i forgot to mention this in the last ask, i knew i was missing something!! before curren!! before sirius!! way way back!! opera o was the first character i took note of because she's voiced by soramaru. i'm a milky holmes fan and then a nico yazawa fan. so she stayed in my mind. why did i forget this...
as for opera o herself, i really love her. i love 99 in general. i love the real life history...
opera o herself, the end of century overlord, magnanimous and kind... maybe a little too loud... encourages her rivals to beat her but is still too strong. her strength makes her lonely despite everything. she's kind but what she did in her wake some may consider not very nice. (00 gen wouldn't...)
it's a very clever reflection of the basis since TM opera o became more and more unpopular as time passed. it was also said that his way of winning was boring (always clinches it at the end). i don't agree, but i'm a person from the future, i could only imagine goint to the races and being disappointed TM opera o gave another curbstomp performance.
i also like that a lot of her mannerisms are lowkey based on wada jockey, since TM opera o was a special horse to him (even though TM opera o stopped listening to him after a while and was better off for it🤭 wada jockey has grown since, he was just a rookie)

how i got into it i just answered in the last ask (sorry, they literally just sent it 🤣)... as for pairing...
hmmmm.... when i think about it, it's like this...
i mentioned it in the last ask, but before i got into uma this year, i liked looking at fanart of makuiku, shakafai, gorumaku... i lost interest in gorumaku when i got into uma but i still like the former two a lot.
i also liked beruguru and rudosiri (i had an interest in the former two because i still thought gurunee had her misandrist setting, i heard dober admired her, i liked both of them... i also had interest in sirius because i will follow fairouz ai until the day i die.)
when i got into uma i almost got into curreaya, but it slipped past, i just think it's cute but i'm not interested that much (lord kanaloa entered my life...)
but the existence of nakajoda permanently tethered me to the series. i'm sorry. this answer was so long wided for no reason. it's nakajoda. the answer was always nakajoda. it's nakajoda. thank you.

i don't remember if anyone asked before, even if they didn't, it's fine!
i used to be a massive uma hater actually 😂 like a straight up anti. i saw the first concept movie cygames put up (the one where ogurin and rudolf kiss) and i was like wtf is this? ofc back then uma had a very different vibe... i was really stubborn about it though. i was like, this game will never come out! and such. i probably should let bygones be bygones and not repeat the stuff i said 🤣
even back then, when the game came out, my friend was playing right? and he showed me curren~ i never forgot her. ofc i was still stubbornly trying to be a hater, going "this is the only design that interests me" (you're an idiot. shut up)
but the important thing is curren left an impression on me. i kept really liking her.
as the years passed my position softened a bit but i wasn't interested at all. i ended up liking mcqueen too along the line. i liked looking at shakafai and makuiku fanart, i think gorumaku too, but these days i'm not too into gorumaku? maybe 🤔 i still like shakafai and makuiku though so 2/3
around this year? let's say late late last year. so, around this time. i had at least two friends who were trying to get me into it, so i was brigaded from both sides, right before third anni i gave in. curren was also in twincolle so i rerolled to get her. i didn't think i would play for long, but it really grabbed me after a bit. i had a lot of fun reading the homescreen interactions for days, refreshing the screen constantly, but i was scared of doing any training for a week 😅 once i ran out of homescreen convos(!) i got to it. then i discovered bday convos can be watched back and watched jordan's. nakajoda took over my brain like a parasite...
getting into keiba was slow but sure 😅
i think umamusume probably saved my life. i was going through a lot. i'm a very private person so i won't elucidate on it but it really helped my brain get a little better!! i'm glad!! 😭

see, these are my words as someone who hasn't watched s3. i think you should watch it if you want, but i personally might not ever touch it. it seems kind of fumbled...? either way it's incredibly devisive with keiba fans due to it portraying kitasan black's career in an accidentally unflattering light
for me, since i'm a keiba fan, i probably won't enjoy it. i realize i'm too much of a stickler for real life history (i think people who rigidly see irl and uma as 1:1 are dumb tho) so i might not enjoy it that much.
so if you want to, you should! it's just kinda mid and nothingburger aside from a few eps i've been told. it doesn't interest me that much. i think the time for me to watch it has passed due to the aforementioned keiba thing

more or less, yes! you can watch it!! GO!!!
but it's great that you watched RTTT because they are chronological in real life history (RTTT is based on 1999 classics year and BoaNE on 2001. we do not talk about what happened in 2000<--guy who is always talking about it)
since you watched RTTT you probably get how the triple crown races work but i'll leave a glossary here for anyone on the fence and checking this question
classics year - 3 year old season, when most horses debut (some debut at 2, but the generation is defined by the 3 year olds. so pokke, tacchy, cafe and dantsu are from the 01 generation)
triple crown - once in a lifetime set of races that can only be done by 3 y/o (classics year). consists of satsuki sho, japan derby, kikka sho. you only get one chance, so if you miss them tough luck
japan cup - big race for the best of the best. can include overseas horses, so it's like the world's stage.
arima kinen - final race of the year, this is a huge deal