Just For Fun / Uma Musume

Oguri Cap: so tell me, kitty, you really think they will make me an anime girl too?! Eris: cert-nyan-ly!

Symboli Rudolf: Trainer never told you what happened to your father.
Tokai Teio: He told me enough! He told me he won the derby!
Rudolf: No Teio, I am your father. ^note in Real Life, Symboli Rudolf was indeed the father of Tokai Teio.
Teio: NOOOOOOO

Aside from the above, there's also Agnes Tachyon (Daiwa Scarlet's father), King Halo (Kawakami Princess' father), Mejiro Ryan (Mejiro Dober and Mejiro Bright's father), Kin'iro Ryoutei^note IRL name: Stay Gold (father to Gold Ship and Nakayama Festa^note and Orfevre, who were cut from the finished anime and game), and Special Week (father to Cesario)^note and Buena Vista, who had been cut. New addition Tsurumaru Tsuyoshi is also the son of Symboli Rudolf. There's also a cross-title father-daughter relations in Akitsu Teio ^note IRL name: Nippo Teio and Haru Urara.

...and then there are also the magnificent grandparents: Mejiro McQueen to Gold Ship, Special Week to Daring Tact, and Sakura Bakushin O to Kitasan Black.

Special mention must be made for Maruzensky, who as an influential sire has sons^note Sakura Chiyono O and Leo Natal (IRL name: Leo Durban), grandsons^note Special Week, Winning Ticket, Mejiro Bright, and Rice Shower, a great-granddaughter^note Curren Chan and Cesario; would've been three with Buena Vista had she not been cut, and even a great-great-granddaughter^note Daring Tact, which incidentally came from Special Week's line thus making Special Week a grandfather himself in canon. Maruzensky's line to Special Week is also the longest^note only truly missing Epiphaneia, whose parents are Symboli Kris S and Cesario; Spe's birth mother (IRL name: Campaign Girl) has a cameo appearance in anime season 1 pedigree chain currently represented by actual characters in Umamusume.

Another special mention goes to Tony Bianca (IRL name: Tony Bin) from the Cinderella Gray manga, who is also fairly well-represented in the Umamusume world being the father of Air Groove and Winning Ticket as well as maternal grandfather of Admire Vega.

Haru Urara actually has an interesting family tree. Maruzensky's father Nijinsky also sired Haru Urara's mother. From her fatherly side, she counts Partholon (Symboli Rudolf's father) as an ancestor. Her father Nippo Teio was a succesful racer in the era of the Heisei Big Three^note Super Creek, Inari One, and Oguri Cap; Tamamo Cross also raced in this era but his career was pretty short, spanning just shy of two years. Truly she was destined for greatness...

Even shipping in this game is influenced by IRL horse relationship! A recent support card depicted Seiun Sky and Nishino Flower together in a cute scene. IRL, they actually had a child^note Nishino Mirai together. This gets a bit gnarly when one takes a look at Nishino Flower's other mates...^note she also foaled three children from Agnes Tachyon and two from Taiki Shuttle.

Umamusume is:

• A memorial to a dead horse
  • ...who died unbeaten
• A badass retirement facility for Yutaka Take, a famous Japanese jockey
  • ...who rode all the lead girls of an anime. For real.
• A potential Cash-Cow Franchise
  • ...or is that cash horse?

It is also...

• Love Live! meets Free! meets My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

In the Umamusume world:

• Horsegirls in general is well-represented in show business, especially in the US.
  • There is a recent blockbuster movie called Silver, The Lone Ranger. The main characters, Silver Reid and her pinto accomplice Fellah, were known by older generations through their radio and TV exploits.
  • Trigger was a strikingly beautiful movie star.
  • ... not to mention the actual Wild West cow-horsegirls, who could shoot very well while they ran. Young American horsegirls would grow up listening to the stories of the "Wonder Horsegirls", the generation of horsegirls that made it big in the cowboy film industry.
  • Ex- cow-horsegirl Bamboo Harvester became a hit with kids on television, best known by her stage name Eddie.
  • Midori No Makibao was about a short, stout little horsegirl trying to succeed in the Twinkle Series. Fuji Kiseki was approached to play one of the major characters, but declined the role. ^note IRL, the titular horse is said to have been based on Tamamo Cross, who was rather small compared to his contemporaries Super Creek, Inari One, and Oguri Cap. Another major character, Cascade, was based on Fuji Kiseki mixed with traits from Symboli Rudolf.
  • On a more tragic media note, the movie Ruffian tells the true story of a prominent American horse girl who did die after breaking her leg at a race. And nearly everyone remembered that movie when Suzuka broke down.
  • One notable attempt to bring horsegirls into media spotlight was the Dream Valley series of horsegirl dolls, which even launched with their own tie-in shows about friendship, love, and occasionally beating back the forces of darkness. As of the latest generation in-universe, there's a bit of Magical Girl inspired elements mixed in.
  • Modern depiction of horsegirls in the media are beginning to cover more serious themes. Recently the series Bojack Horsegirl was widely praised for its depiction of the struggle of the titular character, a retired actress trying to overcome depression and addiction.
• Centaurs were the Amazons of the greek horsegirl world: a mythical tribe of horsewomen known to dwell in Magnesia and Cyprus, renowned for their strength and speed. After stories of the Centauromachy spread, "centaur" ended up gaining the same connotations as "barbarian" among modern horsegirls.
• There was a powerful and mysterious conqueror in Asia, known only as Genghis-chan, who led her throng of horse girls to control half the continent for a time. Ghengis ended up having two children, which history named as the Two White Horsegirls for their luster, who went through a minor Rebellious Princess phase.
  • While that was 800 years ago, Mongolia, where she originally came from, still has a considerable horse girl population and culture, significantly different from that of Europe, America, or Japan. It has its own aesthetic that can be uncanny for others. A Mongolian horse girl can get a fiddle made out of her own tail hairs and happily play it. Their big competiton festival, called Naadam, includes archery and wrestling as well as racing; competitors are Mongolian horse girls. The Mongol Derby is literally 1000 km (600 miles) long; despite its name, it is not age-limited and attracts a lot of international competitors for a unique and dangerous experience.
  • When the Mongol horsegirl army attempted to invade Japan, their fleet was destroyed by a great storm. Before that point, the custom of sacred dancing before the gods had been reserved for human priestesses, but the horsegirls of the Japanese army petitioned the Emperor for the right to perform a sacred dance to celebrate their victory and thank the gods for sending the storm. To this day, performing a victory dance - now accompanied, of course, by musical numbers - is a custom unique to horsegirls in Japan.
  • The mysterious word umapyoi begins appearing in historical documents dating back to around this period, including some of the first attested lyrics of songs performed by horsegirls. One popular theory has it that this is a Portmanteau of uma and hyoi, an onomatopoeia for the sound of an arrow in flight. According to this theory, these songs originated as a way of mocking the Mongol army's horsegirls (by claiming to be able to out-shoot them).
• Horsegirls are a popular choice for policework, especially in the UK... and of course Canada, where for historical reasons they run the federal police - while finding time for non-competitive, yet dazzling shows.
• They also used to have distinguished places in the military because of their extraordinary speed, though this role has significantly diminished in the twentieth century with the advent of mechanized warfare. War horsegirls retained a penchant for "showing off" when possible. Their military units, rare and valued (because horsegirls themselves are rare compared to humans), had fancy names like Hussars or Dragoons.
  • Poland was one of the best countries for horse girl warriors, with a high degree of respect for them in society. The famous Winged Hussars of Poland, many of whom were full-fledged members of the nobility ("szlachta"), distinguished themselves in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. These ferocious women, who routed the Ottoman units (which did include some horse girls too), carried decorative large wings on their bodies. So the modern-day racing runners in fancy (and not very aerodynamic) capes are following a well-established tradition.
    • Some of these knightly traditions survive to the present day as the Kazimierz Majors, a quadrennial multi-sports competition considered the most prestigious of its kind. This used to be a national tourney, only becoming fully international in the last decade or so.
  • Virginia Stuart was a famous Confederate general who led raids of horse girls.^note Virginia was a horse whom J.E.B. Stuart rode.
  • War Horsegirl by Michael Morpurgo is a novel about a horsegirl in the Great War who finds that the world has changed and the supposed glory of old has seemingly given way to gore and despair, with sides so similar each other she ends up changing them for personal attachment, with the general suggestion that human wars are meaningless and foreign to horse girls... and humans themselves if you give it a little thought. The book still gets its fair share of backlash.
  • From Japan, there's Shingen Takeda who revolutionized cavalry warfare by introducing the lance charge to Japanese horsegirl warfare, which prior to the introduction put much more emphasis on mobile archery. His nemesis Kenshin Uesugi was rumored to be a horsegirl who masqueraded as a man. Kenshin also had a close friend, called Hosho Tsukige, who definitely was a horsegirl though - she assisted Kenshin in the battle of Kawanaka-jima.
• The Pony Express was a relay mail delivery company that employed horse girls. In some European countries, horse girls established the modern organized mail system as such.
• However, outside the military, police, and mail, horsegirls in the past were often consigned to rather unpleasant physical work, drawing upon their extraordinary speed, strength, and stamina. Public attention was drawn to their employment conditions by the autobiography of one Black Beauty, edited (and embellished) by her human friend Anna Sewell.
• Inu Danshi: Coursing Beauty is a popular personification franchise about dogboys participating in races. It was originally made for human girls, but horsegirls ended up becoming a good chunk of the Periphery Demographic due to resonating with the competition aspect. While the bulk of merchandise revolves around the "Greyhound Team", there was a winter-themed side story about sled race dogboys. Horsegirls tend to make crossover fics where they race against dogboys in Skijoring competitions.
• Only Japan has idol concerts for its victorious racing horse girls. It's considered another Widget in-universe.
  • This can be shown from canon. In Episode 12 Special Week performs her Winning Live alone. The second and third places in the Real Life race were taken by Indigenous (Ireland/Hong Kong) and High-Rise (Ireland/UK/US/Emirates); it is unclear if Broye may have been second in the anime (Montjeu was fourth in real life), but she is not Japanese either. So Special Week is singing alone because the other girls have not trained to sing a Winning Live, and it would presumably be cancelled if a foreign horse girl won.
  • Cinderella Gray, however, had Obey Your Master^note IRL name: Pay the Butler performing the Winning Live as usual. Presumably, she's simply that prepared.
• Among humans, "as fast as a horse girl" became a common descriptor for lightning fast people. Athletic girls in track and field or running sports are also referred to as horse girls, whether positively for their speed or negatively to tease them about their hobby.
• A horsegirl who has a Triple Tiara is considered the pinnacle of horsegirl racers of a particular region^note amongst Japanese IRL horses depicted in Umamusume: Mr CB, Symboli Rudolf and Narita Brian. Of the many triple tiaras (there's generally one in every country), the American and English ones are generally regarded as the most storied and prestigious.
  • In Japan there is one final frontier that only a handful of horse-girls currently achieved, the Seven Stars. It is achieved by winning the Triple Tiara and then sweeping all Emperor Cups^note Spring and Autumn and Memorial Grand Prizes ^note Takarazuka Kinen and Arima Kinen in the following year.^note This achievement only existed in the game, although a few of the Japanese triple crowners (and TM Opera O) was indeed called Seven Star horses for winning 7 G1 races.
• On the flipside, there are an equally few horses who had never won a race in their (usually long) careers. Haru Urara counts herself as one of these Maidens, but she is well short of the title Maiden of Maidens. That dubious honor falls to Dance Saber^note a truly mind-boggling 229 defeats; she was sired from Dance in the Dark and counted Sunday Silence and Native Dancer amongst her ancestors..
• Africa boasts their own distinctive zebra girl tribes. They are notable, unlike some tropes might suggest, for their reluctance towards interacting with humans, let alone participating in races.^note That said, zebra races are a thing, but only as a novelty.
• Ancient Greece, Rome and Byzantium all had a strong horsegirl culture, especially when it came to races - "chariot racing" referring to all members of a participating team (usually four, but sometimes two or even ten!) running together in a pack, in a manner comparable to Roller Derby:
  • There is evidence of chariot racing having been around as early as the 13th century BCE. It eventually became one of the core sports of the ancient Olympic Games in many variations. These events were the only ones in which human women could actively participate (as trainers). Eventually solo racing events sprouted as well.
  • Alcibiades, while better known as a statesman, was also a very renowned trainer. Notoriously, he once sent seven teams to a race, with two of them taking the two top places.
  • A lot of racing traditions, such as the ceremonial entrance, actually originate from these races.
  • Bucephalus the horsegirl was a famed war companion (and childhood friend) of Alexander the Great. After her death in battle, he commemorated her by naming a city after her.
  • Incitatus was close to becoming one of the first horsegirls to hold a major political position. She was offered a position of consul, but turned it down in favour of a priestly position. She was also famed for her unique taste, such as enjoying oats with gold flakes from an ivory bowl.
  • Ancient Rome had chariot racing as one of their favourite pastime, with horsegirls being part of larger teams comparable to today's football teams in terms of popularity. Initially there were only 2 teams, but the count eventually grew to 4 and, finally, 6. Fans of two of the teams eventually ended up starting a huge riot, such influential they were. Scorpus and Diocles were among the most famous chariot team trainers.
  • The Byzantine Empire inherited the team concept, but the sport as a whole started losing its popularity after the races were "nationalized" by the emperors.
• There was quite a lot of notable horsegirls in the field of mathematics, most notable ones including:
  • Clever Hans, whose work has become largely forgotten after a certain psychologist accused her of making up the results of her work;
  • Muhamed, a German mathematician who could make many complicated calculations in her head - however, her genius didn't reach full potential due to her perishing in World War I;
  • Marocco Bankes, who was also a celebrity stuntwoman.

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