It's a work where neither the audience nor the characters will be hurt.
With the broadcast of the second season of the anime of "Horse Racing Lady PrettyDerby" (hereinafter referred to as "Horse Racing Lady"), the mobile game "Horse Racing Lady", which was launched on February 24, quickly occupied the top spot on the Japanese App Store and Google Play best-seller lists, and the revenue of the first week of the service has exceeded 2 billion yen (the first week of "Hara God" in Japan was 1.9 billion yen).
Horse Racing Lady is a cross-media project by Japanese game company Cygames that includes anime, manga, and mobile games. The first season of the anime was released in 2018, and the girls who inherited the glorious name and racing ability of the other world were called horse racing girls, and their appearance was no different from that of ordinary girls except for the pony tail and horse ears. In the process of attending Therason Academy, horse racing girls will continue to compete in horse racing competitions to compete for the championship, "they are born to run", and after victory, they have the opportunity to take the stage to perform for the audience.
Simply put, the production team turned Japanese horse racing into a cute girl and inherited the results of historical horse racing, and the animation and other contents contained many elements - school, sports, idols... It looks like a hodgepodge, but it doesn't feel out of place.
Since there is no choice Chinese language, the Chinese users of "Horse Racing Lady" have drawn cards and raised horses according to the Chinese and Japanese languages compiled by the forum gods, and have also transformed into horse lovers and studied the history of Japanese horse racing at the end of the last century. In Japan, "Horse Racing Lady" has long been a regular on Twitter's hot trend.
NGA forum gods do raiders
"I hope this work can become a work that will not hurt the audience and the characters", "Horse Racing Lady" animation producer Ito Hayanosuke has been interested in horse racing culture, making horse fans happy at the same time, he also wants to make users who do not understand horse racing feel interesting.
As a result, "Horse Racing Lady" focuses on the career nodes of those legendary horse racing, in order to create emotional flashpoints, and transforms many two-dimensional users who are purely attracted by the story into horse racing fans who study real history. In Japan, where horse racing culture is already very mature, the success of the "Horse Racing Lady" project, which provides high-quality content, is inevitable.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" > nothing can be solved in a horse race</h1>
Japan, which introduced horse racing at the end of Edo, is now at a world-class level in terms of both betting and results. Many domestic users mention horse racing, which may be associated with gambling and losing money to the fallen uncle, but in fact, Japan's racecourse has left a considerable place for amusement facilities for children.
"If the playing field is 1, the surrounding facilities are 10." Yang Minghan, CEO of Winnie HodsLey Club and member of the Speed Horse Racing Committee of the Chinese Equestrian Association, became interested in horse racing when he went to Japan fifteen years ago to study, "Most of the racecourse is in the suburbs, so on weekends, Dad will take his wife and children with him, Dad will buy a 'Horse Cai' to watch for an afternoon, mom and child to play in the square, and when it's time for dinner, go home together." ”
Kyoto Racecourse
As a result, many Japanese have memories of being taken to see horse racing by their parents as children. Like the playground on the roof of the department store, in order to win the hearts of the children, Wong Wai Kee, marketing director of the Winnyhoe Jockey Club, said that special dramas such as Ultraman and Masquerade Superman will carry out limited activities in the racecourse, and even some children will offer to go to the racecourse for the activities.
This trend of linking horse racing from gambling began during the bursting of Japan's bubble economy. Yang Minghan told Quan Now, "Since the 1990s, the Japanese have begun to cultivate horse racing into a culture, and the chosen spokespersons have affinity stars. ”
JRA's 2015 brand advertising
What's more, during this period, JRA associated horse racing with the word "dream" - your horse racing, has run out of the starting point, they are running for a bigger stage, all kinds of horse racing competitions have been given various meanings by them, in the advertisement, it seems that nothing can be solved by a horse racing race.
Legendary horse racing with excellent results can also receive the same treatment as stars in Japan, and the winning horse will tour the field to receive applause, which lays the foundation for the world view of "Horse Racing Lady", where the horse racing lady has a live stage like an idol.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="18" > from rejection to "true incense"</h1>
According to JRA's marketing ideas, it is said that the horse racing plan aimed at the younger generation and the second-dimensional group should be strongly welcomed by them. But in fact, at the beginning of the project, JRA was very reluctant to "Horse Racing Lady", and some horse owners did not want to license the name of their horse racing to a "feminine" horse racing plan.
Today, none of them can ignore the success of the Horse Race Girl project. Last year's epidemic caused most of Japan's sports industry to suffer a heavy blow, only the horse racing industry maintained a growth trend, Yang Minghan believes that this growth is indispensable to the credit of "Horse Racing Lady", "It is three years ago, they pulled in a group of young people who like the second dimension, plus now the second season of animation and mobile games to attract users can cause an increase." In Japan's highly aging society, the cake is so big, a sport to come up with more than 50% of the increase has been difficult to achieve, "Horse Racing Lady" helped the horse racing industry grab a lot of users over. ”
The Tokyo Racecourse also featured the stalls of "Horse Racing Lady"
Cygames also showed enough respect for the horse racers, and they restricted the second creation, asking fanwork writers to respect the prototype horse racing and the character image, and not to cause unpleasantness to horse racing enthusiasts and related people.
In the anime, from the image and personality of the horse racing lady to the competition storyboard, they are as loyal as possible to the realistic prototype, "If I can make the horse racing fans feel a little more surprised, I will also feel very happy." 」 The animation directors of "Horse Racing Lady" and Kei Kawa and Hayanosuke Ito had the same idea.
For example, the star racing horse "Golden Boat" has a mischievous and irritable personality in reality, "Yan Yi" is rich, the trainer can't escape the encounter of being bitten and torn clothes every day, and once the game was touched because of the ass angry and did not run directly.
The golden boat in the animation is "skin on the skin", often kicking down the trainer, playing pranks, even traveling is riding a balance bike, becoming a "different monkey" among the cute horse racing girls, but the owner of the golden boat, Jinlang Longli, said after playing the mobile game, "The golden boat in the game is more difficult to raise than the real horse." ”
"Horse Racing Lady" players like to use the "Pippi Boat" emoji in the QQ group
The intentions of the production team and the cute appearance of the horse racing lady are the basis for the project to attract users, and the reason that can trigger the enthusiasm of Japanese and Chinese users for the project and even the Japanese horse racing culture is not only to emphasize the core of dreams and competition, but also to balance reality and fiction when the production team describes the real horse racing event.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="28" > will the horse race be sad? </h1>
In the "Horse Racing Lady" animation, the driving force of the horse racing lady comes from her own dream - "Special Week" aims to "the world's first horse racing lady". The sadness of the horse racing lady comes from the shattering of her dreams, and the "silent Suzuka" who only has the heart to run suddenly has a crushing fracture of her leg and can only leave the arena temporarily; the "Emperor of the East Sea", who is about to complete the "Triple Crown", has experienced three consecutive fractures and cannot withdraw from the arena...
But in reality, will horse racers whose driving force comes from the outside world (human behavior) the desire to win? After a fracture, apart from the pain, will the racers grieve because they can't continue racing?
People always project their thoughts and logic onto animals, but no one knows which understanding is correct — even if horse fans have different ideas about the most basic question of whether horses like to run or not, "Horse Racing Lady" gives a reference answer that most people want to believe and is in line with human emotions.
In the second season of the anime "Horse Racing Lady", the Emperor of the East Sea accepts the ending he set in tears under the sunset, "I have, I can't run like that." The same is true of the real East Sea Emperor, after the third fracture, it has taken a break for a year, not many spectators can be sure what it is thinking when cultivating, will it be lost, will it want to return to the field, will it notice that its life state at this time is different from before?
The fateful Emperor of the East Sea
In this way, "Horse Racing Lady" with a background in another world has an ambiguous space that can be played, fujiwara believes that relying on human imagination to portray the joys and sorrows of real horses is very rude to them, but in an alternate world, he can freely describe his own understanding, "If it is the world where the horse girls who inherit the soul of the horses live, they can depict the behavior and mood of the horse girls according to the hearts of fans." ”
For the audience, the image of the horse racing lady used by the production team seems to convey the helplessness and pain that the prototype horse racing cannot express to humans, and with a layer of realistic support, sadness and tears have a heavy weight.
At the same time, the significance of the quadratic element is that we can make up for the regrets of reality in it. The two protagonists of the first season of "Horse Racing Lady" are "Special Week" and "Silent Suzuka", who also made their debut in 1997, and they both served as partners with the legendary Japanese rider Taketoyo, so the reason for choosing them was not only because they were two of Japan's most popular racehorses of the last century, but also because of the wonderful sense of destiny between them.
Rider Wu Feng (right) also participated in The Horse Racing Lady
In the anime, Special Week regards Silent Suzuka as an idol that wants to surpass, and after Silent Suzuka fractures, Special Week is busy taking care of Silent Suzuka and even forgets the goal of "becoming the first horse racer" for a while, and after adjusting the state, in the Emperor Awards Competition, Silent Suzuka's encouragement becomes the motivation for Special Week to sprint and win.
In reality, Silent Suzuka stands out for its tactics of "running away from the gate (rushing to the front as soon as it leaves the gate and always leading towards the destination finish)", and sometimes its lead can even reach a quarter of the track. However, it should be noted that compared with the huge body, the toes and feet of the thoroughbred horses are too small, and the other side of the pursuit of speed is the increase in the probability of fractures.
Silent Suzuka
On November 1, 1998, the Emperor's Award, the silent suzuka ran faster than usual, but at the 3rd bend, the silent suzuka suddenly stalled, and then the doctor found that it was a comminuted fracture of the left leg. Generally speaking, if the horse in the high-speed running is fractured, the rider will fall off the horse and be injured, but the silent suzuka is slowly moving to the outside of the track, and some people believe that the silent suzuka is protecting the safety of the Wufeng rider on the back.
Later, with no hope of recovery, people euthanized Silent Suzuka, and it is said that Wu Feng was drunk for the first time in his life that night, and it was not until a few years later that he was willing to talk about it again with deep self-blame.
The "Horse Racing Lady" anime restores this moment from the storyboard to the commentary, but unlike reality, silent Suzuka only needs to rest for a while to recover. In May 2018, after the seventh episode about the past was broadcast, on the Japanese horse racing information website netkeiba.com, the number of visits to silent suzuka rushed to the top, and viewers rushed to the Twitter comment area of "Horse Racing Lady" to thank them for not letting the silent suzuka in the animation die, and someone posted the horse ticket for that race, "Animation is really a gentle world." ”
Back to reality, a year later, Wu Feng rode the special week to participate in the Emperor Award again, in fact, the special week and the silent Suzuka both have the gene of the American horse king "Sunday Tranquility", in the sprint stage, the special week is like suddenly given strength, from the bottom position to the first place, won the victory. After the game, Wu Feng said in an interview: "The moment of the final sprint is like a silent suzuka pushing me behind my back. ”
Special weeks
Because of this sentence, the production team presented these contents in the animation: during the special week sprint, they heard the encouragement of the silent Suzuka, and only then did they have the strength to speed up again and run to the first.
It passed away in Special Week 2018 and it was hoped that it would continue to run in heaven with the silent suzuka
The animation team's handling comforted ma fans who had been heartbroken by reality. And for non-horse fan audiences, when you open the shell of "Happy Ending" on the animation production package and understand the "silent tragedy", the emotion and grief are intertwined, even if we all know that "protected Wu Feng" and "pushed special Monday" may be difficult to prove emotional projection, we are willing to immerse ourselves in the tenderness of the production team, believing that the speed up is that silent Suzuka is helping Special Zhou and Wu Feng.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="49" > to change the "failed" horse race and life in the game</h1>
Japanese horse racing critic Shugoro Izaki once said, "People are attracted to horse racing because they found life there." ”
The Japanese star horse race "Haru Ulara" at the beginning of the 21st century is a microcosm of The "Lost Twenty Years" of Japanese society. In 2003, Japanese society still did not come out of the shadow of the "lost decade", the economy stagnated, the unemployment rate hit a new high, and the aging and low birthrate made the mental activity of the public significantly reduced. Local racecourses are also unable to escape the possibility of deficit, and a special racehorse has come to the Kochi Racecourse in Japan, Chun Ulala, who is a rare mare in horse racing, not to mention small in size and small in courage.
Chun Ulala's pink hood was sewn by its trainer, Zong Shiyan
After the first open match in 1998, commentator Koji Hashiguchi was counting how many games it had lost, thinking that one day he would be able to say the phrase "After losing X games, Haru Ulara finally won", and the defeated Haru Ulara did not give him the opportunity to say this.
Under the media publicity, more and more people wore the surroundings of Chun Ulala - pink T-shirts to watch the race at Kochi Racecourse, and some viewers said that Chun Ulara gave them the courage to live, "it is the star of hope for the losers". Even then-Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was following Chun Ulara, and in the Budget Committee of the House of Lords on March 10, 2004, he said: "I also want to see Chun Ula win, and this horse is an example of 'not giving up'." ”
After losing 100 consecutive matches, on March 22, 2004, Wu Feng played with Chun Ulala, and when they played, the rainy day suddenly cleared, which was considered to be a harbinger of Chun Ulala's victory.
But in the end, Chun Ulala's ranking was tenth – second to last. The total bets people bet on Chun Ulla that day totaled $1 million, and they lost, but shouted "thank you" to Chun Ulara. Just like winning the first place, Wu Feng and Chun Ula la ran around the field again, the sun shining on them, and the audience cheered together. Zong Shiyan, a trainer at Chun Ulala, said: "If society only focuses on 'winning', then life is a continuous competition, if you feel that you have given everything but still lose, then you should still be praised." ”
Although the two seasons of the animation of "Horse Racing Lady" did not give Chun Ula too many shots, Chun Ulala, who always had a smile on her face, had a lot of popularity among users with the experience of prototype horse racing. If the anime makes up for the regrets of silent Suzuka's reality, players begin to try to change the fate of Chun Ulla in the "Horse Racing Lady" mobile game.
Chun Ulala
The game mechanics of the "Horse Racing Lady" mobile game are not much different from the two-dimensional mobile games such as "Fleet Collection", players can choose a horse racing lady to cultivate, through training, competition and other operations to complete the goal of the horse racing girl, and insert a galgame-like plot segment in the middle. Unlike other horse racing ladies who want to win a certain race, Chun Ulala's ultimate goal is only to "participate in the Arima Memorial Race", whether it wins or not, it is considered to be a goal.
Because Chun Ulala is good at mud with only short-distance events, and arima Memorial is the long-distance race and grass field she is least good at, in order to make Chun Ulala taste the victory, players have made various attempts.
In the mobile game, before cultivating a horse racing lady, the player needs to choose two other horse racing girls for her, obtain their genetic factors, and can get the bonus of the corresponding attributes. A push friend named フルさん used this method to change the innate adaptability, so that Ulala's long-distance adaptability reached A and grass adaptability to C, making Chun Ulala run to the first.
Everyone wants to see Chun Ulala's smile
After that, the pushers frequently posted screenshots of Chun Ulala's victory, and she became one of the horse racing girls that players wanted to challenge the most. "Chun Ulala, my Superman", players spread this sentence in social networks, the meaning of this sentence is more like - Chun Ulala has endless possibilities, and we can achieve things in the game that are not in history, creating miracles that belong to me and Chun Ulara.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="64" > no one will be injured in Horse Racing Lady</h1>
In fact, the reality of chun ulala can also be regarded as a miracle, in the horse racing industry, running a good result before the age of 4 to be a stallion is the happiest ending of a horse racing.
"Especially in Australia, more than 80% of the stallions have been eliminated, and in Japan, 50% of the stallions cannot die well", Young Minghan's Winnholz Horse Racing Club is the only Sino-Japanese joint venture horse racing club, they are considering whether they can give Japanese horses another way out, "those horses that are very capable but have to retire due to injury, or who have bad luck because of the race system, can be transported to China?" Kitakami Hiroshi's current equestrian clubs have a great demand for horses, and once they enter, they can basically be raised for a long time. ”
Therefore, there is a voice that "Horse Racing Lady" gives cruel animal cruelty a layer of dream, and there is a lot of controversy about this view, but blaming virtual beauty simply because of the cruelty of reality may not be the most appropriate behavior.
According to an interview with Japanese media outlet KAI-YOU about Akihiro Ishihara and Hayanosuke Ito, the animators of the first season of "Horse Racing Lady", the two producers created the animation with the very simple idea of "wanting to make everyone happy".
"Horse Racing Lady" completely eliminates "Horse Cai" from the world view, only retains the pure desire and dream of the horse racing girls, does not completely reproduce the tragedy of reality but lets the silent Suzuka continue to run on the track, the Emperor of the East Sea who intends to give up tries to run again under the encouragement of everyone, and the horse racing lady who lost the race will not complain and mourn herself but continue to train hard, so the design of Ito Hayabusa is to hope that the work can make everyone happy.
Akihiro Ishihara is already tired of the public's resentment of the loser and the curse of the winner in reality, and the reason why he designed the stage link in the animation is because he wants to let "everyone laugh and sing together after the game" and let the world of horse racing girls full of victories and losses show a soft side.
In this way, rather than "wrapping the cruelty of reality with dreams", "The Horse Race Lady" is more like a shelter for us to temporarily ignore the harsh reality that is difficult to solve.