Before going further, I'd preface by saying if you have watched S2 and loved then you should watch S3 and form your own opinion. However, if you didn't like S2 then don't have high hopes here then.
While everything from entertainment value, artistic merit, the premise of the story, the emotional peak moments were all there. The Bias and Narrative Consistency is where S3 suffered.
Meaning:
2/2 Artistic and Entertaining: It handled the premise of a a star studded idolizer, a childhood friend turned rival and the twilight of ones career really well. The final race in particular hit hard after that emotional investment.
2/2 Recommended to everyone: I can't recall a good sports anime that handled the twilight years of an athlete properly. I wont say more since spoilers but I think this has something for everyone to appreciate.
2/2 Emotional Moments: There were multiple extremely emotional moments, with the final climax leaving me kinda dead inside. It was one heluva emotional rollercoaster and I can see myself remembering this for a long time after this show ended.
the 2 points here are one from Narrative Consistency, which compared to S2 wasnt as good and the other for my bias on Power Systems.
1/2 Narrative Consistency: I define it as the ability to ask "What are we doing", "Why are we here", "When is this happening", "Where are we headed" and "How did we get here?" at any point in the story. Having a clear answer at any point means full points, but here admittedly, ever 3-4 eps feels like an arc of its own that doesn't properly flow well together compared to Season 2 which flowed extremely well from start to finish. So while S3 gets the job done, I feel it isn't as clean or smooth as S2.
1/2 Bias Category for meeting 2 of 3 biases. My preference is:
1 = Historical Inspiration, Uma musume adapts stories of Horses that happen in real life into a dramatized anime form which I absolutely love.
2 = Idealogue, It has sufficiently deep exploration of themes such as pursuing your idol as a dream, dealing with childhood friends turned rivals and of course most importantly the Twilight years of an Athlete's career.
3 = Magic/Power System, Meaning the abilities and powers involved in resolving the narrative and plot points. I use Sandersons 3 Laws of Magic for Power Systems here.
Law 1: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.
For S1, I wasnt convinced. Special Week and Suzuka are talented but I dont understand exactly how and where they are talented. I appreciate shallow steps on hills and slip streams but I feel they were only used once or twice max. S2 however solved that. Tokai Teio has flexible ankles and a beastly acceleration on short spurts that makes her a menace. Meijiro McQueen has plenty of power and stamina that allows her to compete over a longer distance and is more consistent. This is best leveraged in their corresponding training arcs with Teio being given endurance training and mcqueen taking strength training. S3 However, I am not sure I am entirely convinced. Kitasan has an incredibly busted body physique. a nod to the real life Kitasan known as a Tough guy. This often didnt translate much onto the race, but they did use it for training arcs.. which was more 'Intense Training' rather than specialized training.
Infact a point about foul play. In S1 we see a horsegirl try to knee jab Special Week, but she dodged it. We saw how Satomo Diamond is a bit frail and was pushed around in the race in S3, but we don't see any of that with Kitasan explicitly. If we had seen how Kitasan with her strong physique could easily withstand pressure, and her strat to be middle of the pack aligned as such it would make better sense here in contrast.
Law 2: The Limitations of your Powers are more interesting than the Capabilities.
Law 3: Explain what you already have before you expand it.
These 2 were properly met as we frequently contend with Limitations of each characters and how they approach them, and all training arcs start with stating what we already have before moving onto expanding it.
Hence with that.. while S1 satisfied 1 of 3 laws. S2 satisfied all 3. S3 satisfied i feel only 2 of them, as the explain-ability of the power systems didn't feel as relevant and it was more Loud Screaming during races instead.
Hence a 8/10. Better than S1 but flawed just enough to not be a masterpiece. The narrative shortfalls and the just enuf absence of the power system compared to S2 brought it down.
But eh, Despite that I still enjoyed and loved it immensely as the emotional rollercoaster was truly something insane.
