Umamusume: Pretty Derby
2018
8
214.1K
TV-14
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Umamusume: Pretty Derby
2018
8
214.1K
TV-14
views
saved
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In a world very much like our own, great race horses of the past have a chance to be reborn as "horse girls"—girls with the ears and tails of horses as well as their speed and endurance. The best of these horse girls go to train at Tokyo's Tracen Academy, hopefully moving on to fame and fortune as both racers and idols. Special Week, a high school horse girl from the countryside, has just transferred to Tracen, and she's determined to fulfill her promise to her mother to become the best horse girl in Japan. On her way to school, she takes a pit stop at the race track and instantly falls in love with Silence Suzuka's style, becoming determined to race on the same team as her.
Countries:
JP
Languages:
Japanese
Content Rating:
TV-14
Runtime:
24min
Status:
Ended
First air date:
2018-04-02
_As usual for my anime reviews, this is copied from the season 1 comments. This series might get a second season—the producer expressed interest in making one—and if that happens I will update this review if/when I watch that second season._
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Average episode rating for season one: 6.61538462
This is another time that I won't round the rating up even though, mathematically, it deserves to be. Even though the series is enjoyable to watch, I wouldn't really call it "Good". The pacing is much too fast, and I never felt there were any real stakes to the story. It never seemed like Special Week really might not reach her goal; she just had minor setbacks. Silence Suzuka had a slightly better character arc, but it was no less predictable along the way.
I like to think this show could have been better in two cours. On the one hand, sports anime are not one of my preferred genres, in general. A two-cour anime about a sport I know nothing about would have been intimidating, and I probably wouldn't have started it on an impulse like I did. But the extra length would have allowed for more leisurely pacing that allowed time to show the girls' training work instead of focusing on races and rarely showing the long stretches of practice in between.
A longer series would have also let the audience get better acquainted with the characters. If your anime needs to put name cards on screen every time a character appears to make sure we remember who they are, you've either got too many characters or not enough time to introduce them all. Or both.