Pretty Derby made everyone a horse girl in 2025

This summer, I was sitting in my friend’s living room doing what we call “parallel play,” where we each enjoy a separate activity while in the same room. She was painting, and I was playing Umamusume: Pretty Derby. Despite her activity being altogether more cultured than mine, it only took a few races for her, her partner, and her roommate to all gather around my phone to cheer on my racer like it was a high-stakes sport. It’s undeniable: Umamusume makes everyone a horse girl, and that’s exactly what happened for a lot of casual gamers in 2025.

If you somehow missed the fever that swept the nation this year, let me attempt to explain what is undeniably a weird concept. Umamusume: Pretty Derby is a game all about managing an anime horse girl — they’re a lot like normal girls, but with horse ears and tails and a penchant for carrots — as they make their way through a season of racing. You’ll need to balance improving their various stats, managing their rest and happiness, along with other details like their skills and total number of fans. The game has existed in Japan since 2021, but only arrived elsewhere for mobile and PC in 2025.

It makes more sense to think of it as a sort of roguelike, where every run you pick a racer and try to do a bit better than last time. Successful past horses can also be used to form the lineage of a new one, giving them a better head start to success. The real hook of the game comes in the races themselves, which players have the option to watch play out in full. You’ll see absolute blow-out victories, last-minute bursts to the front from an underdog, and suddenly find yourself desperately shouting full-volume at an anime horse girl to activate their special ultimate skill.

These heart-pounding races made the game an absolute hit on Twitch. According to TwitchTracker, the game saw a 1.1K% gain in viewers, and 944% gain in streams. Even content creators you wouldn’t expect to see playing the game, like Ludwig and Northernlion, were pogging up over anime horse girls.

It went far beyond Twitch, too. I’d never really been what I’d consider a horse girl — I had a quiet respect for those dedicated to the lifestyle who would spend elementary school recess whinnying, but it never hooked me. All of that changed with Umamusume, however, and not just for me. The entire world caught horse fever, both for the virtual racers and real-life creatures.

That’s because every horse girl in the game is actually based on real-life Japanese race horses, with the developers even including existing relationships between horses that have shared lineage. Though many of the horses have passed on (my personal favorite racer, Silence Suzuka, passed away in 1998), some like Gold Ship are still around, and have garnered a massive new following thanks to Umamusume. Before the horse Haru Urara passed away this September, for example, she was gifted 2.5 tons of grass — roughly the weight of two cars — by fans. She was beloved by many for her unenviable record on the track: zero wins and 113 losses.

The love for the horse girls of Umamusume also became a viral internet sensation in almost every capacity. As someone who had never expressed to the algorithm any previous interest in horses, I was suddenly getting fan cams about the real-life Gold Ship and videos of the horse girl Agnes Tachyon set to the music of Death Grips on my feed.

It wasn’t just edits, either — Umamusume spilled over into real life more than many other popular games this year, and a lot of it was honestly heartwarming. Fans are having meet-ups at racetracks where they dress in costume and cheer on real horses, and I’ve seen multiple videos about fans dressing up as horse girls to attend Denver Broncos games. The International Museum of the Horse in Kentucky even dedicated an entire exhibit to the horse girls and their counterparts.

It’s important to note that the overall library of Umamusume media goes well beyond the game. There are multiple anime series and manga, but neither (particularly the manga, as it’s hard to find translated physical versions) had caused much stir in the United States until the release of Umamusume: Pretty Derby. All of that has now given fans even more lore and horse girl goodness to latch on to, and a second scenario — the sort of career path framework used in each run — was just added to the game in November, reigniting the fire within many players.

The impact of Umamusume: Pretty Derby on pop culture in 2025 was undeniable — that’s a major reason why it ranked within the top 20 of Polygon’s top 50 games of the year. Many players wound up learning about the history of horse racing, sent grass, dressed up with friends, and even made new ones — all because of a shared love of anime horse girls.