Anime horse girls: they're in. The Steam debut of Umamusume: Pretty Derby, a gacha racing and management sim where you train horse girls inspired by real racehorses, has brought a Japanese juggernaut to PC and a global audience. It has also indirectly convinced a whole lot of those players to spend their would-be gacha funds on a much nobler cause: feeding real horses.
The current adopted daughter of the Umamusume community is Haru Urara, a pink-haired underdog who shares both name and history with a horse who famously lost every single race of her competitive career. Haru Urara, the real, 29-year-old horse – and 29 is pretty old for a horse, especially a racehorse – has exploded in popularity in her retirement thanks to her digital counterpart, with Umamusume fans heaping praise and fan art on the character.
