The Near Hentai Monthly Lady for February 2026 is Gold Ship from Umamusume: Pretty Derby, and what perfect time for me to draw this franchise for the first time. Later this month we’ll officially kick off the Year of the Horse on the Chinese calendar, so a horse girl winning NHML this month feels so serendipitous.

Now, I know nothing about Umamusume. I don’t own a smart phone and have never played any sort of mobile game in my life, especially not one like this. I’ve also never seen the anime, and frankly I don’t much think I ever will. For the most part I don’t really find this franchise all that appealing, and I find some of the reasons it exists off-putting to say the least.

That being said, if I was going to draw a girl from this franchise, I’m glad it was Gold Ship. I’ve seen her around a bit, and she’s easily the most interesting character from the franchise. The horse she’s based on seems like he had so much personality, and it translates really charmingly into an anime girl. I also find her design more interesting that the other Umas, at least in the anime.

You see, whenever I work on an NHML for a franchise I’m not familiar with, one early step is to pull up their page on Fandom or Wikia or whatever and see what characters they have close relationships with. Like may wikis, the Umamusume one includes a “Relationships” section, so I was browsing through everyone there to see who caught my eye. I did find two characters with designs I kinda liked, but while trying to look into them it seems they haven’t really shown up in the anime yet (as best as I could see). I did find at least one video of both of them doing some sort of song and dance number with Gold Ship, but while watching that I realized that I don’t actually like Gold Ship at all outside of the anime.

In the games she’s much more generic looking, with a default face that I think all the girls have in the game. Everything I like about her, specifically her build and face shape, are distinct to the anime. Since I don’t like mixing my influences, this made me much less likely to use either of the girls I’d had in mind. While watching anime clips, though, it became clear there was only really one good partner for her, and that’s Mejiro McQueen. Mejiro isn’t really my type or anything, but she seems to be Goldshi’s best friend and was in almost every single clips I could find of her from the anime. So I just went the obvious route here.

As for Gold Ship herself, though, I do have a fondness for her and wouldn’t mind using her again. Since I don’t care about her source material at all that might mean she shows up in some crossover Asks or something, I don’t really know, but don’t be shocked if I draw her again.

With this post, NHML nominations for the month of March are now open. For those who don’t know, I’ll run down the rules real quick. Nominations are limited to one per person. You can nominate any female character you want, provided I have not drawn her within the past calendar year (though I prefer characters I’ve never drawn, period). Previous NHML winners are not eligible for a second time. Nominees must also not be from the same franchise as this month’s winner, Umamusume. If you violate any of those rules, I’ll let you know, and you can nominate someone else. I know it can be hard to keep track of these things. You may nominate by either commenting in the cBox, commenting on this post, or emailing me (Nearphotison2010@yahoo.com). I’ll compile a list of the nominees in the sidebar of this site, and then on March 1st I will use a randomizer to select the winning character who I will proceed to draw sometime that month. I look forward to seeing who you all nominate this time around!