In the days after the Preakness Stakes ended, the name Nishikino Academy spread through the entire American circuit like wildfire.
Because Sunday Silence had only become famous that month and had only just taken the first two American Triple Crown races, although some people had been paying attention to her before, there had not really been any need to deliberately investigate her background.
But now Sunday Silence's popularity had risen, and after the Preakness Stakes ended, she had personally promoted Nishikino Academy.
Naturally, a huge number of people began looking into what exactly this Nishikino Academy she had mentioned was all about.
The netizens had not expected much before they searched. Once they did, they were shocked.
"Hey, hey? Didn't they say Nishikino Academy is a Regional Academy? Why do the pictures from the official site make it look like some kind of noble academy?!"
"These school buildings, these dorms... I feel like the dorms over here in America are basically pigsties—"
"Haha, you're telling me this is a Regional Academy in Japan? Looks more like Tracen Academy to me!"
"Guys, guys, look at the names of the teachers in Nishikino Academy's international class. I'm not seeing things, right...?"
"Holy crap?! Tony Bianca?? I was wondering why there was no news after she retired in Japan and why she didn't go back to Europe. Turns out she's teaching at this academy?"
"An Arc-winning Umamusume teaching personally... Don't tell me Sunday Silence was actually right...?"
"This Nishikino Academy isn't simple!"
To be honest, Nishikino Academy had always been promoting these excellent educational conditions themselves.
But honestly, the results had not been good.
Having the former strongest in Japan, Tamamo Cross, presiding over Nishikino Academy was, frankly speaking, not that attractive to these overseas viewers.
But if you told them that the academy's teacher was not only an Arc winner, but that the student she had trained was now the winner of the first two American Triple Crown races and even aiming for the Triple Crown...
Now they were wide awake.
Damn, this academy might actually have something going on!
For a time, search terms related to Nishikino Academy shot up the trending charts.
And Principal Nishikino, who had been paying close attention to this matter the entire time, could not stop grinning when he saw it.
Damn!
This overwhelming traffic!
Absolute bliss.
Principal Nishikino felt like a little brother being carried hard by someone's thigh. Funding was ample, the staff worked hard, and every plan in his mind could be realized one by one.
Damn, being principal felt way too good, didn't it?
Especially when Principal Nishikino learned that the academy's admissions office had been flooded with phone calls, he was overjoyed.
Now they probably would not have to worry about applicants for the second half of the year~
How comfortable.
In an excellent mood, Principal Nishikino silently took a poster out from his principal's office. On closer inspection, the poster was printed with Sakuraba's big face.
Principal Nishikino silently hung the photo on the wall of the principal's office.
He was especially grateful that he had been able to meet a benefactor like Sakuraba.
If not for him, he would never have had days as dreamlike as these.
If Principal Nishikino had to say it himself, then Sakuraba ought to be enshrined!
Who would not treasure an existence like a lucky cat that brought in wealth?
Ah!
Sakuraba-san!
Eternal god!
...
While Principal Nishikino was devoutly worshiping the Sakuraba poster hanging on the wall of his principal's office, Sakuraba received a message from the Satono family.
Regarding the Umamusume game he wanted to make, because Sakuraba was the investor, he could provide some design ideas.
After Sakuraba gave his ideas, the Satono family would help turn those game ideas into reality. That was roughly how it would work.
If you asked Sakuraba how to design a game, he might not understand.
But losing money? He understood that!
Heh.
Now he had motivation.
If the goal was to lose money, Sakuraba felt there were quite a lot of things he needed to do.
First of all, as an outsider, Sakuraba knew absolutely nothing about game design.
However, he knew that whether a game sold well was related to its gameplay.
Then here came the question. What kind of gameplay would make a game's sales crash?
Sakuraba felt he had an idea!
He was going to design a prison!
The core gameplay would be making players enter this prison and suffer!
Sakuraba thought to himself that as long as the core gameplay he designed was a prison, there was absolutely no way any player would like playing this game!
After all, surely no one liked going to prison, right?
Next was the game type!
First, the genre had to be a mobile gacha game!
It could not be a buy-to-play model or a subscription model. It had to be a mobile gacha game with zero cost and no pressure to get started!
The gimmick of a free gacha game could easily attract large numbers of players into trying it.
Because it was free, there would be almost no barrier to entry.
After attracting a huge number of players and using them to finish promoting Oguri Cap, Sakuraba would use his ultimate move to drive them away!
That was to poison the banners!
First, he would make two banners: one character banner and one support-card banner...
He would throw cute Umamusume with appealing designs into the character banner as hard as he could. Once players were lured in by the cute Umamusume and pulled on the character banner, Sakuraba could laugh loudly at them.
Haha↓
You fell for it!
Once you pull character cards and start raising the favorite Umamusume you spent massive resources to obtain, you will discover that if you want to train a powerful Umamusume, you need powerful support cards!
And the banner Sakuraba planned to poison was precisely this strength-providing banner!
Two hundred pulls for one spark! And then? Stuff it full of disgusting trash support cards!
What were people afraid of in a gacha game?
Off-rate spooks!
You thought the drop rate was high, so you could get what you wanted?
Haha, watch me give you ten garbage SSRs!
And then, after a player really did spend two hundred pulls to spark one powerful support card, Sakuraba would jump out and say to anyone who reached that point:
Naive!
You thought a support card was complete just because you pulled it?
If you want to play with the complete version of the support card, you have to pull four more copies! A fully limit-broken card is only the starting line for support cards!
If you don't max it out, all you get is a castrated game experience.
But if you want to max it out, then you have to face this disgusting gacha hell!
Forced spending!
Sakuraba was not even going to pretend. He was going to slap those two words right in every player's face.
I refuse to believe that after the game looks this ugly while eating your money, you would still want to keep playing it.
At that point, there was one question.
Then could I not just skip the gacha and be a casual scrub?
Of course Sakuraba welcomed players like that.
If you did not pull cards, then Sakuraba would not make money, right?
And not making money was a good thing!
Sakuraba wins!
To make sure everyone came into contact with this disgusting gacha system, Sakuraba even planned to hold a player PvP tournament every month and make the players compete themselves to death.
Want to stop your favorite Umamusume from getting kicked away by someone else?
Then pull!
But what if you still do not want to pull?
Then quit!
Hehehe, the perfect player-retention-destruction plan!
Sakuraba did not even dare imagine what kind of godlike person would still keep playing a game like this after he unleashed this full combo.
How could anyone possibly enjoy going to prison?
---
T/N: looks at umamusume pretty derby