Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network. Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
Then again, when other outlets talk about covering political horse races, I don't think they've ever meant it quite this literally.
Sylvia
Chris, all I've been thinking about this past week is how different the second season of Umamusume might have looked if Silence Suzuka had instead been detained for potential horse crimes.
Well, that plus all the global/national ramifications of our current political reality/hellscape. But mostly it's been about horses.
This naturally isn't the first time the absolute kudzu patch that the USA Department of State is these days has scuppered a show, but it is extremely notable for our specific demographic due to the sheer scale and popularity that Uma Musume has reached. That means it affects a lot of people, including those that might not have considered political realities ramifying their interests.
Also, not for nothing, there's just an inherent veneer of askance to this international situation that escaped weeb media containment when the news story involves cartoon horses and girls. It's a lot to dig into!
And more than enough to make you want to scream cathartically into a hollow tree stump, as horse girls are wont to do.
To recap, this past week, there was a planned series of concerts in Los Angeles as part of the "Uma Musume: Pretty Derby - 7th Event World Tour: The Stage." Pretty cool, right? I'm on the wrong coast, but I have friends who were planning on going. However, several days before the concerts, Cygames announced through their official channels that they had not yet secured visas for the performers. This did not bode well, to say the least.
The freakout was understandably intense. I'll say that I was impressed by Cygames' forthcomingness and follow-through a little later in this saga, but I have to admit that here it feels like they were cutting things close, only letting people know that cancellation was a possibility this late in the game.
I mean, I understand that they didn't want to cause said freakout too early if they could help it, to say nothing of the fact that they simply might not have realized this was going to be an issue until it got down to the wire. There are, pointedly, a lot of moving parts that go into making international concerts happen. If anything, the announcement like this could have been seen as a last-minute gambit to get things moving.
And certainly, this PR Hail Mary garnered a lot of attention rather quickly, from what I could tell. Notably, Oculus founder and all-around insufferable tech-lord sycophant Palmer Luckey responded to the announcement on Twitter with a "Check your DMs!," implying he had some pull with the powers that be. Which is very funny in retrospect, considering that zilch came from it.
Personally, I can't believe somebody from Silicon Valley would overpromise and underdeliver. That doesn't sound like them.
What was he going to do, bribe them with an otaku-themed cryptocurrency?
Image via TwitterImage via Twitter
It was ignoble all around, up to and including horse girl fans @-ing the actual executive administration begging for help. It goes hand-in-hand with my point about the "cartoon horse girls" framing to show how it can seem absurd, but is actually properly representative of how far-reaching the consequences of these kinds of political decisions are. And I mean decisive.
No Uma for the USA. First of all, credit where credit is due to Cygames for promising to not just refund the tickets but also reimburse fans for travel and lodging expenses. That can't be cheap, and I imagine it's going to be a logistical nightmare, but at least they're putting their gacha fortune to good use (besides their penchant for unusually high quality anime series)
It is an above-and-beyond maneuver, and the sort of thing you could probably only pull off if you had the amount of funds you'd get from, say, an unholy combination of gacha gaming and horse racing.
And to be fair, the people they're paying probably already put a ton of their own money into their horse wives fund, so this might be considered more of a rebate than a reimbursement.
But seriously, zero credit to right-wing Umamusume fans for reaping what they've sowed, and reaping loudly and indignantly in the public sphere.
There's the old saying about how if you don't do politics, politics will do you. But this goes beyond performative apoliticism, and straight into "What the hell did you think was going to happen going in for the most loudly anti-international administration in recent memory when it came to your beloved international acts?"
Again, it's not like this is an unknown issue. Speaking from another fandom I'm in, Transformers-fan rock group The Cybertronic Spree previously had to skip the first stop on their tour this past summer because of their own visa issues (they were coming over from Canada).
Notably, they were also seemingly kept waiting on updates on the process until the very last minute, signaling that these sorts of (lack of) communication issues may just be endemic to the whole deal these days.
Right, it's impossible to know exactly what went on behind the scenes and who was communicating (or not communicating) what. But it's worth emphasizing that this is no isolated incident. The same thing happened around the same time to the singer Tarokiki, who was supposed to perform at a Wuthering Waves concert.
Notice Regarding Singer Tarokiki's Replacement at the Wuthering Waves Concert Tour "To the New World" (Los Angeles Stop)
Dear Rovers,
We regret to inform you that due to the unforeseen complication with singer Tarokiki's U.S. visa application, she will be unable to perform as originally scheduled at the Wuthering Waves Concert Tour "To the New World" (Los Angeles Stop) on October 17th, 2026.
We are coordinating alternative vocalists and arrangements for the tracks originally scheduled to be performed by Tarokiki. Details regarding the replacement vocalists and related performance arrangements will be announced through Wuthering Waves' official channels once confirmed.
Additionally, the official refund channel will now officially open providing fee-free refund services for ticket holders affected by this lineup change.
Refund Request Window: You may request for a refund from the time of this announcement until 7:00 PM, October 17th, 2026 (PDT).
How to Apply: Submit your refund request online via the AXS Help Center directly.
- AXS Support Channel: Log in at https://t.co/rmc1qwa0OL and click "Contact Us" / "Submit a Request"
- Customer Support Live Chat: Available during official business hours by AXS.
Please note the refund procedures described above are the only official channels. Any refund requests made through other means will not be eligible for processing.
Important Terms & Conditions:
- This special fee-free refund applies only to original purchasers through AXS who bought tickets prior to this announcement and wish to cancel due to the lineup change.
- Tickets must be unused and have no record of venue scan-in, entry to ticketed on-site activities, redemption of event perks/merchandise/ticket gifts, or any other form of use. Any associated ticket barcodes will be permanently invalidated upon refund approval.
- Refunds cover the base ticket price and standard order/handling fees charged at purchase. Non-refundable items include third-party expenses (e.g., travel, lodging, or transport).
- Requests must be submitted through the designated AXS apply channels within the official refund request window. Requests submitted after the applicable deadline or outside the designated channels will not be eligible for a refund.
- Refunds will be credited to the original payment method within 5–7 business days. The organizer reserves the right to deny refund requests involving fraudulent claims, resold tickets, or otherwise used.
- For any additional questions, please contact [email protected]
We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this lineup change may cause. Together with our updated lineup, we will do our utmost to deliver a fantastic performance for everyone.
Thank you for your understanding and patient support.
And given that there are plenty of other examples outside the anime/manga/gacha world, it feels increasingly less likely that this was due to some screw-up on Cygames' part. The common thread here is the State Department.
I've seen some less-than-good-faith commentators trying to assert that Cygames might have dragged their hooves on the visa process and been the ones to blame here. But given what a well-oiled machine that massive media corporation is, and the other examples we just ran down, I'm comfortable saying there's just no way that's the case.
Image via ts7th.umamusume.jp
Notably, the Uma World Tour does have additional stops in London and Seoul still slated as coming up. If those get out of the gate without a hitch, it'll make clear that Cygames' planning ought to have been right on...and paint an unfortunate picture for any other international acts that might still be planning to make the USA a stop.
Like, this should not be surprising either. The current Trump administration has been very vocal about "securing" the border, which has included lots of moves to limit and delay the processing of visas. And if your goal is to have fewer immigrants and foreign visitors, which theirs clearly is, then this is one way that you do that! Cause and effect!
There's also just the bald-faced absurdity of six months being an insufficient span of time to process visas for a bunch of women who just want to pretend to be horses on stage for a couple of days. Regular governmental bureaucracy inefficiencies aside, that's nuts, right?
You would think! Notably, ANN reached out to Academic Visa Connections PLLC, which provided a statement with their own insight into the subject. Specifically, regarding the classifications typically needed for these performances: O and P petitions cannot generally be filed more than one year before the performers' services are needed, and USCIS's regular processing timeframes can vary considerably. Current processing times are posted on USCIS's website as 13 months for a P-visa approval and 14.5 months for an O-1 approval, which means USCIS's regular processing timeframes will not work for performers. That makes relying on regular processing difficult for organizers who must coordinate fixed concert dates, travel, and substantial financial commitments. There is an option to pay extra for "premium processing," but evidently that comes with a host of its own caveats and isn't even a guarantee! So basically, yeah, the processes at the Department of State are hella messed up right now, and no one can be sure if they're going to get their visas in time, if at all!
It is hella messed up! Based on those wait times, Cygames would have had to begin the visa process over a year in advance of the concert dates, yet it's unlikely they would have even had the tour dates finalized over a year ago, let alone all of the other logistical details. The US dates were only announced back in June, four months ago. So if they were waiting on the visas for six months, it's very believable they filed for them as soon as they knew when they'd be there.
And naturally, the option to pay extra for a chance to have your visa expedited reeks of extortion. It certainly doesn't seem like a system built to benefit visitors to the US.
I can't stress enough the well-oiled weeb-media machine that Cygames is at this point. You consider how much money it's costing them to cancel this thing—they wouldn't have gotten the ball rolling in the first place had they not otherwise been assured they could make everything happen with the proper processes. But it seems a lot of tours are learning in real time the last year or so just how hostile the States are to international performers.
Another point is that some enterprising horse detectives allegedly noted a wording change in the original datamined version of Cygames' cancellation announcement versus the one that was actually published. I don't want to get conspiracy-brained here; we have no way of knowing whether the visas were actually "denied" rather than simply delayed indefinitely. But what a conscious wording change like that does signal is that someone in the legal team didn't want to antagonize an administration that's already so antagonistic they wouldn't even let the horses come over here.
While globalism is not without its own set of problems to be aware of, America's rekindled isolationist fervor over the past two years has had a ton of awful downstream effects. And most of them go beyond horses. At my day job, I have coworkers who have had to find a new employer because my current one was unwilling to put in the time/money/effort to help renew their work visa this year. These are people who have lived here for years, with families and friends, who may have to uproot their lives through no fault of their own.
I won't bemoan anybody if funny horse girls end up being their radicalizing moment—we need more people realizing how cruel and absurd this system is—but I hope they don't let their awareness end at horse girls. Even within the confines of the animesphere, these restrictive immigration policies have a significant chilling effect on anyone considering a trip to America.
That's a point: if Cygames' organizational empire and dump-truck-loads of money couldn't get them here, it absolutely doesn't bode well for regular folks who just want to visit for a vacation.
And that's intertwined with the Uma Musume concert itself! Like you said, I know of a bunch of fans who were planning to visit for this event, many of them from outside the LA area—internationally, even! That's a missed experience for a lot of people, not to mention a lot of missed opportunities for the local economy, which would have benefitted from the tourism and outside traffic. Representatives of the Uma fandom even made the local news right before the would-be concert's weekend, and you can hear how there was a host of other events happening adjacent to this.
Hopefully the Hallowienerfest Dachsund Race at least went off well. Less gambling on that anyway, I presume.
I dare not presume "less gambling" in any situation in 2026 America. But that's a topic for another column. It's also worth considering how this might affect fandoms and conventions in general. The fact of the matter is that anime comes from Japan, which is not the United States. If we want to connect with the people who make anime, they need to be able to travel abroad and visit. Actually, it's even more basic than that: they need to feel like they can visit. Each cancelation and policy change erodes trust in the State Department's system, and that means people in the industry are going to be less likely to bother trying.
You're right, that's the knock-on effect of all of this. A quick search I did showed that Japanese guests at American anime conventions haven't quite slowed down this year compared to previous ones, but as we've seen, the process has only become more backlogged. How long until the companies behind other franchises, ones that don't have Cygames-sized war chests, see this as writing on the wall and hold back rather than run the financial risks of canceling?
Does that, and the general international hostility, have further downstream effects on anime promotion and popularity here in the States overall? I can't say, but it's absolutely a wild card that's in play.
As wild as they get. And let's imagine a "best case" scenario: it looks likely there will be a significant blue wave in the upcoming midterms. That might cool some of the rhetoric around immigration and perhaps even reverse some of this regressivity. But would that be enough? Eroded trust is difficult to regain, and especially so on an institutional level. What guarantee do visitors have that there won't be a similar policy upheaval in the future? What happens when people view our government as fundamentally unstable, regardless of the party in charge?
This is one of those key issues. There's really no reason for other governments and international organizations to play ball with even the "better" iteration of our administration if there's no guarantee they won't wheel around and turn into frothing supervillains again in four years.
High-level international political calculus, yes, but incredibly salient nonetheless. And as we've laid out here, it's shockingly understandable on a micro level via this Uma Musume concert cancelation situation! Which, yeah, smaller-scale personal happenings are how a lot of previously apolitical people come to start actually understanding politics!
Connecting the personal to the political is an important step that too many people avoid in the modern age of online radicalization that abstracts most issues away into "owning the libs" and such. And for better or worse, Trump 2.0 has been, in large part, about consequences that can no longer be abstracted away. Which sucks because literally everything is worse now, but at least significant swaths of people seem to be waking up to why we actually need a stable and functioning government. And yes, part of why you need that is so you don't end up with a bunch of disgruntled horse fans.
Maybe this will be a big moment for the Trainers in the Uma fandom. Maybe some of them will pursue political education and be able to say, "If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college."
Until then, the silver lining has been seeing a big company like Cygames going above and beyond to make it right for people, even after they got hosed over by our government. And it's been seen in the heartening reactions of the Trainers who came together in LA anyway to participate in fan events and even pay their respects at impromptu vigils. And yeah, glib as we can be about it, it's seen in the people posting. Here's hoping they understand that they've got to run out of the gate and go to the polls.
To be frank, I'm fairly heartened by that reaction as well. I know this topic will inevitably attract bad-faith comments that I will not read (not that this will stop any of you), but I think a majority of people affected by this horseplay will find their sense of justice galvanized. Gallop, don't trot, to your voting location on November 3rd.
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