the anime Uma Musume: Pretty Derby is a derivation of a game made for mobile where horse girls compete in races and also sing like idols. We don't know why, but this game seems to be in high demand, so we decided to write about it.
This is a game that is both musical and sports moe, elements that can also be seen in the anime, which aired in the Japanese spring 2018 season, and which has a total of 13 episodes. This was a time when animal girls, ship-girls, plane-girls, among others, were very successful.
This anime deals with much more than just the protagonist's journey as a sportsman, but also about everything that is involved in it, also showing the emotional side of the protagonist and how she had to learn to control it to achieve her goal, her dream of be a runner I'm sure you will fall in love with this anime.
Índice de Conteúdo
Why Horse Girls?
This game and anime was not created without reason, its actors were smart to put together two things that Japanese people love, moe girls and horse racing. That's right, the horse racing are quite popular in Japan.
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the authors also wanted to ride the wave of anime that mix girls with other creatures. And since the goal was to be a mobile game, this combination was perfect.
To give you an idea, a very popular game in Japan involving horse racing is Japan World Cup 3 usually mentioned as a bizarre game in the west. It is a horse racing game with unusual characters.
The dream of being a runner
The story of this anime has as its protagonist Special Week, a girl who dreams of being the greatest horse-running girl in the country. For this she goes to a school where horse girls are trained to run. At this school she meets Silence Suzuka, who becomes your friend, and joins your team, the Spica.
And so begins the career of Special Week in the race. The horse girls who star in the franchise were based on real-world racehorses, even having the same names, as well as certain characteristics of them.
Although it has a lot of comedy scenes and is very light most of the time, Uma Musume: Pretty Derby it also has a serious edge, talking about the work done by the characters and even the interactions they have with each other before, during and after races.
In addition, there is a lot of consistency in terms of the way the elements are treated throughout the series, the way the themes are worked and how we can reflect on each of them.
The tone of verisimilitude of the anime
If you do not know the meaning of verisimilitude, it is about coherence, the harmonic connection between the fanciful or imaginary elements that are essential for the understanding of the text. Where everything in the anime seems really true, that you forget it's a fantasy world.
They got a lot right in terms of verisimilitude, in the anime we find phones adapted for the girls horse ears; there are also foreign characters who don't speak Japanese; when some girls get hurt, the time to recover is similar to what it would be for horses in the real world; although the protagonist is great at running, she is not invincible; and several times during the anime her emotional imbalance takes a toll on her during races. The anime focuses on details in order to make the audience feel like there really is a world in which horse girls exist.
But even with all this very solid foundation, it is still possible that the story is poorly executed by using clichés, shallow characters or fanservice. But that's not what happens in this anime, as several clichés were left aside to give more prominence to training and races, which makes the story much more interesting to watch, since we won't have so many predictable elements.
But of course, the cliché situations occur during the anime, including most of the characters are not even widely developed, however, the fact that they try to bring a certain variation of that and join these more silly moments with more serious excerpts that work well everything that has to do with the practice of sport, make this anime very interesting and demonstrate the creativity of the producers.
Using these elements in franchises of this type without forgetting to add charisma to the characters and work the situations that occur with them in a creative way is a great idea. Because, even if the consumer doesn't like fun and cute girls, he will probably like what happens to them during the work.
The article is still halfway through, but we recommend also reading:
Realistic and fictional elements
Another very good thing in Uma Musume: Pretty Derby, is the tortuous way in which the path of Special Week takes it to the top. It is true that during anime most of the results of the races are inspired by real events, but everything that was done to reach these results depended exclusively on the production team.
This was good because they managed to give us the feeling that the character was evolving with each result, and that even though she had great talent for racing, she still had to take care of her emotional side to become the best of all, in addition to showing the producer creativity. We saw that effort and talent were not enough, but emotional maturity was also needed.
The endings of the anime
Another extremely interesting thing about this work was the fact that it had a strong objective from the beginning – which was the dream of the Special Week of becoming the best horse girl in Japan — which in the end came to fruition.
And, furthermore, also managed to add one more goal in the midst of the journey — the of Special Week and Silence Suzuka run together--which was also completed in the end. This was another very good thing, because it closed very well everything that was important to have a conclusion at the end of the anime.
After all, Uma Musume: Pretty Derby shows itself to be a great anime, as it managed to go beyond the basics, but without losing the simplicity or emotional appeal that anime needs to gain the audience's empathy.
