A Review of Umamusume: Pretty Derby
Part 1: Context and First Impressions
"Umamusume. They are born to run. They inherit the names of horses from another world, whose histories were sometimes tragic and sometimes wonderful, and run ever forward. That is their fate. No one knows how the races waiting in the futures of these Umamusume will end. But they will continue to run, aiming only toward the goal in front of them." ~Umamusume: Pretty Derby opening narration
First Impressions
Imagine seeing a massive crowd risng to its feet in accord as they reach the final stretch. With one final push, the race ends in a photo finish. Despite all the horse-racing trappings surrounding the event, the dust settles and the two front runners, both anime girls in ornate costume, wait to see who ultimately pulled out the win.
Umamusume: Pretty Derby is one of the most mystifying media experiences I have ever had. On one hand, the ebb and flow of the show is typical of a sports story, with the ups and downs, setbacks and comebacks, triumph and tragedy that comes with racing. As the opening narration reveals, however, this series' core conceit is that the cast are horse-girls, reincarnations of past race horses, destined to compete on the track.
Perhaps more confusing, the intro shows that the series is part of a larger media franchise, kicked off by a mobile game of the same name. Up until the end of June, 2025, you could only access the game in Japan. Shortly after releasing on Steam and western app stores, the franchise has gotten a significant uptick in public attention. I have not played the game. I am not interested in messing with gacha game monetization. Still, there is an undeniable allure to the strangeness of the premise.
I came across this series before the Global game release, before the franchise got its claws into the angloshpere. I felt like a bit of a crazy person, being one of the only people in my peer group to know anything of it, so seeing a fandom pop up in real time has been a treat.
When I watched the first season, thought it was novel. However, aside from the cranked premise, thought it was just another Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime and a sports anime, albeit one that swapped track and field with horse racing (???). Then, the mobile game came out around the time I was finishing season 2. At that point, I felt that the showrunners hit their stride and found the compelling core of the series; intense competition, personal growth, and the complicated ways in which rivalries and friendships both form in a competitive atmosphere. It also captured the highs and lows of good sports stories, and I’m a sucker for those.After dipping my toes into the game, digging into the online communities that have formed around the franchise, and getting way-too-into the series, its characters, and all the moving parts that make this series unique, it came to dominite my life for a few weeks.
I had to talk about this. I've been talking a couple friends' ears off about this for a while, and I have gotten neck-deep into the fandom surrounding it. I started out incredulous, but now I find it incredibly compelling. I'm also even more opposed to the game's gacha mechanics than I could have imagined, having gotten sucked into the FOMO cycle those games feed on.
Still, I've enjoyed my time with it. And I think it does some really interesting things, interesting enough that I'll be writing way too many words about it. But first, you'll need a bit of background information for any of this to make sense.
Context
Okay, so I’ve made a point to describe the apparent absurdity of this series. The idea of IRL horses, reincarnated into cutesy anime girls, and [still] carrying out racing careers that mirror those of their past lives, and performing a concert headlined by the podium winners, is insane on its face. However, there is some context that can help demystify the project a bit. That context won’t necessarily make the end product sensible, per se, but it will at least illustrate how it came to be.
Umamusume’s premise connects two different Japanese phenomena. The first, and most obvious, is popular interest in horse racing. Back in the 1990s, Japan experienced a bit of a golden age in horse racing, where the general public became enraptured in it. That generation of race horses became household names for a lot of folks, and have continued to persist in the public consciousness. From what I understand, Cygames capitalized on the nostaliga some people have towards that shared experience, and it seems to have resonated with audiences in Japan. They have progressively added new horses from more recent eras, but that Golden Era generation sticks around as series staples.
The other essential cultural touchstone the series leans on is that of the teen idol. If you are unfamiliar (and I'll be frank, I am pretty unfamiliar with this myself), the Japanese pop music industry has a decades-long history of building entire brands around young women, crafting their public image to appeal to a specific slice of the market. Those personas usually involve playing up an exaggerated character based on some established trope, and concerts and apperances involve thematically appropriat, ornate outfits. The closest analogue I can think of stateside is, like, Hannah Montana and the Disney live-action show stars from the 2000s and 2010s, alongside boy bands and girl groups. But idol music is a very distinct cultural product of Japan.
If you take those two disparate cultural influences and pineapple-apple-pen them into a new media franchise, you get Umamusume: Pretty Derby! And, as it turns out, combining horses and idols was a bit of a master stroke. Horses are weird animals with a boatload of personality, and these specific horses have the cultural capital and documented history to have a ton of baked-in character. And, if you want to hook a new audience, pretty anime girls will do the trick!
I find it especially wild that tons of Global players, initially baffled by the existence of this franchise, end up with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of Japanese horse racing, of all things. Lke, knowing the career trajectories, IRL personalities, and little additions to the Umamusume character that highlights some specific aspect of the real life horse. Folks really are diving into VHS-quality horse racing tape to learn more about their favorite anime girl, and I think that's beautiful.