Yumiko Anjou

**Yumiko Anjou (JP: 安城 ユミコ)** is a Japanese Russian Touring Car Series driver currently racing for Tairo-Permskie Sport Rossiya (TPSR). She is part of the Saihara Motorsports Academy alongside many of her fellow teammates in other motorsports series, although Yumiko is the very first Saihara Academy driver from the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.

Yumiko joined the inaugural Russian Touring Car Series as part of Audi's Tairo-Permskie Sport Rossiya (TPSR) with support of Saihara Motorsports. With 12 races complete and 4 races left, Yumiko is officially the 2020 RTCS champion and is expected to join the 2021 European Touring Car Championship (ETCC) with Saihara Motorsports' new operation. She is also the youngest touring car champion in any tier, a record that is not likely to be broken.

## Etymology

**"Anjou"** comes from the French region of the same name in the central Loire Valley of France. However, the meaning of Anjou in this sense is misleading. The origin of Anjou comes from the Celtic tribe that lived near the area prior to Roman rule, and during the reign of the Franks the city of Juliomagus adopted the name.

In Japanese, the two characters that make up Anjo kanji **(安城)** have the meaning "peaceful wall" with different interpretations of this kanji.

Yumiko is often referred as "勇美子" in hiragana.

## Biography

### Early Life

Yumiko is the youngest daughter of Kaito Anjou and Yuiko Saihara (thus making her a distant relative of Saihara team owner Kazuichi Saihara, a fact only discovered by Kaz late in 2020) and has three older brothers, Rikiya, Misao, and Hiro. Unlike them, who pursued scientific ambitions, Yumiko had motorsports ambitions from the start, and while this set her apart from her older brothers, this won her the respect for them.

The Anjou family originally hailed from Nanao in Ishikawa Prefecture. At some point before Yumiko was born, Kaito moved to Taito City in Tokyo near Ueno station along the JR East Yamanote Line.

### Entry to Saihara

Yumiko applied to join the Saihara Motorsports Driver Academy late in 2019 just as she received official approval to race in Russia for the inaugural 2020 Russian Touring Car Series. In a Russia where democracy is the prime focal point of its many ethnic groups and where it is a federal union just like the United States, Yumiko hopes that she will gain experience to pursue a future drive in motorsports. Yumiko chose Russia as her fellow Saihara teammates were involved in other series elsewhere like ESPLAR and IFRC, and therefore she chose a series where she was more likely to showcase her talent. With many established teams from the western part of Russia, she signed on with Tairo-Permskie Sport, a team based from Perm in the Ural Mountains. This team did not necessarily have the best equipment, let alone the best pit crew, but Yumiko made sure of the belief that she adopted from Greater Kanto Motorsports that the driver is the most important part of the car would work to make her competitive to other drivers in the long run.

When the season began, no one predicted that Tairo-Permskie, let alone Yumiko Anjou, would match the more established Moscow-based teams. However, she picked up the pace during practice for the 2020 RTCS Tatarstan Grand Prix, pacing in 2nd and running there for the entire race. Destroying the critics, she would go on to take a shock pole at Mari-El and dominate for her first win, immediately making her a target for the other racers in the field.

### Current Day

In 2023, Yumiko finds herself as the leader of a revitalized Saihara Motorsports, who lost the championship to their archrivals Greater Kanto Motorsports the previous season in the ESPLAR Elite Series. The legendary rivalry between Julia Truong's and Kazuichi Saihara's teams will once again be at the forefront this season, with neither team backing down and racing each other as hard as possible to gain points. With these facts in mind, Yumiko is expected to be front and centre to the battles to come.

Yumiko was largely favored by Saihara over the hot-headed Alio Kyugare, whose overly defensive style didn't exactly win over the hearts of team management. But Saihara considers both of them to be equals, considering their achievements the previous season, and in the rivalry and season to come, the two of them have to work together to produce competitive racing against their archrivals. And new teams are lurking in the spotlight as well. There has been some spotlight on Podkarpackie's Kailu Wieczorek, who is regarded as the "most improved driver" on the road courses, and a dangerous rival in these types of tracks, and especially Hennivan Racing, Team Nitra and Mylo-Kerrivan. Mittyia Hala especially given her past experience could pose a danger, and Mylo-Kerrivan's team structure is still top compared to Saihara's despite having far more consistent success.

Even now, with both drivers and the team being officially Bushiroad-sponsored following the Cardfight Vanguard revolution of the early 2020s, it does not exactly guarantee financial safety. With the series having to find innovative ways to cut costs without reducing the entertainment value, having to cut down on the number of teams in the top class to 20 from 34 initially, and also cutting back on the number of tracks to a total of 35 from 48, it still remains that ESPLAR is the most safety-minded and all-around fast motorsport series. Saihara may not have the most sponsors behind them, and even Bushiroad isn't exactly the safest option in terms of sponsorship alone. But nonetheless, with only one team per manufacturer, each team including Saihara should feel secure about their cars no matter the state of their teams.

Yumiko is also among the only coder-drivers, hoping to challenge Greater Kanto's Kazumi Furukawa in her own craft.

(WIP)

## Trivia

* Yumiko shares no relation to Tokoha Anjou from Cardfight Vanguard G.
* Yumiko is a planned future OC in Lean278's Silver Dragon Saga in SEGA's Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis. However her looks and place in the story is unknown.