YMMV / Uma Musume

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Twin Turbo really a just a weirdo or is she a case of Obfuscating Stupidity? Given that the only other horsegirls to see through Teio's almost-perfect disguise were Nice Nature and Biwa Hayahide, she really might be the latter case...
• And You Thought It Would Fail:
  • After two years of delays and troubled production, the released game earned 2 billion yen in the span of five days, tallied into a 120 million dollars revenue and 4 millions download near the end of their first month. Not something you would expect from a series about real life race horses reincarnated into girls who are also racers and idol singers.
  • The second season broke the record for cumulative disc sales of Television anime, selling over 160k copies in its first two weeks. Cash-Cow Franchise indeed.
  • Cyber Agent announced their 2021 financial report, which saw a 208.1% increase compared to the previous year, in which Uma Musume was credited as the biggest contributor. At this point, the IP as a whole is probably Cygames's biggest breadwinner, which is a real surprise considering how the game was stuck in Development Hell since 2018 and had a real chance of simply turning out to be another forgotten Vaporware.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Ironically enough considering the franchise's stance on explicit fan work, but this is the case for many overseas fans. If they didn't know about the franchise from the many fan works of Gold Ship, then they would've known about Uma Musume thanks to the many fan works of Daiwa Scarlet or Satono Diamond.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The donut-eating contest in episode 6 was longer than the rest of the festival montage combined, and served no purpose except humor or possibly a weird fetish. But then you find out that this is actually a representation of a Real Life race, the 33rd Arima Kinen in 1988 (note that the contest is also named "33rd"). The results are in line with the race too, including the disqualification.
• Broken Base:
  • The Make A New Track scenario has always been a hot-button topic among the Japanese playerbase since its release. Some players praised the fact that raising stats relied less on RNG, as well as the structure of the scenario allowing trainers to send their character to races that they can't enter in other scenarios due to quest conflicts^note Other scenarios require the character to enter certain races, usually based on races that their real life counterparts ran in, meaning that the character cannot race in any other races that is set to happen on the same turn. On the other hand, many others have criticized the grind-y nature of the scenario in comparison to other scenarios (gameplay encouraging trainers to enter their character in to as many races as possible with no regard to bad conditions, for starters). Oh, and there's also the fact that no one can make up their mind as to whether it should be abbreviated as MANT or ''Meikura (メイクラ)'' or ''Kurama (クラマ)'', among other candidates.
  • The introduction of original horsegirls into the story is also heavily divisive. This especially applies to the characters added in the Arc scenario since, unlike Happy Meek and co, there are pretty explicit hints as to which real-life horses they are based on. Not to mention that as of 2.5th anniversary, none of them have become playable (and it is unknown whether they ever will) and their voices are never even featured in songs - that's especially concerning since their voice actresses have relatively few other roles.
• Contested Sequel: The second season, as mentioned above. Another result of divisiveness is the added moments of drama compared to the first.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Pun aside, despite the show having a lot of named characters, a few still stand out:
  • Just like the real horse, Haru Urara's upbeat attitude and determination earns her fans who admire her spirit.
  • Seiun Sky has merchandise released alongside the main cast despite having little to no appearance in the first PV and trailers. (It doesn't hurt that her game version was very nearly a Game-Breaker when she first debuted.)
  • Oguri Cap's spoken lines can be counted on one hand, but fans still enjoy looking for her doing what she's known for every episode.
  • King Halo was a late addition to the whole cast, but she still has fans despite losing every onscreen race she appeared in, thanks to good voice acting and cute character design.
  • Gold Ship, aka "most popular character in the franchise", even people who don't know the series recognize her as that "funny horse girl" thanks to her eccentric personality, always doing something odd in the background, her attractive appearance and fantastic voice actress. The staff knows very well about her popularity and even made her the (un)official mascot of their youtube channel. She even has her own Twitter account. It also helps that the real life Gold Ship was very popular in horce races and still is very meme-friendly.
  • Rice Shower exploded in popularity after her episodes were aired and arguably stole the show away from the season's protagonists, Teio and McQueen. Being a Creepy Awesome Badass Adorable Elegant Gothic Lolita who defeated McQueen is just the start of the fanbase's love for Rice Shower.
  • Twin Turbo, one of the new characters introduced on the second season of the anime, has also garnered attention of the fans upon the release of her episodes.
  • Some characters that were initially overlooked have gained more traction upon the release of the game, as they have been fleshed out within their ingame stories. Notable examples include Nice Nature (who also appeared at the anime's second season) and Agnes Tachyon.
  • Kin'iro Ryotei is popular despite being a background character. This is largely because fans see her as an expy of real life racehorse Stay Gold, the father of Gold Ship.
  • Sirius Symboli is extremely popular with female fans, ranking in #56 in a 2023 poll asking for the most popular characters among yumejoshi.
  • Even mob characters (game NPCs whose names weren't taken from a real-life horse) can get this treatment, with several of them earning own articles on the niconico encyclopedia.
• Estrogen Brigade: Even when you don't include the game's LGBT Fanbase, some of the horse girls (primarily the Bifauxnen ones) have attracted a meta case of Even the Girls Want Her. Fuji Kiseki and Air Shakur managed to rank within the top 100 on a twitter poll asking for the most desired character of 2022 among yumejoshi. Symboli Rudolf, Fuji Kiseki, and Gold ship showed up in the 2021 poll, and Sirius Symboli ranked high in the 2023 poll.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Whatever you do, don't call the game an Idle Game that "plays itself". Uma Musume is a Raising Sim with roguelite elements in the vein of THE iDOLM@STER: Shiny Colors. While the races are automatic, they are such a small part of the gameplay that you can skip the racing animations entirely.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • It is revealed by Word of God that there are no actual horses in here and the horse girls are actually reincarnated from their real-world counterparts or based on the horses which are still alive, likely to prevent Celebrity Paradox and Furry Confusion. Aside from that, this particular world has seemingly no other differences from the real world. How did humans manage to get by without horses is a goldmine of Alternate History. Did they try to use a different animal as steeds instead?
  • Elsewhere Fics focusing on horse girls from other countries in their own academies is also very popular.
  • The release of Yabusame Symboli Rudolf and the Fall story event confirmed horse girls can be deadly efficient with human weapons. Just how did human warfare history turn out with the existence of horse girls, considering the many wars humanity fought on horseback.
• Fan Nickname: Fans have given Narita Top Road the nickname of "NTR".
• Fountain of Memes:
  • Easily the biggest source of memes for the franchise as a whole has to be Gold Ship, as noted in the Ensemble Dark Horse entry. If there is a meme of this franchise, there is a high chance it involves her.
  • At least in the Korean fandom, Silence Suzuka. As noted in the Memetic Mutation, her comment about Special Week having two mothers easily became the single most hilariously infamous line for them. This became even better when it was revealed that in season 2 she went to America...which in Korean culture can be interpreted as a euphemism for being sent to death.
  • The song "Umapyoi Densetsu" might not be a character, but its status as Fountain of Memes is undeniable. For a start, it was composed by Akihiro Honda, the same composer who created "Sins of the Father". It was composed after he stripped to his undies and popped open two bottles of wine. For a time, it was used to audition the cast of Uma Musume, and it was the main theme of the very first trailer that established the franchise's status as Quirky Work. Post game release, it became a popular song to receive covers from Virtual Youtubers, and gained popularity on TikTok through a series of short videos of people running on its tune. The dancing of "Umapyoi Densetsu" is also iconic enough that there exist many fanarts of other franchises' characters doing the same dance as the horse girls... as well as a video of rookie players from the Rakuten Eagles baseball team dancing it in cosplay. See it here (warning: possible Brain Bleach).
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Ironically enough, with the Like a Dragon/Yakuza fandom. The real-life yakuza is rumored to be behind the many restrictions Cygames met with this franchise. Despite so, this friendly relation started when Kazuma Kiryu's voice actor, Takaya Kuroda, was casted as Mihono Bourbon's trainer, who is essentially an Ink-Suit Actor of Kiryu/Kuroda in the anime. Also, Satono Diamond's real owner, Hajime Satomi, is the former chairman of Sega. These relations led to several fan works of fans from both franchises.
  • The Arknights fandom has a soft spot for Uma Musume, treating it like a subset of the Kazimierz entertainment scene as the horse people of the Kuranta are very much like the horse girls in Uma Musume, naturally this includes crossover jokes and fic fuel and memes about the Doctor secretly sending the Kuranta operators to take part for some extra money, or Platinum regretting becoming an idol knight instead of an idol racer.
  • Of all things, a lot of Monster Rancher fans have admitted to playing the games due to their very similar gameplay. Eventually Tecmo made a Monster Rancher mobile game called Monster Farm Line that borrows gameplay heavily from Uma Musume.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The real life Japanese kanji symbol for "horse" is 馬 (uma). It represents a horse with four legs. In the anime as well as the game, this symbol is changed to show two legs.^note However, this change wasn't applied to kanji which have that particular symbol as one of the radicals, most notably 駿 (the "shun" in "Tokyo Yushun", the other name of Japan Derby). Make of that what you will.
  • Mihono Bourbon's unique skill name might seem like a Gundam 00 reference, but it's actually a G-code command.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The franchise has a decent fanbase in Korea and China even before the game's official release, which explained Cygames's decision to announce a Korea and China release at the end of their first month.
• Good Bad Bugs: The game seems to be exceptionally blessed with them.
  • The DMM version of the game launched with a bug that would occasionally cause characters on the race victory screen to display with a different character's model, but still using the original character's animations and voice. This led to hilarious scenes such as Haru Urara scowling down at the player fiercely, Rudolf prancing around in extra-kawaii mode, and McQueen using Gold Ship's "Ferrari" victory pose. The bug was eventually fixed but many players have been clamouring for it to return as an Easter Egg. Some examples can be seen in this video.
  • Agnes Digital's Halloween Chinese Vampire costume has an animation with her fooling around, pretending to attack the player and then being defeated by Paper Talisman to the head. There was a rare bug when she was initially released: if the player was lucky enough to draw two copies of her in a single pull, the animation displayed her as transparent (Cheshire Cat style) after being hit with the talisman, as if ascending to a higher plane of existence.
  • A bug in the 2023 Valentine's Day content drop caused the item "Seiun Sky's Handmade Chocolate" to have an incorrect description stating that it was handmade by Special Week. Considering the two characters in question, this is entirely plausible. Fan theories ranged from "she was too lazy to make it herself" to "she was too embarrassed to admit she'd made it and lied" to "she only made one lot of handmade chocolate and gave it to Nishino Flower instead".
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The July 2022 story event focused on Taiki Shuttle and Zenno Rob Roy. A little over a month after the event ended, both of their real-life counterparts passed away within two weeks of each other (on 17 August and 2 September respectively).
  • In the Golden Ending of Smart Falcon's training scenario, she gets invited to participate in the Dokidol World Concert, which is Uma Musume's Dubai World Cup counterpart. In real life, the Dubai World Cup was Smart Falcon's final race, where he had a humiliating loss that resulted in a Career-Ending Injury.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In a sad way, this◊ moment in the opening became meaningful when Special Week, the Real Life horse, died on April 27, 2018. The opening was first shown on April 1, 2018 (Silence Suzuka, the Real Life horse, is long dead).
• Heartwarming Moments: Special Week running to Suzuka and apparently saving her life at Tenno Sho. Bonus point: the Real Life Suzuka died, and it appears that in the anime world Suzuka could have died too - if not for Special Week).
• Ho Yay:
  • Special Week's admiration for Suzuka can easily be interpreted as a crush, with Spe's reaction to first seeing Suzuka in action seeming a bit like Love at First Sight. Suzuka isn't at all put off by her admiration so far, and seems to be fond of her as well, even blushing and smiling a bit when she first calls Special Week 'Spe-chan'.
    • Episode 6 definitely plays them (and several others) up as, at the very least, very close friends, if not soulmates (though that episode has no skinshipping between them).
    • In the manga, the yuri subtext is much more pronounced, with Spe-chan calling a city trip with Suzuka a "date".
  • It's implied that Special Week's two mothers were together, more so than just her adopted mother "taking over" baby Spe from her biological mother. Spe's human mother keeps a picture of Spe's birth mother in a little shrine; while this is a common practice in Japan, it's typically only done for deceased family members. Of course, this brings up a multitude of questions regarding relationships between humans and horse girls (women?); Word of God says such relationships are possible but does not seem to provide any details.
  • When Mejiro McQueen is brought into the picture, the constant attention and attempted pranks from Gold Ship can easily be taken as a sign of interest on Gold Ship's part.
  • Grass Wonder's affection for Special Week in Episode 8 can be interpreted as that of a jealous stalker, borderline on an obsessive Yandere. Not helping the case is the time when the two Real Life stallions, Grass Wonder and Special Week, while already retired, were exhibited together... and Grass Wonder got a bit too excited.
  • The second season has Tokai Teio and Mejiro McQueen forming a Friendly Rivalry where the two inspire each other, to the point the Evolving Credits implies McQueen has become as important to Teio as her idol Symboli Rudolf. Then episode 11 hits, and ramps up the subtext, by having Teio suddenly become tongue-tied when trying to express her gratitude, with McQueen remarking that Teio's acting like she's trying to confess. Eventually Teio works up the courage to straight up ask McQueen out on a date between friends, where she can finally thank her, while the whole thing plays out like a romantic scene. (And the episode even finds time to play at a similar Puppy Love between Kitasan Black and Satono Diamond.)
    • Episode 12 then has it coming the other direction when McQueen has a Heroic BSoD when she hears about her incurable leg injury, with her greatest sorrow being that she can no longer race against Teio as a rival — the language of her inner thoughts practically makes the latter out to be her soulmate.
• I Knew It!: Anyone that is savvy with history of the horses will know what is going to happen to their corresponding horsegirl counterparts along with their win/loss record. For example, those who knew about the actual Silence Suzuka guessed that its anime counterpart would suffer a leg injury. It happened in episode 7.
• Incest Yay Shipping: Despite having no blood relation within the franchise's lore, pairings formed from the real-life horse relations are pretty popular in the fanbase, like McQueen/Gold Ship (Grandfather/grandson), Agnes Tachyon/Daiwa Scarlet (Father/daughter), Special Week/Suzuka (siblings) etc...
• Just Here for Godzilla: Expect most newcomers to look up Uma Musume for one reason: Gold Ship. She easily has a ton of fanart and many want to know more about her.
• LGBT Fanbase: A nearly all-girl cast with plenty of Les Yay and the option to play as a female self insert in the game inevitably attracted quite a few sapphic women to the franchise.
• Memetic Badass: Hayakawa Tazuna is a support character who acts a gameplay guide for your training campaigns. She is known for her notoriously inaccurate pre-race result prediction based on your girl's stats. However if you buy into the theory about her being the Uma Musume form of Tokino Minoru, a legendary World War 2 era race horse, then her inaccuracy is explained by her being so ridiculously strong/good that her standard for winning races is simply way higher than what you girl can realistically achieve. There are also moments in the franchise where she can casually catch up with strong horse girls like Special Week and Taiki Shuttle without breaking a sweat. Another part that built up this image of her is her support role and Green color scheme, which fits her into the Green Devil memetic archetype found in other Cygames games like THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls and Princess Connect! Re:Dive.
• Memetic Loser: Haru Urara's status as a Real Life example of the trope is lovingly transferred into the series.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Gold Ship's drop kick.^explanation Gold Ship's victory animation has her performing a drop kick attack on the camera, making the camera fall off. This is actually a reference to Gold Ship in real life kicking a man after winning 2013 Takarazuka Kinen.
  • "So nice you have two mothers." ^explanation  Silence Suzuka expresses admiration for how Special Week's two mothers all worked hard for and supported Special Week's dream to become an athlete, but among Korean fans this became the single most memetic line in the whole show because having more than one mother is actually a form of insult towards one's family, causing Silence Suzuka to become a memetic asshole.
  • Uma Musume is an incest anime. ^explanation  While Same Sire relationships is not considered horse incest in the real world, it does not stop fans from joking about the real life relationships of the horses, like with the case of Special Week and Silence Suzuka. However, played straight for relationships like Symboli Rudolf and Tokai Teio, who are father and son, and Special Week and Maruzensky, who are grandson and grandfather respectively
  • EI EI MUN!^explanation Matikane Tannhauser's catchphrase has spawned a plethora of videos, most notably this rendition of "We Will Rock You", this 1 hour loop and this parody of Rhythm Heaven.
  • AGEMASEN!^explanation The "stingy" version of Special Week that appears in Teio's Imagine Spot has become shockingly popular. It's often used as a meme - sometimes with the expression transplanted onto another character - by players of the mobile game bewailing their support characters' refusal to give out key skill hints. It's no coincidence that one of the most infamous examples of this tendency is the SSR Special Week support, which is infamous for failing to provide a key skill, Spirited Devotion.
  • tsuiteku, tsuiteku...^explanation A notable scene in chapter 2 of the game's main story features Rice Shower following ("tsuiteku") McQueen to the dorms. Of course, it got eventually parodied with a a bunch of Rice Showers following McQueen
  • Shonbori/Tanuki Rudolf^explanation Originally started off as a sad chibi artwork of Symboli Rudolf's 3D chibi mobel, it quickly gained popularity on 2ch and Nico Nico, eventually leading to the transformation of other characters into the Shonbori/Tanuki style. The evolution of the meme can be viewed here]]
  • Little Chestnut Golshi^explanation Due to how gray coat works in horses, real!Golshi looked like a chestnut when he was little. As a result, there is a sizable share of aged-down Gold Ship (the horsegirl) fanart depicting her with chestnut hair
  • Outta the way! I'm Onii-sama!^note どけ！俺はお兄様だぞ！^explanation The rallying-cry of Rice Shower fans everywhere. The meme originated from a particular panel in Jujutsu Kaisen in which Choso declares himself to be "Onii-chan". Since Rice Shower in the game asks if she can call her trainer "Onii-sama" or "Onee-sama" (depending on the trainer's gender), fans quickly latched onto this and made an edited version of the panel in which he declares himself to be "Onii-sama". The meme has since spread to fans of other horsegirls, beginning with Curren Chan ("I'm Onii-chan!", which oddly enough is the exact line Choso says) and continuing to Mihono Bourbon ("I'm Master!"), Agnes Tachyon ("I'm a guinea pig!"), Nice Nature ("I'm the shopping arcade!") and so on.
  • These people have been Umapyoi-ing!!^note こいつらうまぴょいしたんだ!!^explanation The fandom has latched onto the theory that the nonsense word "umapyoi" is actually an Unusual Euphemism for sex. For the most part, this is played for Rule of Funny though - especially considering the issues surrounding Rule 34.
  • Dobomejirou. ^note どぼめじろう^explanation When the horse names for the Chinese release of the game were announced, Japanese fans immediately tried machine-translating them back into Japanese, with predictable results. One such result was "Mejiro Dober" getting mangled into "Dobomejirou". Fans have now embraced the idea that she uses "Dobomejirou" as her Doujinshi nom de plume. Likewise, Agnes Digital's reverse-translated name, "Alice Digital", is occasionally used as a pen-name (but less so, possibly because there's a real doujin circle by that name).
  • Grace-chan^explanation In August 2022, Korean players who were fed up by the bad treatment of them by the local distributor of the game, namely Kakao Games, decided to protest by sending - in a twist from the usual sending of protest trucks - a protest horse carriage. The carriage quickly went viral, with many artists spawning an original horsegirl design for the horse pulling the carriage.
  • Mongol Derby build^explanation Emerging after the change in stat limits after the introduction of the Grand Live scenario, the Mongol Derby build is an Affectionate Nickname for a specific Awesome, but Impractical build which involves maxed stamina (~2000) and high guts level at cost of the three other stats. It is almost completely useless in Champions Meetings and the likes, but nevertheless is popular to train For the Lulz - Mongol Derby referring to the famous 1000km endurance race.
  • "My mother was a mare and my father a lonely rancher."^explanation An edited screenshot of the anime shows Special Week running towards Tracen with the aforementioned caption about her birth parents. Naturally, some off-color fans deliberately take the quote out of context, omitting the fact that horses do not exist in the world of Uma Musume, and joke that her father had sex with an actual horse, with several memes showing horrified reactions towards the statement.
  • "wow Twin Turbo looks different here!"^explanation Twin Turbo used to be, by far, one of the most wanted horsegirls that, at the time, was not trainable, with this comment frequently appearing (both in Japanese and international fandom) every time a character other than her became trainable; a meme comparable to the infamous "Koikaze when?" - and similarly to "Koikaze when?", it was finally put to rest when Turbo became trainable just in time for the game's 2nd anniversary.
  • NTR got NTR'd.^explanation The modern version of Twin Turbo above. After her miniseries, Road to the Top, released to wide acclaim in May 2023, fans were expecting Cygames to make Narita Top Road the next playable horsegirl. Instead, Hishi Miracle was announced out of the blue and quickly released. Following that, Marvelous Sunday, Katsuragi Ace and Sirius Symboli all got their playable debuts in fairly short order, leaving poor old Top Road out in the cold. She would eventually be released in late August 2023, two months before the Kikuka Sho (the race which she won in the anime, and the real horse's most famous victory) would take place that year.
• Narm Charm: The show is a fun sports anime with endearing characters, despite the absurdity of the premise and how it's taken completely seriously.
• The Scrappy: Despite the abundance of Les Yay as mentioned above, yuri fans are not happy with the presence of the male trainer in the anime since his first reveal in one of the trailers. Justified as they feel that he is the Featureless Protagonist that many people expect from a mobile game anime. While some have forgiven him for avoiding several aspects of said trope and instead being a supportive mentor with no horsegirls having romantic feelings for him, his habit of touching their legs from behind has drawn the ire of them.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • In the game Haru Urara gets a chance to run the Arima Kinen, a race that she is massively ill-equipped to compete on^note Arima Kinen is a 2500m turf race, way beyond Haru Urara's skill. Some trainers take it as a personal challenge, and some succeded.
  • Some trainers, albeit fewer of them, decided to have a try at Stayers' Stakes (Japan's longest graded flat race, at a staggering 3600m length)... using, of all horsegirls, Sakura Bakushin O.^note Which is way beyond her range... though arguably, it's just like running in Sprinters Stakes three times Some crazier trainers made her win...
  • There is a whole list (in Japanese) of these, mostly involving Arima Kinen.
• Tear Jerker: Has a whole page.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The July 29th, 2021 update of the game brought, among bugfixes, a modification of Mayano Top Gun's main race outfit - namely modification of her jacket to remove the Taiwanese (keep in mind, a Chinese release of the game is in the works) and Japanese flag.^note (And making the entire jacket look more like the one featured on Top Gun: Maverick in the process) Many were definitely not happy with that.
  • Some were also not happy with how Yamanin Zephyr has been completely redesigned between her anime season 2 cameo and her official reveal, though it was nowhere as divisive as the aforementioned Maya redesign.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Due to receiving the No Historical Figures Were Harmed treatment in the anime as well as being a foreign racehorse, no one expected Montjeu to appear as a horse girl in the game's main story.
  • Daring Tact, on the grounds that the real horse was still actively racing at the time of her reveal in 2022.
  • While many new character reveals were expected for the game's 2nd anniversary stream, the appearance of Neo Universe among them surprised absolutely everyone. (It was believed until that point that Shadai, the club that owned the IRL horse, was not willing to cooperate with the franchise. That there is a character in the Cinderella Gray manga that is partially based on Neo Universe certainly lowered the expectations too.)
  • Two words. SAMSON BIG.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Rice Shower. The In-Universe fans do not like her because she ended up spoiling both Mihono Bourbon's undefeated Triple Crown win and Mejiro McQueen becoming a consecutive three time Tenno Sho winner. The fans of the show however love her because they feel sorry for how she is treated and her performance in the actual races.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Little Girls?: As of 2022, the franchise is increasingly becoming this. Although its out-there premise (real-life racehorses, reincarnated as horse-girls in an alternate world!) was originally expected to appeal only to middle-aged male horse-racing fans and hardcore Moe otaku, the surprisingly wholesome premise of female athletes competing for glory has given it an unexpectedly-broad fanbase, not to mention it's much more inclusive than other similar franchises since you can play as a female trainer in the game.

---