Uma Musume: Yuri, or Bait?

For my first post here, I thought I'd address a common topic: what is bait, and how can you tell if something is sincere? It's a fair question, especially in this age we live in of loved lives and banged dreams and such. It's my belief that Uma Musume as a series is very different from what appear to be its peers. It's a little bit of a unicorn, actually (do those exist in their universe?).

I can't speak for anyone else, but I've been consuming yuri as a genre in various forms since at least 2010 and kind of religiously. Animated or drawn or written, niche or classic, I've seen a lot. And what I can say is that while yuri does come in many different forms, the intention of the creator sets the stage for everything afterward. A work can have "yuri" in the title and be filled with girl x girl fanservice, but it doesn't commit to any of it and comes off ultimately shallow. On the other hand, a work can be completely divorced from yuri as a genre but feature a wholehearted girl x girl romance (eg .hack//Sign). So what makes something genuine?

A lot of it has to do with writing intent as well as framing.

Uma Musume as a project began in 2016, and after some rocky years in limbo, finally released as a mobile game in early 2021. Not only is it an impressive success story, from legal battles, management changes, and years of radio silence to topping the sales charts and performing at a dome (November 2022), but the playerbase may surprise you. In all-girl series, female players are nearly always a minority. No matter how prominent girl x girl relationships are, the intent is usually to cater to the deepest and widest range of likely wallets. For all-girl series, this is frequently men. Women typically aren't seen as a reliable source of profit outside of otome, joseimuke, or BL series. This is what makes Uma so weird.

Every fangirl's dream? (Umayuru, Episode 23)

Since the game's release, players have the option to be a male or female trainer. This isn't unheard of. Cygames's other property, Granblue Fantasy, also has a gender selection, with the caveat that it limits interactions with certain characters. Uma isn't like this. As a female trainer, the language in your dialogue choices is altered in "voice", but not in content. Girls will sometimes refer to you in a more feminine way ("Trainer-chan", for example). None of this has any effect on romantic subtext (or text) or, say, receiving gifts on Valentines Day. When training Mejiro Dober in particular, she has completely different stories for a male or female trainer. As a female trainer, she warms up to you and trusts you, but as a male trainer she keeps a chilly distance.

Many characters are ambiguous in who they're targeted toward, but others become very clear. Super Creek, for example, plays on tropes that are popular with men. Compare that to Air Shakur, who has a thriving community of yumejoshi and GL fans, and you get the sense that they absolutely know what they're doing. Uma may have a niche premise, but its approach reaches across the board. And it works!

Where else, after all, can you find a math and coding nerd orekko with piercings? (Air Shakur story, Chapter 3)