Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’ve got a somewhat unorthodox piece for you all, as we touch down at the beginning of Umamusume: Pretty Derby’s second season. I actually reviewed the first two episodes of the original Umamusume back when they premiered, and apparently had a laundry list of critiques: the slice of life material felt by-the-numbers, the sports side failed to create tension, and the concept was so absurd that I could never achieve the buy-in necessary to engage with it emotionally. However, I have consistently heard that Umamusume’s second season is a vast improvement on the original, and am thus prepared to have another go at its fantastical horse girl world.
From what I hear, this second season apparently tunes down both the slice of life interludes and preposterous “also they’re idols” contrivance, honing in on the franchise’s sports drama fundamentals. That seems like a sturdier foundation than the first season’s mix, so while this is still pretty far outside my usual wheelhouse, I’m gonna do my best to keep an open mind about everyone’s favorite horse girl idol drama gambling app tie-in franchise. Let’s get down to the track!
Episode 1
We begin with our narrator explaining the unique features of this world, like how horse girls somehow inherit names of horses from another world. I suppose you might as well embrace that contrivance, as attempting to explain their bizarre names in-universe would likely only tear at the fragile fabric of this reality
Also seems like a bit of a soft reset, not necessarily assuming the audience has seen the first season
We look down upon what seem to be crop circle-esque images of horse girls in high grass. I did like when the original series leaned into the incidental eccentricities of this world, like horse girl-sized phones and special horse girl road lanes
We then touch down at a Tokyo race course. I’ll be interested to see how this production mines effective drama out of its races; it’s an inherently trick sport to dramatize because there’s no direct interaction between contestants, but that didn’t stop Run with the Wind from dazzling
The animation is quite solid for this establishing cut, which is no easy feat – there’s like twenty characters all running away from the camera, necessitating a whole mess of individual redraws for what looks to be a relatively high drawing count
Apparently Symboli Rudolf is breaking away. She’s introduced through an ambitious panning cut, showing off her delightfully overcomplicated hairdo
As I said, I’ll do my best to give this show a fair shot, but it is certainly a lot harder for me to invest in stories with these sorts of ostentatious gacha character designs – basically, designs that look like they were intended to pop through overwhelming color contrasts and glut of ornamentation, but which consequently also seem completely improbable as actual outfits in any sort of cohesive overall world. I feel such designs naturally undercut both characterization and worldbuilding, making me feel awkwardly conscious of their origin point
We see a younger version of our presumed season heroine watching in the stands
Rudolf takes the crown. She is later offered congratulations by her apparent rival Maruzensky
“You’re going to need talent, effort, and luck. And you can’t afford to miss a single one.” An immediate admission that passion isn’t enough
Our lead’s name is Tokai Teio
We then jump to the present day, where a horse girl named Mejiro McQueen has just won a race
Apparently Tokai Teio is now “arguably the most popular horse girl out there.” Interesting point at which to start our story!
Kinda sterile CG backdrops, but her bedroom is satisfyingly stuffed with little markers of her personality, as well as that of her apparent roommate. Kinda surprised that even the most popular horse girls have to share rooms
Her roommate is Mayano Top Gun, which certainly explains her Top Gun poster
Yep, the backgrounds in general are pretty underwhelming. CG is the standard at this point, but it’s always a little disappointing
So she’s also apparently still a high schooler? I suppose they’re obviously not going to push against anime’s overwhelmingly youth-focused paradigm for a gacha adaptation, but this story really does demand a huge degree of fantastical buy-in for a premise that isn’t particularly strong in the first place
We are briefly introduced to a variety of other horse girls as they reach the high school gates, including the first season’s protagonist Special Week
Apparently they’re all members of Team Spica, which will be hosting the day’s open campus event
Cute gimmick of other horse girls passing by with their own names floating beside them. Oh hey, there’s Super Creek, the “goo-goo babies” horse
The open campus event is a handy trick, allowing our cast to explain their education to beginners (and thus the audience) even though they’re all veterans
I like how the “education” part of their curriculum is just learning about horse girl racing events
This episode is suffering a problem common to gacha game adaptations: it’s utterly cluttered with far too many characters, as it’s attempting to make sure everyone’s favorite character gets at least a moment in the sun. One of the many reasons such works tend to fall flat in adaptation, as they generally prioritize offering cameos for longtime fans over telling a focused, uncluttered narrative that might capture a new audience
They then pass by the Yelling Stump, where one horse girl is declaring her passionate feelings for another into the void
Apparently Teio is the first competitor to enter the Derby undefeated since Rudolf
These young would-be competitors are also names I vaguely recognize from social media posts. Kinda interesting how this show stretches out the compressed, simultaneous timeline of the game into distinct generations of competitors
Seems like they’re really setting Teio up for a fall, given all the momentum currently behind her
Wait, Rudolf is also in their school? So do horse girls grow up as fast as actual horses, or is their academy just sort of a liminal perma-high school that all professional horse girls attend?
“The second step is winning the Derby, so I have to win!” Seems like our eventual journey will be about Teio grappling with an unthinkable disruption to her life-long dream
Unsurprisingly, the show uses somewhat janky CG models for its non-showcase race moments
We run into Nice Nature at lunch, another apparent favorite among my mutuals. Instantly recognizable to me as the Kumiko Euphonium horse girl. I like her little Christmas-colored ear warmers
We then bump into Twin Turbo, perhaps the most overdesigned character so far
A nice Rocky training montage as Teio prepares for the derby. Man, they are really setting her up for an awful fall
She bumps into McQueen at the local shrine on the afternoon before the Derby
McQueen is stunned by Teio’s casual referral to her as her “rival.” Different yuri-flavored anime have a variety of illusion-of-doubt terms for their obvious couples, but “rival” is definitely one of the funniest. I’m reminded of this classic Hark, A Vagrant comic series
“That’s going on Umastagram.” Fantastic
Apparently these races are broadcast worldwide. Teio’s quite the celebrity
I like how each of the racers in turn has some private thought on the lines of “this feels like destiny” as they step forward. Every destined victory is someone else’s bitter failure
The race begins, with Teio in eighth position as they take the first turn
Rudolf underlines the challenge at hand: “you could almost say today’s race is a test of Teio’s luck”
Oh shit, she actually takes the Derby
In the aftermath, she at last notices something wrong with her left ankle. Hoo boy
Welp, I guess we’re still doing the post-race idol concerts for some reason. This time both her trainer and Rudolf notice an issue with her ankle. Well yeah, you shouldn’t do an idol routine after a track race!
And Done
Well, that was fine, all in all. I frankly don’t feel particularly more compelled by this season than the preceding one, at least so far; it still feels more like this is payoff for existing fans more than a narrative intended to attract newcomers, and concessions like the overwhelming glut of characters and general incoherence of worldbuilding still made it difficult to emotionally invest in Teio or her universe. The characters feel so abstracted that “achieving your dreams” has moved beyond any sort of relatable human context, and “look at all these horse girls” is a pitch that doesn’t really do anything for me. Nonetheless, this was all still buildup to this season’s actual conflict, so it remains to be seen if the show can mine some genuine pathos out of Teio’s eventual hardships. It’s hard out there for a horse girl!
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