I’ve done plenty of yapping about Haru Urara this week, the beloved Japanese racehorse who lost every single one of her 113 career races. Both the real Haru Urara and her anime counterpart in Umamusume: Pretty Derby have been feeling all of the love since the game launched an English version in June, introducing her to a whole new audience and propelling her popularity to new heights.
There are small winks to her penchant for defeat throughout her in-game career—events where she loses but is still cheered on by the masses, and the fact she’s still cheery even when placing terribly. But one moment exemplifies that more than any other: The Arima Kinen race.
It’s essentially a moment in her career intentionally set up for her to lose astronomically. Each horse girl specialises in certain distances, and for Haru Urara it’s sprints. Except Arima Kinen is a Long race, 1100m longer than most of the ones she encounters. To make matters worse, it’s also on a turf track, whereas Haru Urara is a dirt track horse girl.
As you can see, it’s all one big conspiracy theory designed to practically guarantee her last place, often finishing long after the rest of the pack has already crossed the finish line. For the record, this is how my first time doing that race went for me:
Honestly, I thought it was flat-out impossible to even get 15th place, let alone first. I’ve been proven very much wrong though, as one dedicated Haru Urara fan has managed to nab first place with her. All without spending a single penny in the game.
Now this person isn’t the first person to do it on the global server—that honour seemingly goes to this person, but they were rocking some awfully good support cards (which they admit are “whale cards” in the comments) and legacy Umamusume to pull the whole thing off. But as Reddit user mateus186 puts it: “I’m from Brazil so I can’t be a whale, this game is expensive here.”
If that’s not the true underdog spirit of Haru Urara, I don’t know what is. Aside from one borrowed well-built support card from a friend, mateus186 manages to do the whole thing with a pretty basic deck, semi-decent legacy horse girls and only a handful of skills to carry the shining star of losers everywhere across the finish line.
What’s a whale?
When it comes to gacha games, you might hear players referring to different sea creatures like minnows, dolphins, whales, and leviathans. They’re terms coined to refer to how much money someone spends—a minnow might not spend more than $5 a month, whereas a whale could be in the realm of $500.
“She never gave up so I didn’t give up too,” mateus186 wrote in his post. “To be honest I just got into this game because I saw a streamer playing her career and I wanted to play and make her win that race to see if she would not cry. And well, after many losses I finally managed to make her smile. So if there is anyone there still trying to make her get a win in Arima Kinen she can do it, you just need to believe in her.”
As mateus186 says themselves, an awful lot of RNG would have gone into making sure everything fell into place for this race. There are certain random chance events that give huge stat boosts—ones you don’t get to pick, largely leaving it up to fate. There are tons of other smaller moving parts here that determine what numbers go up where, and it seems like everything was just right for this particular career run.
It’s definitely inspired me to give things a go with my own Haru Urara at some point soon. After all, the shining star of losers everywhere deserves at least one victory, and what better one to give her than this?
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