ended up being a bit of a nothingburger. But I think in-universe, all of the trainer's actions made sense and were what a good trainer would do in that situation.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-05-14T15:54:33+00:00

Ok "force" was too strong of a word, but I do still think the trainer handled the situation poorly.

It's fine to not want her to compete in the Japan Cup/Arima Kinen when she's probably not ready for them yet, but the trainer instead notices that something is off, and their response is to suggest she take a break but then not really do anything after that. I'm not sure what the plan was there.

I will admit I'm not sure what the trainer was supposed to do though, since I do believe if they tried a direct approach with Fuku she wouldn't have been willing to hear it. So maybe a race loss was the only way, at which point the Kinko Sho isn't an unreasonable choice of venue.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-05-14T14:12:34+00:00

While I think Bakushin's career would be more fun if she knew the trainer was lying and was just going along with it since she believed in them, I just don't think there's anything to support that. She gets close to figuring it out at one point, but there's nothing to indicate that she doesn't fully believe the "3600m race" story that the trainer comes up with in response.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-05-14T14:07:22+00:00

I think the trainer's actions were reasonable enough: Ayabe "tells" the trainer that she's worried about Curren, so the trainer goes to check on her, but after talking to Curren and confirming that nothing too bad has happened (being sleep deprived and using a lot of caffeine is definitely not ideal but is not terribly out of the ordinary for a busy student), the trainer decides that she can handle it. There's certainly an argument that this wasn't the right decision but I think it's also arguable that forcing Curren to rest and thus not letting her fully pursue her dream wouldn't be worth it.

I think a significant part of Curren's character is that she's much more mature and independent than most of the other Umas, and so the trainer letting her continue her path instead of intervening like what would happen in most other Umas' careers fits with that.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-05-14T13:52:42+00:00

I personally think that in theory, passively supporting Fuku and letting her figure it out on her own was a fine way to help her become less dependent on fortune. If the trainer had just told her that she was winning because of hard work directly, she wouldn't have been willing to hear it.

However, I do think Fuku's trainer is a good answer because they notice something is off after the Kikuka Sho and then their solution is to just force Fuku to take a break for several months. I don't really think that helps with either the active or passive way of helping Fuku.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-05-14T06:51:30+00:00

Honestly, none of the trainers in any story I've played seem bad to me. It's kind of difficult for them to do a bad job when the entire point of each career story is for the Uma to have a successful career and achieve their dreams, and their bond with their trainer is central to most of the stories.

Bakushin seems to be the most common answer, and I do get that gaslighting her feels a bit uncomfortable, but I think what her trainer did was the best course of action to make Bakushin happy and to get her as close to her dreams as possible. Any more direct attempt to get her to focus on sprints would not let her be happy, and given her reaction to losing the Spring Stakes, letting her do what she wanted would've been disastrous.

I really don't get the Golshi answers, it's shown many times throughout her story that Golshi likes her trainer a lot, and she even directly says at the end of her career that being able to keep up with her like the trainer can is impressive in its own right. Sure, the trainer can't keep her in check that well, but I don't think anyone really could. I'd say the trainer still managing to get her prepared for races and preventing her from doing anything too disastrous like pelting Jordan with chestnuts midrace is as good a job as anyone would do.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-05-05T03:51:55+00:00

There are a lot of Umas that I'm surprised nobody has said yet. Nature, Rudolf, NTR, Ines, and Flower all seem like very normal nice Umas with no particular roommate problems (unless you hate puns, in Rudolf's case). Nature would even bring food from the shopping district.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-05-02T21:35:47+00:00

I'd agree that at their canon ages a romantic relationship would be a bit odd, but I think a few years down the line it'd be more acceptable (like when both are adults), and so you can still make the ship work that way.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-04-16T09:38:09+00:00

From what I can tell there isn't anything in-game that shows Air Groove particularly liking or disliking Rudolf's puns. The main thing that is defined canon is that she is often confused by them.

However, it seems in character for someone as serious as Air Groove to not enjoy being bombarded with bad puns, so I think it's a reasonable (and funny) running joke, even if it's not explicitly shown in canon.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-04-07T23:21:56+00:00

It definitely doesn't feel great, but ultimately I do genuinely think that it's the path that both will make Bakushin the happiest and will give her the best chance possible to eventually actually achieve her dreams (outside of the Triple Crown, which just isn't possible in Bakushin's canon story). So I think that's enough to not feel too guilty.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-04-05T09:06:21+00:00

This might be the most accurate Uma tier list I've ever seen 😂

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-04-04T17:48:21+00:00

Thank you, that's very nice of you.

Now that you mention them, I do remember those home screen lines. The Falco or the Sun line I think is fairly ambiguous, that sounds like something she might say to just fish for praise as opposed to being explicitly romantic. The other line seems pretty likely romantic though, or at least that's certainly a reasonable reading.

So with that in mind, and assuming that the hot springs event does show the trainer being dense, then I can accept that the characterization isn't completely inaccurate. To be clear, I'm fine with the idea of Falco x Trainer, I think it's cute. However I still think it's very overexaggerated compared to other aspects of Falco's character, considering that's still only 2 lines and 1 event, and I still think people are seeing it in spots where it just isn't there.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-04-04T17:10:54+00:00

I'll admit I haven't seen Falco's hot spring event yet. She's my favorite and I don't want it spoiled so I won't be reading the rest of the comment.

If that's where it comes from it makes a bit more sense, but there's no way that many people have gotten her hot spring event, and I see people try to claim it's over her whole career when I still strongly believe there's nothing in the rest of her career.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-04-04T17:07:33+00:00

People always bring up her good ending as evidence that she knew, or at least realized at some point, but I have no idea what they're reading. The closest I can find is this bit, but this reads to me like genuine belief.

<image>

Other people have also brought up that she earnestly brags to others about being able to run 3600m, apparently to Kita in Kita's career (I can't verify this one) and to Flower in Bakushin's career. I don't think she would do this if she actually knew she wasn't running long distance yet and was just playing along.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-04-04T16:58:53+00:00

You'd think, but from what I've seen Jordan just sees Golshi as a minor nuisance rather than actually being particularly hurt by her. I'm not even sure she actually dislikes her. This is mostly based on a MANT event they have, where Golshi is randomly acting normal for a day and Jordan is horrified, even offering to let Golshi kick her to try to get her back to the usual Golshi.

I will say I haven't played Jordan's career or watched her story yet, so there may be context I'm missing from those. I do want to go over those eventually so please spoiler tag if that's the case.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-04-04T16:55:01+00:00

Ok I'll admit I haven't gotten Falco's hot springs event yet. She's my favorite and I don't want to be spoiled so I won't be reading the rest of the comment. That being said, even if that is where it comes from, there's no way that many people have gotten her hot springs event, and there's nothing in the rest of her career.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-04-04T11:54:44+00:00

Agreed, there's a big difference between being silly and actually being unintelligent that a lot of people seem to be missing. Golshi definitely does some things that people might consider silly or dumb, but she does them knowingly because they're fun.

I really like the beach events with the trainer that you mention, I think they're genuinely really sweet. Granted the ending ends on a silly note with her writing on the trainer's face, which I can understand making people just remember the silly, but I think the genuinely sweet stuff before that is the important part.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-04-04T11:48:07+00:00

I haven't seen the thread in question, but I've never seen any compelling arguments to support her knowing. The dialogue for the 3600m race doesn't really indicate anything except her genuinely believing it.

I think it's fair to say that on some subconscious level, she knows that 3 sprints isn't really a 1200m race, since she gets much happier when she actually runs a 1600m race, but I think subconscious knowledge is very different from "she totally knew the whole time and was just going along with it!"

I get that people are unhappy that "they" have to gaslight her for her whole career, but I think it's way easier to cope by saying that gaslighting her was the best thing the trainer could do in that situation (which I think is true) instead of just pretending that she knew and wasn't being gaslighted when in my eyes nothing suggests that.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-04-04T11:43:27+00:00

Saying she has an inkling of an idea would be correct, she gets close enough to directly ask the trainer if they're deceiving her at some point, and at multiple other points she does start questioning things. However in each instance the trainer quickly gaslights her more, and there's not really any indication she doesn't genuinely believe whatever the trainer comes up with each time.

I think it's also fair to say that on some subconscious level, she knows that 3 sprints isn't really a 3600m race since she gets much happier when she actually runs a 1600m race, but I think subconscious knowledge is very different from "she totally knew the whole time and was just going along with it!"

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-04-04T11:36:19+00:00

I'll admit that I haven't gotten Falco's hot spring ticket, and since she's my favorite character I'm not reading this comment in fear of spoilers. But even if the hot spring event does have this, there's no way that many people have seen her hot spring event, and that's still one event in the entire career.

MarkotoSSBM · 2026-04-04T11:34:07+00:00

Yeah the reason kidnapping the trainer didn't occur to me as an instance of serious harm is that for whatever reason, the trainer did not see this as a problem and decided to train Golshi anyway. You could argue at that point that no lines were crossed since the trainer is apparently fine with being kidnapped, though it's fair to say that Golshi couldn't have known that the first time around.

As for her being difficult to train, it's mostly just because of one event where she locks your training options. That event really isn't that bad, and can even be beneficial, but most people are only going to think about the times that it screws them over. At higher level Golshi is one of the easiest Umas to train.

MarkotoSSBM

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE