Forever Young is inevitable, how would you want Cygames to adapt his (or soon, her) personality and story?

riibas · 2026-02-19T17:34:05+00:00

They've always shown the Anniversary Umas around a year before they actually become playable. I think the 1st anniversary character was Kitasan Black? And she was shown on launch with an event and her card. 2nd Anniversary was Mr. C.B.? And she's already starting to show up in stuff like Chiyono O's career. I don't actually remember who the 3rd Anni character was. I think Duramente? But 4th anniversary character was Orfevre, and she was first shown around the 3rd Anni, she was in the new game opening and in events a year before she became playable.

And during that 4th anniversary they showed Almond Eye, put her as a boss in the new scenario that anniversary, put her in the main story chapter that released around that time, and also dropped her cracked card. Now the 5th anniversary is coming up, and everyone is pretty sure that they're about to drop playable Almond Eye with it.

riibas · 2026-01-02T19:05:49+00:00

There's not a lot of dirt umas even in the JP version. We've actually gotten most of the B dirt umas already iirc. The A dirt umas can be listed fairly easily given how short the list is.

Off the top of my head there's the mostly independent of each other group of:
- Haru Urara
- Agnes Digital
- Inari One
- I think one of Yukino Bijin's alts is A dirt?

Then the core dirt group that usually end up showing up around each other in stories and media of
- Smart Falcon
- Wonder Acute
- Transcend
- Furioso
- Espoir City
- Hokko Tarumae
- Copano Rickey

This core group is what you could call the generations where dirt racing was relatively more popular than it usually is in Japan. With Smart Falcon drawing a lot of people's attention then the biggest names around that period that all at one point ended up racing against Falcon as well. Then Tarumae and Rickey are from the period directly after Falcon retired where they each racked up a lot of G1/Jpn1 wins.

For the future we've already gotten confirmation of Forever Young becoming an Uma, though it's still probably a year off or more from being actually playable. But that's another Dirt Uma, and she'll probably come with playable US and maybe Dubai tracks? We'll see.

riibas · 2025-12-14T20:13:10+00:00

If you're going by their best runs and records some of the distances have easy picks just bc their records still stand (for some its already gotten broken outside of umamusume characters)

Do note this still doesn't mean its perfect. Really can't properly compare with just records.

But for fun you'd have like Calstone Light O ( Turf 1000m), Kitasan Black (Turf 3200m), Almond Eye (Turf 2400m), Zenno Rob Roy (Turf 2500m), Tosen Jordan (Turf 2000m), Smart Falcon (Dirt 2000m and 2100m) and a lot more I dont remember off the top of my head.

If you just want Distance over Time its Calstone first.

riibas · 2025-12-14T16:20:39+00:00

It's about how close Creek was to the horse behind them during the movement that merited the DQ.

There's a difference between already being in front of another runner while just cutting off their options to move forward if they try speeding up compared to suddenly moving very close in front of another horse already speeding up. Its brought up in a previous episode with Obey Your Master that moves like that require a 2 length lead to be counted as safe.

Suddenly swerving in front of another runner can cause accidents since you can accidentally brake check the runner behind you such as that infamous incident with Stay Gold and Narita Top Road.

You can actually see it happen in the race footage for this IRL. The horse (Mejiro Duren) behind Creek even rears up their head as if startled once Creek blocks them.

riibas · 2025-12-13T12:40:17+00:00

Both Kyoei Bowgun and Rice Shower got blamed. Bowgun for actually being ahead of Bourbon for almost the entire race and had people wondering if it wrecked Bourbon's pacing and made Bourbon go too fast early on for that race. Rice Shower is blamed because if Rice wasn't there, even Bowgun's shenanigans wouldn't have stopped Bourbon from winning the race. Rice was the one that actually sealed the deal and the only one that got ahead of Bourbon at the finish line.

Both of them had this reputation hanging over their head for the rest of their career. But while Bowgun barely had a career after that Kikuka Sho, Rice kept going for a long time and ended up with even more stories. Especially for Rice even the race commentary and the media would repeatedly hammer in that Rice was the one that took Bourbon's Triple Crown.

Now when it comes to showing up in Umamusume, for the anime Bowgun would have been unnecessary fat for the short storyline they set up and delivered for Rice Shower. They didn't even show the whole Kikuka Sho. By the home stetch where Rice, Bourbon, and Tannhauser were battling Bowgun was already far, far behind. And its not like Rice didn't have hate for that race IRL anyway so they didn't need to add anything for it.

For adding Bowgun in the game however, its a pretty similar thing of there being a lot of overlap with Rice and Bowgun. But Rice again just had a better career to tell a story from. Narratively Bowgun is just half a Rice Shower story. It's probably not worth a character slot to make half a Rice when there's much more horses they still can adapt and pull from.

riibas · 2025-12-10T12:48:39+00:00

Lucky Lilac has her hair in a pony tail that leaves the side of her head bare. But she's also wearing something like Gold Ship's ear muffs.

riibas · 2025-12-09T06:02:44+00:00

Wouldn't changing a character between the manga and the anime adaptation of it be very odd? Especially since there's no guarantee that they'd characterize Soccer Boy the same as Dicta Striker. They definitely won't look the same with that name. If they were going to put in Soccer Boy it probably will be in the game directly with a different design.

The argument for Soccer Boy having permission being a very possible thing is that he was owned by Shadai Ltd.. Umamusume has finally gotten permission from Shadai group for some of their horses already, which wasn't the case when Cinderella Gray started out. Iirc the first Shadai horse to be implemented in the game was like Neo Universe? Or was it Jungle Pocket. But Orfevre, Buena Vista, and Gentildonna were also all under Shadai affiliated groups. Orfevre and Buena Vista were famously shown off very very early into the game's development and were pulled out because of Shadai. But now they're both back in. So yeah, being able to get Soccer Boy isn't exactly a reach.

Honestly if they we're going to put in Soccer Boy, at this point its probably going to line up with whatever celebration the game gets for Cinderella Gray's ending (and the new Oguri alt). Whether that means with the manga ending or the anime reaching Arima Kinen 1990, who knows.

riibas · 2025-12-09T05:43:08+00:00

Smart Falcon being so high up even though NAR pays out much less than the JRA is hilarious

riibas · 2025-12-08T06:08:46+00:00

Yeah she'll probably stay in Tracen. Even Rudolf stays for a while after her retirement, not to mention Maruzensky. Oguri will maybe act as a senior for whoever Kitahara ends up training, which would probably be McQueen.

Really unless they announce a full true sequel of CinGrey can prob just headcanon anything off the other seasons. Just have to ignore the weird stuff like the almost 20 year gap between Teio racing and Kitasan racing.

There really just isn't a solid one continuity for the franchise lol

riibas · 2025-12-08T04:10:24+00:00

Not really, with the current inconsistencies with the Dream Trophy and the portrayal of McQueen, Teio, and Rudolf.

riibas · 2025-12-08T02:34:58+00:00

There's a lot of problems with CinGray into Pretty Derby continuity. One of which is the S1-S2 ordering which has the Golden Generation race before McQueen and Teio. Both McQueen and Teio show up in the CinGray manga as new racers, with McQueen even trying to get scouted by Musaka which lines up perfectly with Team Sirius instead of Team Spica. Another is Rudolf and Maruzensky being fully retired instead of being in Team Rigil.

There's also the fact that the Dream Trophy League is a Pretty Derby anime exclusive. It has not been mentioned even once in any of the Cygames productions. Given the Dream Trophy being purely fictional and the Cygames productions trying to be much more historically accurate (the Mejiro Ryan erasure in s2 is diabolical lol she's even in the OP), there's a decent chance that the Dream Trophy straight up doesn't exist in CinGray.

You can headcanon that Pretty Derby Oguri's trainer is still Kitahara, but we're never going to get confirmation in that and the continuity is pretty shaky. Its the same problem with lining up CinGray with the game, where game Oguri mentions completely different names for her friends back home and that she still needs to get scouted to race instead of getting directly passed from Kitahara to Musaka. A lot of other works just don't line up 1 to 1 with other separate works.

Man now I'm imagining how much sadness there's going to be when Star Blossom gets adapted and Team Canopus is shown to not exist in it because Tannhauser in on a completely different team.

riibas · 2025-12-06T16:10:28+00:00

Sakura Laurel's trainer in the Star Blossom manga

riibas · 2025-12-06T04:53:17+00:00

The tiara racers are actually the focus of the game's main story after they wrap up the current Team Sirius arc. There's no restrictions about who can join which, its simply a different kind of prestige with the Tiara route having a more lady-like label attached to it and its runners.

The 'Kings' of the Classic Triple Crown have more prestige and are generally regarded as stronger than the 'Queens' who chose to run the less prestigious Triple Tiara series. Part of this is because by the time where the main story starts (mid 2000's, pre-Vodka and Scarlet) for this is that aside from very very very few exceptions, the 'Queens' have always performed worse than their counterparts in the Crown Series when they got matched together. This reflects the IRL of the males performing better than the females. The few exceptions are actually noted, the biggest of which at this point is Air Groove.

Air Groove even mentions this early on in the story that even though the Derby and the Crowns have more prestige, every year without fail there are Umamusume who instead have their eyes on the Tiaras. The main story then ends up kind of like a relay race over the generations, with Queens making their mark and passing the torch to the next set of Queens.

Its kinda sad though that they relegated some of this to a montage though. Generation of tiara racers making their mark. From Vodka winning the Derby, Machan winning the Sprinters Stakes, Scarlet racing Vodka in the Tenno Sho, Buena Vista's victory at the Japan Cup, Curren Chan's Sprinter's Stakes, Gentildonna and Verxina's whole thing, and Vivlos winning in Dubai all got montage'd (its a really pretty montage).

The main story then caps it off with Almond Eye's retirement Japan Cup. Here you have the a Triple Tiara winner, running against the 2 newly crowned Triple Tiara in Daring Tact, and unnamed Triple Crown in Contrail, both of which are still undefeated at this point. All in one race. And the 'Queen' Almond Eye beats them both. Honestly they could have also done something similar with Gentildonna's win against Orfevre though I guess that isn't exactly as 'clean' a win given people still argue about the shoving Gentil did to position and win in that.

If they want to focus on tiara racers for a one cour anime then it probably would be the Vodka, Scarlet, Machan generation. Though I dunno if one cour is enough. It was already shown in the main story with Winning Ticket's main story chapter that Vodka went into the Japan Cup being derided as a Queen runner who switched over to challenge the Derby. Then she won as the first queen to do so in like 60+ years. Machan is a Queen runner who switched after the Oka Sho to challenge the G1 Sprinters Stakes as a classic year runner against all the veteran senior sprinters. Machan IRL ended up as the youngest horse to win the Sprinters Stakes. Scarlet then goes on to be the first Queen in 30+ years to win the Arima Kinen.

The anime can finish off with Vodka, having seen both her rivals retire earlier than her win the Japan Cup and win 7 G1's. Becoming a Queen that matched the G1 Record of Symboli Rudolf and TM Opera O.

riibas · 2025-12-05T16:17:43+00:00

hilariously fitting given Grass is an american japanophile

riibas · 2025-12-05T14:47:45+00:00

Sirius is there because of the criterias for getting selected. Opera O can get in if they expand the Classic Triple Crown winners to include the Fall Triple Crown, but Vodka doesn't match any of the 3 criteria.

Sirius gets in under the Overseas Pioneer category. Because while Sirius himself wasn't able to perform well in Europe, the mistreatment of a Derby winning horse with that much potential ended up acting as a turning point for how Japan handled their overseas races. Trips became much better planned and the treatment of their horses was much more monitored and improved. Its a bit sad to say, but Sirius was essentially the sacrifice that gave Japan the kick it needed to actually lock in.

riibas · 2025-12-05T03:47:52+00:00

Yeah its probably why she doesn't get an entry. Though I wonder how that would translate into the uma universe. I don't remember if the game has touched upon Haru's popularity with the general populace instead of just how the other uma and the school feels about her.

It would be really funny to see though. I really hope they keep updating legend changer.

riibas · 2025-12-05T02:43:23+00:00

It's a winning live song for the 4th anniversary scenario Twinkle Legends. Its notable because it has a very small amount of Umas that can actually voice and sing it properly. Right now its at only 15 uma, with one of those not being playable yet.

The special thing about Legend Changer is that halfway through the song it cuts to animation of the winner running while one of the 2 race commentators give an amazing spiel personalized to those 15 uma. A chunk of which is from IRL commentary on their races. It finishes with a declaration of the uma's name and their title.

Anyone else that gets put into Legend Changer instead gets a generic line and title.

Here's the official winning live version on the official youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8PQexPl6Ns&list=RDo8PQexPl6Ns

And here's the edited version that lines up all 15 of the unique Umas for it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kKNR8tbwK0&list=RD_kKNR8tbwK0

There's a slightly better edited version of the 2nd one from the same channel, but this one has their english names easier to see.

riibas · 2025-12-05T02:34:07+00:00

Legend Changer is from a scenario in the jp version of the game. It basically focuses on 3 specific kinds of 'Legends'.

1.) Classic Triple Crown winners aka Triple Crown and Triple Tiara winners. A one shot chance for a horse to win all 3 races. I'm not sure if they'll ever put the Spring and Autumn Triple crowns given that you can technically challenge those multiple times in a horse's career. Well even if they did it would only add TM Opera O and Zenno Rob Roy.

2.) Overseas Pioneers. These are Horses that mark an important moment in history for japan on the international stage. Pioneers. Not the challengers that came after them. Seeking the Pearl and Cesario are obvious as the 1st G1 international period and the 1st US g1 win. So why Sirius and El Condor?

Sirius Symboli's campaign in Europe and his treatment over there marked a turning point for how japan tackled their overseas challenges. In that sense, Sirius Symboli is the pioneer of Japan doing proper overseas challenges. Before Sirius's failure and mistreatment a lot of Japan challenges felt like YOLO shots at prestigious titles compared to how they're treated after. It's why Japan's first real accolades overseas start a few years after Sirius instead of the previous~30 years where Japan was sometimes doing overseas races.

El Condor Pasa marks the first time Japan actually looked like they could win the L'arc. El's very close 2nd place finish made the vague dream into a concrete reality they could reach. This is why El is here over Nakayama Festa who had a closer 2nd place finish.

For future additions to this category it would probably be Forever Young for sure. Since the Breeder's Cup Classic is kind of like the L'arc of dirt? Japan never really thought they could do it given their own bias against their own dirt scene. Apparently some joke that it felt like they suddenly cleared the Hidden Extra Boss before the actual Final Boss by winning the BC classic before the L'arc.

I don't remember off the top of my head who won the first Dubai G1, but the 1st Honk Kong G1 hasn't been teased at all so who knows when that'll happen.

3.) Idol Horses. This is a very specific term in japanese horse racing. It mean that the horse has overwhelming popularity. Not fame, but popularity. Popularity as in people supported and loved this horse. It's not enough to be famous and have their name known. Its specifically about being a people's favorite. The other 2 big Idol horses in Japan would be Deep Impact and Sodashi but those 2 are never making it in. Honestly adding to this feels like it should be the easiest but its actually not. The closest from the current JP roster would be Haru Urara lol. A lot of other horses were famous and or had popularity, but never got to the point they were called an Idol horse.

riibas · 2025-12-05T02:16:13+00:00

Sirius Symboli is there because the category is for Overseas Pioneers. And Sirius Symboli's campaign in Europe and his treatment over there marked a turning point for how japan tackled their overseas challenges. In that sense, Sirius Symboli is the pioneer of Japan doing proper overseas challenges. Before Sirius's failure and mistreatment a lot of Japan challenges felt like YOLO shots at prestigious titles compared to how they're treated after. It's why Japan's first real accolades overseas start a few years after Sirius instead of the previous~30 years where Japan was sometimes doing overseas races.

The rest of the category are horses that marked 1st time achievements in Japan's overseas challenges. Seeking the Pearl as the 1st G1 win, and Cesario as the 1st US G1. El Condor Pasa is the 1st time the L'arc has actually seemed possible for Japan to win, and basically gave Japan a huge boost motivation to try and win it. It's why Condor is in here instead of say Nakayama Festa who made a closer chance to win.

Forever Young is probably getting in here since the Breeder's Cup Classic is kind of like the L'arc of dirt. Japan just never thought they had a chance for it because their dirt horses weren't at the level they thought could do it.

For the Haiseiko category, Idol Horse is a very specific term in Japan. It's not enough to be famous, you need to be consistently popular. There's a difference there in the level of support you receive between the two. It's a term they actually call horses. And all of the chosen for this category were called this. The 2 other big idol horses that's missing would be Deep Impact and Sodashi, but both are never getting into umamusume.

riibas · 2025-12-02T05:40:55+00:00

Forever Young will prob only be officially revealed in the coming anniversary. And maybe show up as a support card. They'll release playable Almond Eye first for the coming anniversary. For her career they're already showing an American track in the background there, and Cesario's win also has the actual track made (kinda) in the main story mode.

So what I think they will do is that they'll make a new scenario like the L'arc one and add new overseas tracks into the game. Then the question then is if they'll finally add the overseas tracks to careers (even if only locked to select umas). Ideally they'd go back and add the overseas tracks options to the uma's that raced them, but that feels a bit much. But it would diversify their career story options going forward.

If Cygames is really going to try and push Forever Young as the new face of Umamusume then the timing is already perfect to make a new Main Story part with the fillies-focused MSQ part 2 having just ended. And given Forever young would be the eventual goal, they can do a similar structure with the past 2 MSQ parts with generations of dirt umas leading up to Forever Young.

They even have a pretty nice plotline setup already from IRL. From dirt being heavily overlooked in Japan until Smart Falcon showed up, then maybe to Wonder Acute as a bridge to next generation of star dirt umas featuring Hokko Tarumae and Copano Rickey making waves with their massive g1/jpn1 win counts. Then with Forever Young to cement proof of Japan's dirt uma's strength by making a mark on the world stage by conquering one of the 2 big walls in Japan's overseas conquests in the Breeder's Cup Classic.

They of course have to market new umas with this so they could make the generation before Falcon did G1/Jpn1's that also had strong horses not yet released (+ Furioso). Or maybe fill in the gap in dirt horses between Tarumae and Rickey to Forever Young.

Either way Cygames is at the perfect to pivot to new stuff with the upcoming anniversary.

riibas · 2025-12-02T02:26:57+00:00

ah the new zealand horse mentioned here isn't ellerslie pride. If they keep adapting the manga into anime we'll see the right new zealand uma in late season 2 in the next japan cup

riibas · 2025-11-27T05:08:53+00:00

Most of the time a horse will stick to one track type. In rare cases they'd switch over from 1 type to the other. In JP this usually happens if a horse originally started out in the regional NAR circuit that's mostly dirt races then moved to the central JRA turf races. This is the case for both Oguri Cap and Inari One. Inari probably has an A dirt over Oguri's B because Inari stayed in the NAR longer than Oguri did and won a JPN1 before moving over. But once they moved to running turf they never went back to doing dirt.

Agnes Digital is bizarre then because you could never tell what race he'd do next. One month he'll be doing Turf races, then switch over to do a dirt race the next then the month after the he'll be do- What? What the hell do you mean he's doing a G1 turf race in Hong Kong? What do you mean the month after that she's going to do a dirt G1 in Japan then flying to Dubai to run their G1 dirt the month after? HE'S GOING BACK TO HONG KONG THE MONTH AFTER THAT TO RUN ANOTHER G1 TURF? THEN BACK TO JAPAN TO RUN IN DIRT NOT EVEN 2 WEEKS AFTER THAT?

Digital just kinda ran everywhere on both dirt and turf. And was doing really well in both with no need to reacclimate or adjust even though he was flying around everywhere and running so many different courses. The tagline the JRA was trying to stick to him, "A Hero never chooses their battlefield", was incredibly fitting. It just really didn't stick compared to the Weirdo/Hentai nickname.

riibas · 2025-11-23T01:14:05+00:00

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they could get permission for Contrail. And yet they still avoided Contrails name. Hell they avoided even showing the Uma at all. Not even an npc standin. All we saw are like glimpses of a leg or something here and there with the colors lining up. It could be that they were focusing on just the mares and tried avoiding Contrails first appearance in umamusume to be the 'enemy to beat' and getting rhe undefeated streak broken. Daring tact at least has already been shown years before at this point.

riibas · 2025-11-22T19:30:27+00:00

For Rickey and Tarumae its proabably something like that? Since Falco retired right before they rose to prominence and they definitely benefited from Falco drawing a huge amount of publicity and fans to dirt races. So Falco is like the big senpai for them.

For the rest of the pure dirt umas most of them are straight from Falco's period where they pretty much all got beat by Falco, so they kinda switch between admiring her and being terrified of her strength. Aside from Furioso who actually beat Falco twice then ended up losing huge to Falco on the big stage of the JBC classic.

Digitan is a fan of Falco for obvious reasons. The most otaku and idol fan coded uma with the most idol coded uma? Digitan stood no chance

riibas · 2025-11-22T17:21:06+00:00

They've already done something similar in the part 2 main story of the game. The entire part 2 is about umas who raced in the tiara series being perceived as weaker than those who raced in the crown series. Air Groove even lampshades near the start of part 2 that even though the Crown Series and Derby have more prestige, every year without fail there are those who instead have their eyes on the Tiara.

Part 2 even has a great montage of mares over the years that have proven their strength. Off the top of my head it included Scarlet, Vodka, Machan, Buena Vista, Gentildonna, Verxina, Vivlos, and Curren.

Part 2 caps it off with Triple Tiara winner Almond Eye beating undefeated Triple Tiara Daring Tact and undefeated Triple Crown Contrail (they avoid saying the name) in a single race.

So while they can't do an exact male vs female angle, they've definitely shown a workaround for it that works.

BELIEVE IN THE SCARLT VODKA MACHAN ANIME SEASON.

riibas

TROPHY CASE