The podcast is charging in for another episode with John, Lorelai, Crystal, and Lilith. This week, John's been playing more Raidou: Remastered, and Pokémon Emerald Seaglass. Both he and Lorelai have been obsessing over horses with Umamusume Pretty Derby and she's also been playing Persona 5 The Phantom X when she was at multiple Pokémon conventions. Lilith has been going into a lot, playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Dragon Quest XI, and every Build Engine game you could imagine. Crystal has been living the good life with R4: Ridge Racer Type 4. In the news we go over the Druck leaving the Last of Us TV show and a ton on the XBox Layoffs. You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Social Media @TheGamesline, Lorelai, John, Lilith, and Crystal. Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions, send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net! You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone! Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real. Edited by Lorelai Video Production by Lorelai Here's an excerpt by Crystal: Lorelai: Umamusume is what if iDOLM@STER didn’t have the mediocre rhythm game that it made you do for training stuff. John: My frame of reference is immediately Monster Rancher, because that’s what I played as a kid. Lorelai: I genuinely am shocked at how much I’ve been enjoying it. Crystal: I’m looking at the Umamusume wiki right now; I didn’t realize there were 131 playable characters. John: The game has been out for 4 years in Japan, and it was honestly very strange how long it took to come out over here. But it was also highly delayed for its initial release anyway. The reason why they have all the idol stuff is because it was originally supposed to come out when all the idol stuff was very big. When Umamusume came out the idol stuff was less of a thing, and now, over here, it’s even more so less of a thing. Everyone’s just kind of like, “Why are they singing?” Lorelai: [laughs] Yep. John: I’ll be honest, I don’t watch any of the concerts. Cancel me if you must, but I don't. I just want to race. I want to win. That’s what I’m here for. Lorelai: I like watching the races. It opened the ability for me to skip the races half the time, and I’m like, “No! No, I refuse!”  John: You get to skip it if you’ve gotten first place with that character in that specific race before. But I watch it, because it’s exhilarating! You want to see your girl win! And sometimes they pull off some crazy shit, and sometimes they get last place for no reason because they don’t feel like it, and you have to deal with it. That’s sports. I’ll actually talk about it on the anime podcast next time, but Lilith and I watched one of the movies last night with some other friends. It’s the Beginning of a New Era, and that’s why she says she likes Agnes Tachyon, because she’s in that and she’s insane and it’s great. I was ready to just be like, “Oh, you know, it’ll be cute because it’s these characters that I know, whatever.” But I thought it was just a great sports story!  I would say the main girl is a little underdeveloped, but overall I just thought it was compelling and extremely well-animated. So I would recommend checking that out if you have any interest in Umamusume, or if you’re just a sports anime fan. It feels something like a Haikyu!! or a Slam Dunk or something like that. Lorelai: I haven’t watched the anime yet. I’m gonna have to now, I hate that. Lilith: Like John said, it was surprising that they were doing the sports anime “teeth gritting and screaming” except they’re all horses. But also just really impressive animation overall. At one point, I jokingly said this was Redline for horses. John: And it is! It pretty much is!Lorelai: Horsegirl Redline!?Episode Notes