It started as a joke. Most things in the Northernlion Cinematic Universe do. You’re watching a guy who has built an entire career on being the "King of Isaac" and the master of dry, observational wit, and suddenly, he’s knee-deep in a Japanese horse-girl simulator. If you weren’t there for the Northernlion Uma Musume club saga, it sounds like a fever dream. If you were there, it was a masterclass in how a creator can bend a niche, high-friction genre to their own specific brand of comedy.
Uma Musume: Pretty Derby isn't exactly "NL-coded" on the surface. It’s a hyper-specific Cygames title where you train anthropomorphized racehorses who are also idols. It involves heavy stat-tracking, RNG-dependent training arcs, and a lot of menus. Usually, Ryan Letourneau (Northernlion) thrives in games with high "banter potential"—titles like Super Auto Pets or Balatro where the gameplay provides a steady rhythm for him to talk about grocery store etiquette or the socioeconomic implications of a shopping cart left in a parking lot. The Northernlion Uma Musume club became an unexpected vessel for exactly that.
The Birth of the "Northernlion" Horse Girls
Let’s be real. Nobody expected the crossover. When the game first started making waves in the West, it was mostly confined to the gacha-hardcore crowd and the anime community. But NL has this weird gravity. He pulls games into his orbit that shouldn’t work for a generalist audience and makes them mandatory viewing.
The Northernlion Uma Musume club wasn't just about winning races. It was about the absurdity of the premise. You have a man who once spent forty minutes arguing about the "sandwich-ness" of a hot dog now meticulously choosing whether Gold Ship should focus on her Speed stat or her Stamina. It was a collision of worlds. The "Club" functionality in the game allowed fans to congregate, but more importantly, it allowed for a shared narrative.
People were genuinely invested. They weren't just watching a gacha game; they were watching a guy navigate the bizarre cultural landscape of a game where Secretariat is a cute girl who likes carrots. The chat was a chaotic mix of seasoned Uma Musume veterans trying to give advice (which Ryan would mostly ignore or playfully mock) and newcomers who were just there for the "pogging."
Why This Hit Different Than Other Gacha Streams
Most streamers play gacha games for the "gamble." They want the dopamine hit of the 0.01% pull. That’s not really NL’s vibe. He’s much more interested in the "roguelike" elements of the training mode. To him, an Uma Musume run is basically a run of Slay the Spire or Monster Train, just with more singing and dancing.
The training loops in the game are brutal. You can spend thirty minutes building the perfect horse only for a random event to tank your motivation right before the big race. That is the "NL Salt" sweet spot. Watching him react to the game’s cruelty provided some of the best clips of that era.
- The "Gold Ship" obsession: She was the perfect mascot for the stream. Chaotic, unpredictable, and prone to ruining a run for no reason.
- The "Banter-to-Gameplay" ratio: Because the game has a lot of downtime, it allowed for those legendary 10-minute tangents that have nothing to do with gaming.
- The sheer confusion: For the first week, half the audience didn't know if he actually liked the game or if it was a bit. Honestly? It was probably both.
The Technical Hurdle of the Japanese Client
You have to remember, for a long time, there wasn't a localized version. This meant NL was navigating menus in a language he doesn't speak, relying on visual memory and "vibes." This added a layer of slapstick comedy to the Northernlion Uma Musume club activity.
Imagine trying to explain to a casual viewer why a bald man from Canada is squinting at Japanese kanji to figure out if he should give his horse an extra rest day. It’s objectively hilarious. He turned the language barrier into a feature, not a bug. It became a game of "What does this button do?" where the stakes were accidentally retiring a top-tier athlete.
What Most People Get Wrong About the "Club"
Some critics at the time thought it was a sell-out move or just chasing a trend. They missed the point. If you look at the history of the Northernlion live streams, he has always had a soft spot for games with deep, idiosyncratic systems. Whether it’s the bizarre logic of Checkered Flag or the hyper-specific mechanics of University Tycoon, he likes to poke at things until they break.
The club was a community touchstone. It wasn't about the leaderboards. It was about the shared experience of participating in a piece of internet subculture that felt completely alien. It was "niche-maxing."
The game demands a level of sincerity that NL’s persona naturally undercuts. That tension is where the comedy lived. When the game gets emotional during a winning "Live" performance (the idol dance after a race), NL’s deadpan commentary provided the necessary grounding. It prevented the stream from becoming just another weeb-bait gacha session and kept it firmly in the realm of "The Library of NL."
The Lasting Legacy of the Horse Era
Eventually, like all things, the frequency of the Northernlion Uma Musume club content slowed down. The "Daily Routine" shifted. New games like PlateUp! and Marvel Snap took over the rotation. But the DNA of that era remains.
It proved that his audience is willing to follow him into any rabbit hole, no matter how weird or seemingly off-brand. It solidified the idea that the game doesn't matter as much as the perspective of the person playing it. It also introduced a massive chunk of the Western gaming community to the sheer polish of Cygames’ production values, even if they were only there to see if Ryan would finally win the Arima Kinen.
Actionable Takeaways for the Curious
If you are looking to revisit this era or find similar "high-banter" content, there are specific ways to engage with the Northernlion archive.
First, don't watch the raw VODs unless you have six hours to spare. Look for the "Library of NL" or fan-made "Best Of" compilations specifically highlighting the Uma Musume runs. They trim the menu-faffing and keep the high-energy reactions.
Second, if you're a streamer yourself, take note of how he handled the "niche" aspect. He never apologized for playing it. He didn't treat it like a "guilty pleasure." He engaged with the mechanics honestly while maintaining his specific voice. That’s how you keep an audience through a 180-degree genre shift.
Finally, keep an eye on the localized release rumors. While the Northernlion Uma Musume club might be a relic of a specific time in Twitch history, a Western release often brings old creators back for a "nostalgia run." Given how much the game has evolved since his peak involvement, the potential for a "Return to Horse" stream is always non-zero.
Check the fan-run Wikis for specific "Club" names if you’re trying to find the old rosters. Most of them are full now or inactive, but the Discord archives usually have the screenshots of the top contributors from that specific window of time in 2021-2022. It’s a digital time capsule of a time when the "Egg" went all-in on the Derby.