Now despite the show having an ensemble cast because it's a gacha game adaptation, the show mostly focuses on two of the girls, Special Week and Silence Suzuka. I think they work fine as the main duo, I even liked their relationship even if it's nothing deep.
However, most of the other girls sadly miss out on good development because of this direction choice. Now, maybe people that play the game already know enough of the other girls but as someone who is anime only I seriously struggled to even remember the names of half of the other girls. Also I wish they at least gave Trainer-kun a name, even if he is meant to be the player self-insert.
Oh and Uma Musume isn't just a sports show. For some reason they also have the girls do idol performances after the races..? I suppose Japan really loves their idols but to me it would have been better to focus on one or the other rather than trying to mix them up. Granted in this show, the idol stuff was hardly present so it's only a minor gripe at best.
The pacing of the show is a bit too fast to my liking. Granted most of the races that get glossed over with just mentions don't seem to be very critical to the plot at least. Although the progress of Special Week felt rushed to me. It's a bit hard to fathom all of the stuff that happened actually happened in just a one cour runtime.
Now to mention something good for once; The show doesn't just randomly name the girls, they are actually based off of real life counterpart race horses that have existed and reading through discussion threads of people that are into this sport, it was cool to see that even a lot of the races were parallel to real history. Albeit some smaller and bigger liberties were taken to make the story more engaging and I'm okay with that.
I had seem some people say visually the first season doesn't hold up well and even if the latter seasons improve on it, I have to say I think the show looked fine. Sure, some of the CGI wasn't all that pretty but the races were mostly hand drawn anyway. Sound department was solid too, the gallop during the races made things more tense.
This show to me is the exact same how I felt about Girls Und Panzer too. Cute and wholesome girls duking it out in some kind of weird fantasy sport setting. It's all face value and no depth and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just not a mix that I can personally get that into.
PS Gold Ship was probably my favorite.
