New gacha games pop up so frequently most are hardly worth noticing unless you’re looking for a new time sink, and their impact on the real world usually starts and ends at mountains of fan art and a lighter wallet. But one recently released gacha has been drawing even fans who don’t normally touch this kind of game, and it’s having a surprising effect on some real-world animals, both for the better and worse.
There’s a good chance you’ve already heard of Umamusume: Pretty Derby even if mobile gacha games aren’t typically your thing. Based on the 2018 anime of the same name, Umamusume follows a group of horse girls (that is, girls who are also horses, not girls who just really like horses), training and competing in races at the prestigious Tracen Academy. You play as a trainer, leading the horse girl of your choice through their career at the academy by directing how they spend their time, then sitting back and watching that work pay off in races.
In both the anime and game, the characters in Umamusume are based on actual race horses, which has in turn gotten some players interested, probably for the first time, in the real animals themselves. While Umamusume just got its English release in July, it’s been available in Japan for some time, meaning players have already had time to show their appreciation for the horses their favorite characters are based on. That’s evidently led to some fans getting a little too excited to meet their equine heroes, as shortly after the game’s English release, developer Cygames released a blog post asking new players to please behave themselves if they decide to visit any of their home stables in person.
“In the past, there have been instances of visitors neglecting stable rules, trespassing, and photographing/filming without the stable’s consent,” the Cygames post reads. “It is important to remember that these stables are where real living horses are born, raised, and spend their later years, and that the personnel on-site are working hard day after day to care for them.”
The post goes on to lay out some requests for fans visiting their favorite horses, including refraining from smoking, making loud noises, or using camera flashes. Seems pretty sensible.
But more recently, players have found a much more commendable way to cause a little commotion for the inspirations behind their favorite Umamusume characters. Haru Urara has become a fan favorite less because of her role in the game or show than because of the story of her real-life namesake. The original Haru Urara is a Japanese race horse with a truly impressive record — in the 113 races of her career, she never won a single one. Naturally, that’s made her rendition in Umamusume something of an underdog redemption story, and fans of the game’s premier horse girlfailure want to show their appreciation.
As spotted by Siliconera, players have been flocking to the website for Namabokuso Bank, a service that lets anyone send bundles of grass to horses on farms in Japan, and the main recipient of their affection (and what is evidently some particularly tasty grass) is none other than Haru Urara. Fans got so caught up in the feeding frenzy that they crashed the website, though it’s back up and running now.
In a way, horse racing and gacha games are the perfect combination for all the wrong reasons. While sports betting evidently doesn’t exist in the world of Umamusume, gacha can prey on exactly the same impulses as gambling, leading to equally disastrous results for people who get pulled into spending too much. And that’s not getting into the ethics of horse racing itself, which can be extremely bad for the animals involved. Fortunately, no horses appear to have been harmed in the making of Umamusume, and rather than sparking an interest in actual horse racing, it’s turning players’ love for their favorite characters into a desire to help the real-world horses they’re based on.
