Uma Musume: Pretty Derby

Even though I enjoy the game and franchise as a whole, the first season isn't particularly compelling.

Some of the aspects of their world that are normal but to us are horsey are fun, but underutilized.

The sound was frequently mixed weird with glitches and bad balancing.

The art felt manufactured and soul-less which unfortunately made it visually unappealing and didn't play into the fun designs the horse girls have.

As a sports anime, it missed that sparkle that good sports anime have. The outcomes were pretty predictable and I never felt the stakes. The idol aspect of winning the races feels like a weird afterthought in ... nearly every case.

I picked up Uma Musume: Pretty Derby, not because I thought this was going to be a particularly good show, but because it did at least have an interesting premise. That is, I didn't have any context for the show other than that these girls were anthropomorphized horses.

Well, any promise of the show basically died after episodes 1 and 2. I figured out pretty early on that this show was probably an anime original for how many characters there are. Lo and behold, the show was a game adaptation. No wonder. There's just no way you can create a cohesive show with 10+ characters. It's ... impossible. Even after episode 3 or so, there just aren't any characters that have a lot of screen time or purpose. The show was just doomed to die at the start.

While most game adaptations just straight-up suck, some are good. This show was not of the good ones. I understand that Cygames wants to cater to all the fans by having the horse girls that fans love featured in the anime. Well, sometimes the best thing to do is not try to cater to everyone, creating something generic.

As a result of trying to juggle all of the characters which are impossible, the rest of the show also gets neglected. You kind of just see Special Week, the MC, go fast in races. There's no training, strategy, or much rivalry. It's pretty braindead, and all you see is Special Week performing well in races without much context as to why she is good, or why the race is important to her. The idol thing is a gimmick thing that just seems attached to the races, which it obviously is. The games featured it, but adding it to the anime doesn't make a lot of sense for how little time and focus it has.

So, not only does the show neglect any sort of character development, training, or importance to the race matches in favor of slice-of-life interactions with other horse girls, none of the themes are executed well either. There's a complete lack of focus, characterization, and too many things bundled into a 12-episode season. If the show decided to only focus on the character development of team Spica, which only has four or five girls, perhaps it could have been better.

Oh boy. This was an experience. And not the good kind.

Let me start by saying that I am very biased when it comes to P.A. Works. They are probably my favorite anime studio out there, and everything I have watched of theirs has been enjoyable at worst and masterful at best. Unfortunately, with every good basket of fruit, there’s got to be that one with a worm inside. And this is a huge worm.

I understand that this anime was created as a way to make money. Cygames have a lot of sway, and their funding has led to more than a few anime projects being ... created over the years. Uma Musume is no different, being based off a mobile game of the same name. I understand the limitations that that provides, and I understand that when making this anime, the writers and designers were likely limited in how much they could flesh things out. But this felt like they were told exactly how to handle it with no freedom at all, and it resulted in quite possibly the worst anime this studio has ever put out.

The story of Uma Musume is very simple, but not in a charming way. In fact, you could say that the story finishes after the first episode, because once our protagonist arrives at the academy where she is to be trained to become the “best horse girl” like no one ever was, the story makes nearly no progress. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue if this were a character drama, a slice of life with the intent of hanging on a particular moment in time. But this was trying to tell a story. This was trying to be a moving sports anime about horse girls training and running in races. The world itself is also set up very poorly, failing to explain hardly anything about these “horse girls” and how society functions differently because of them outside of races. However, I blame the majority of the story on the lack of any real characters.

While yes, the characters are meant to be the focus here, it seems to me that Cygames made a long (too long) list of characters that all needed to be featured equally. This is normally not an issue when you have time to develop them all properly, but none of the characters received any meaningful development through it’s entire duration. The designs of the characters themselves are interesting in that they are based on real-world race horses, but those references are only skin deep once they start interacting with each other. All of the “bonds” and “friendships” forged along the way feel forced and unbelievable. It’s clear that they were all written only deep enough to give potential players of the game a surface-level attachment to them. By the end of the show, I found the sleazy coach to be the most relatable character, and he was pretty terrible. Not to mention he was the only male in the entire series, not counting audience background characters. Not that I am against all female casts, but in a setting like this, it simply makes no sense. I’m talking about the birds and the bees here. I guess they just spawn from giant gacha machines– I mean they just somehow get born from human mothers.

The art is very good, probably the only good thing in this entire show. P.A. Works always deliver on the art front, and it seem that even in a show like this their record holds true. The backgrounds are vibrant, the characters are well animated (minus some of the really awkward running shots), and the colors pop.

The sound design is fine. Some of the sound mixing, especially during one particular episode, felt unprofessional and rushed, and the sounds of the crowds often felt far too loud. The music was unremarkable, and while I think the OP and ED song were pretty decent, I feel that the rest of the soundtrack lacked anything memorable.

I can’t even say that I’m disappointed. I knew that this was going to be weird going in. But I didn’t expect it to be this shady and gross. The story is a wash, and the characters are complete garbage. While the art is great, it’s wasted here. The best thing that came from this show was funding to go toward future projects. Here’s hoping this is the last I have to see of the horse girls.