Horse Girls in a Pretty Derby Musume: Uma Musume, Anime, and Mobile Game Explained

The anime Uma Musume: Pretty Derby is a spin-off of a mobile game where horse-girls compete in races and also sing like idols. We don't know exactly why, but this game seems to be hugely popular, so we decided to write about it.

It is both a musical and a sports game filled with moe, and the same mix carries over into the anime, which aired during the Japanese spring 2018 season and runs to a total of 13 episodes. That was a time when animal-girls, ship-girls, plane-girls, and similar mash-ups were doing very well.

This anime deals with much more than the protagonist's journey as an athlete. It also shows everything that comes wrapped up in that journey: the emotional side of the protagonist and how she had to learn to keep it in check to reach her goal, the dream of being a runner. If you give it a chance, you will probably fall in love with this anime.

Why Horse Girls?

The game and the anime were not created at random. Their creators were smart enough to combine two things that the Japanese love: moe girls and horse racing. And yes, horse racing is genuinely popular in Japan.

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the team also wanted to ride the wave of anime that mix girls with other creatures. Since the goal was a mobile game, this combination was a perfect fit.

To give you an idea, a very popular game in Japan involving horse racing is Japan World Cup 3, often 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 follows Special Week, a girl who dreams of becoming the best horse-girl runner in the country. To pull that off, she enrolls at a school where horse-girls train to race. There she meets Silence Suzuka, who becomes her friend and joins her team, Spica.

And that is how Special Week's racing career begins. The horse-girls who star in the franchise are based on real-world racehorses, with the same names and even some of the same characteristics carried over.

Although there are plenty of comedic scenes and the tone stays light most of the time, Uma Musume: Pretty Derby also has a serious side, looking at the work the characters put in and even the way they interact with each other before, during, and after the races.

On top of that, there is a lot of consistency in how the elements are handled across the series, how the themes are worked on, and how we can reflect on each of them along the way.

The Tone of Realism in the Anime

Realism, in this context, is the way a fictional world hangs together: the internal coherence between its fantastical or imagined elements, the kind of consistency that makes the whole thing feel believable. In Uma Musume: Pretty Derby, that sense of realism is one of the things the production nails.

The anime gets the realism right. We see phones adapted for the horse ears of the girls, foreign characters who do not speak Japanese, recovery times for injuries that match what they would be for real horses, a protagonist who is talented at running but not invincible, and several moments where her emotional imbalance holds her back during races. The anime focuses on those details to make the audience feel as if there really were a world where horse-girls existed.

But even with a foundation that solid, a story can still fall flat by leaning on clichés, shallow characters, or fanservice. That is not what happens here. A lot of the usual clichés were set aside to give more room to the training and the races, which makes the story much more interesting to follow, since you do not run into predictable beats as often.

Of course, clichéd situations do show up, and most of the side characters are not deeply developed. But the fact that the team tries to vary them and combines those lighter moments with more serious segments that line up well with everything around the sport itself makes this anime very interesting and shows off the creativity of the producers.

Using those kinds of elements in a franchise of this type, without forgetting to add charisma to the characters and working creatively on the situations they go through, is a smart move. Even if a viewer is not into cute, fun girls, there is a good chance they will still enjoy what happens to them across the show.

Realistic and Fictitious Elements

Another strong thing about Uma Musume: Pretty Derby is the winding path Special Week has to take to reach the top. It is true that, during the anime, most of the race results are inspired by real events, but everything that was done to reach those results was built entirely by the production team.

That worked out well, because they managed to convey a real sense of growth in the character with each result. Even with serious talent for running, she still had to take care of her emotional side to become the best of all, and that also showed off the creativity of the producers. We saw that effort and talent on their own were not enough; emotional maturity mattered just as much.

The Endings of the Anime

Another especially interesting aspect of this show was the fact that it set a strong objective from the start, namely Special Week's dream of becoming the best horse-girl in Japan, and that dream did eventually come true.

On top of that, the series also added a second objective partway through the journey, the goal of Special Week and Silence Suzuka running together, which was also completed by the end. That was another nice touch, because it wrapped up everything that mattered for the finale.

In the end, Uma Musume: Pretty Derby proves to be a great anime. It manages to go beyond the basics without losing the simplicity or the emotional pull that a show like this needs to win the audience over.