Gold Ship

Gold Ship (Japanese: ゴールドシップ), often shortened to Golshi, is a character from the multimedia franchise Umamusume: Pretty Derby who also works as a virtual YouTuber on the franchise's YouTube channel PakaTube. She made her VTuber debut there in March 2018. She is known for her unpredictable, mischievous and sometimes violent personality, and she is often described as the most popular character in the franchise.

Profile

Item	Detail
Debut	March 2018 (PakaTube)
Franchise	Umamusume: Pretty Derby
Channel	PakaTube
Nickname	Golshi
Basis	The racehorse Gold Ship

Career

Gold Ship is modeled on the real racehorse of the same name. That horse was known for being temperamental and for either winning by a wide margin or losing badly. His best-known loss came at the 2015 Takarazuka Kinen. He became agitated in the starting gate and started about five seconds behind the field, which led to about 12 billion yen in lost bets. He was later retired to the Big Red Farm in Hokkaido. The character keeps this unpredictable quality.

Gold Ship made her VTuber debut in March 2018 on PakaTube, a YouTube channel created for the franchise. In 2022 she performed at VTuber Fes Japan. When PakaTube reached one million subscribers, she performed a dance with the gold YouTube Creator Award. A set of 24 LINE stickers based on her and the channel was also released.

Gold Ship is also a trainable character in the game Umamusume: Pretty Derby. She appears in the anime adaptation as well. In its third season, she loses a race after losing her temper in the starting gate, a scene based on the 2015 incident, and the season also covers her retirement.

Activities

Streaming style

On PakaTube, Gold Ship takes on challenges such as playing video games. Her playing of Shadowverse on the channel was seen by fans as the spark for a crossover between the two games. When she seemed to be missing from the first lineup of that crossover, she confronted the producer on her channel, and he revealed that she would be included. Another PakaTube short, made with the manga Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray, drew her in that manga's style under the title "Cinderella Gold".

Music and works

Umamusume: Pretty Derby (game and anime adaptation)
Umamusume - Pretty Derby PisuPisu SupiSupi - Golshi-chan, a manga about her as a kindergartner, serialized in Weekly CoroCoro Comic from November 2023
Guest appearances in World Flipper, Shadowverse and Granblue Fantasy Versus
Merchandise such as a Nendoroid, a figma figure and an F:NEX figure
Food promotions with KFC, in which she is dressed like Colonel Sanders, and with FamilyMart

Characteristics

Gold Ship is drawn as a slim girl with silver hair. She is fickle and whimsical, and she often skips training to cause mischief or follow odd hobbies. She is unpredictable and can be violent: for example, she dropkicks her trainer after winning a G1 race. In her story, she says she let the player become her trainer because the player seemed to have a lot of free time. Even so, she is described as quite intelligent, and she sometimes shows a gentler, more mature side to her friends. In races she may hang back at the rear of the field and then surge to the win if she feels like it, much like the real horse. Her results can be very good or very poor depending on her mood, regardless of how she was trained.

Critics often name her the franchise's most popular character. In Nico Nico Douga's 2021 list of the year's top Internet terms, she ranked second, behind Umamusume itself. In the 2022 Famitsu Dengeki Awards she won Best Character. Writers have pointed to her volatile nature and her surprising dialogue as the main reasons for her appeal.