“Umamusume: Pretty Derby” (April 2018, P.A. Works) is a show about a horse girl training to be the best runner in all of Japan for her mother.
Fia Fischbach/THUNDERWORD
This show follows Special Week (voiced by Azumi Waki) going to a school specifically for horse girl racing. Horse girls are human/horse hybrids that excel at running and other cardiovascular activities in comparison to humans. There she befriends several horse girls, joins a team with a Mr. Miagi-type trainer, and creates a heated rivalry with one of her rising star classmates.
As any viewer of animation knows, voice acting can make or break a show. Thankfully the show manages to pull it off, with the important characters’ voices having small details like dialects that other shows sometimes struggle with or just outright ignore. An example of this is El Condor Pasa, (Minami Takahashi) a horse girl who grew up in the states then flew out to Japan – her dialect is very American, with several English words slipping through sentences.
Every character has a unique design, like the character Vodka (Ayaka Ōhashi). She has a very prominent white hair patch that partially covers her right eye, and her racing outfit is very free, with shorts, a tank top, and a leather jacket.
The next thing that needs to be talked about is sound design. While racing the heavy pounding of footsteps is very reminiscent of horses stampeding and the rhythm of the steps becomes important to help Special Week grow.
One issue would have to be the surface-level personalities, they aren’t entirely fleshed out or expanded upon. There could definitely be room for character growth that just isn’t done.
The animation isn’t phenomenal either, it’s mainly shots of running on the track, training on the track, or even the special training, but with stairs. There isn’t a lot of breathing room, it’s like the characters are living specifically for racing.
There isn’t much else to say about “Umamusume” besides the fact that it is an enjoyable show, but it is also quite bland. If viewers like the silly horse girl show then that’s perfectly understandable, but so is not liking the show.