Ines Fujin
Ines Fujin is a character from the multimedia franchise Umamusume Pretty Derby, inspired by the real-life Japanese thoroughbred racehorse of the same name. Residing in the Miho Dormitory as a high school student at Tracen Academy, she serves as a dependable and outgoing elder sister figure. Coming from a financially modest household, she balances her academic and athletic endeavors with numerous part-time jobs to support her family. Defined by her optimistic and resilient mindset, she channels her energy into every race as a high-speed front-runner.
Overview
Ines Fujin is a character from the multimedia franchise Umamusume Pretty Derby, inspired by the real-life Japanese thoroughbred racehorse of the same name. Residing in the Miho Dormitory as a high school student at Tracen Academy, she serves as a dependable and outgoing elder sister figure. Coming from a financially modest household, she balances her academic and athletic endeavors with numerous part-time jobs to support her family. Defined by her optimistic and resilient mindset, she channels her energy into every race as a high-speed front-runner.
Appearance
Ines Fujin features black hair bound into a left side-tail with a green hair tie, green eyes, and light freckles across the bridge of her nose. She has horse ears and a horse tail, wearing a green cover over her right ear. She is regularly seen wearing a white and pink sun visor. Her primary racing attire, titled All-Time Fever, consists of a midriff-baring tube top marked with a green cross, a pink short-sleeved outer adorned with sequins, a matching pink skirt featuring a star-shaped belt ornament on the thigh, and black spats. The letters AF are printed near her lower chest. In casual wear, she swaps her visor for a hat with three cutouts accommodating her ears and ponytail, pairing a black undersuit with a short orange hoodie.
Personality
Possessing a profound sense of responsibility, Ines Fujin is upbeat, open-hearted, and naturally attentive to those around her. To help support her family and twin younger sisters, she takes on various part-time jobs at convenience stores and ramen shops alongside her studies, treating these efforts not as a burden but as a source of pride. Her warm, sisterly demeanor frequently leads schoolmates to accidentally address her as an older sister. Living by her motto of eating well and running well, she routinely stocks block-shaped Toughness Bar energy snacks. Before entering the waiting room prior to a race, she makes a habit of chewing gum to sharpen her focus.
Abilities
Ines Fujin excels as a front-runner, leveraging her rapid initial speed to take early command of the pack. She displays high competence in turf races over mile and medium distances. Her signature skill, Charge Complete! Full Speed Ahead!, grants a speed boost near the final 300-meter mark when running at the front, with the velocity increase scaling up significantly if activated right after cresting an uphill climb on courses such as Tokyo Racecourse. Her skillset also includes medium-distance abilities such as Wild Whirlwind, which reduces opponents' speed while boosting her own, alongside stamina recovery techniques for runaway runners.
Background
Raised as the eldest child in a family of five alongside her father, her physically frail mother, and twin younger sisters, Ines Fujin managed household chores from an early age. Although she initially planned to quit running after middle school to seek employment and help her family, her loved ones urged her to pursue her own dreams instead. Enrolling in Tracen Academy at the high school level with financial support from her father, she continues her racing career while maintaining multiple jobs. She pursues the Classic Triple Crown line starting from the Asahi Hai Futurity Stakes, culminating in an all-out effort in the Nippon Derby.
Relationships
She shares a room at Miho Dormitory with Mejiro Ryan, who is both her classmate and rival. Despite their contrasting origins—Ryan coming from a prestigious lineage and Ines from a humble background—they share a close bond and keep a strict rule against discussing racing inside their room. She performs as a member of the speed-oriented idol unit Nigekiri Sisters alongside Smart Falcon, Mihono Bourbon, Silence Suzuka, and Maruzensky. Through her various part-time jobs around town, she frequently stumbles upon unexpected sides of her peers, such as discovering Mejiro McQueen's secret enthusiasm for watching baseball.
Trivia
Her real-life namesake was a famous racehorse that won the 1990 Nippon Derby with a front-running strategy, triggering the historic Nakano Call chant among nearly 200,000 spectators at Tokyo Racecourse. Her name combines owner Masaaki Kobayashi's prefix Ines with Fujin, the wind god in Japanese mythology. In the game franchise, her voice actor was transitioned from Tomomi Mineuchi to Rika Nagae. A recurring comedy element depicts her keeping her schoolmates' secret hobbies to herself by shouting them into a hollow tree trunk on campus to relieve stress.
