Unfortunately the Akatsuki shaped elephant in the room made it really hard for me to continue enjoying enstars as it was. I mostly feel it was very intentionally spiteful to long time fans and disrespectful to Ibuki's established identity. I'm not as well-versed in the history as I'd like to be, but I found adding him to Akatsuki as an Okinawan/American character really disrespectful considering the history and ongoing struggles for ryukyuuan peoples to be recognized.

That aside, I just generally didn't like the vibe of the stories after a point. I'm a Valkyrie oshi and IMO after the climax event Raison d'être , they're retreading a lot of the same ground now arcwise without much progress. Which isn't bad but it's not what I'm looking for. As for the other units I supported like Eden, kurebi, switch, and esupuri, I felt like the continuous additions to the ensemble stars universe in terms of world building and the background radiation of eichis globalization of ES created a lot of dissonance between some self contained unit arcs and what was actually going on business/politics wise. I know for ryuseitai and fine the dissonance was probably worse because of their direct involvement with the expansion into Okinawa.

💜: I'm feeling pretty good actually! I just wrapped up a big stream (though I had some technical problems at the start.)
🌊: Lately I have been watching Pluribus and it is very very good. I feel like I've been watching more television this year which, feels like a bad thing when I say it but it's nice to have something to look forward to...? Gamewise I just finished ZATO for streaming and I started playing Lost Judgment again in my downtime
🪸: Oh wow an otherkin fact. Honestly I have not really been having A Lot of otherkin moments lately but ZATO took me out back and shot me...Really though have you seen me and Asya Shubina in the same room . how can you know we're not the same person

To begin with I've always liked horses, lol. I might've grown up reading Warrior Cats but I've always liked horses just as animals, as indicated by my past interest in MLP as a franchise, but I never got into horseracing until I got into Umamusume

With Umamusume my first introduction to it was Road to the Top which I sometimes think is even better than the movie it preceded (Beginning of a New Era) at least in terms of directing quality and narrative cohesion...? But what really captured me about the franchise was its approach to dramatizing historical events and I really love learning about the real horses and their histories ...theres just sooo much drama in there and I think this is something I'm seeing in The Royal Family j-drama too, but the way racehorses are all representative of the hopes and dreams of their trainer, their jockey, their owner, all the people who cared for them, and the horses in their pedigree... I guess I just really loved the authenticity and wholesomeness of Umamusume and I actually think the "idol" aspect works extremely well in the context of its world, esp.since I came to it after falling out of love with Enstars.