Uma Musume Pretty Derby Season 3

Episode 12

I don't know how this show gets away with this, man. This episode of Uma Musume Season 3 would seem to be its penultimate one, setting up the swan song of Kitasan Black. So, it's allotted a certain amount of sentimentality and earnest schmaltz. The episode's title is simply the main character's name; that's how you know an anime is serious. But the episode is also making an effort to involve another of its cast in Cheval Grand. As I've remarked in other reviews, Season 3 has been somewhat lopsided in using ostensible main characters who weren't Kitasan or Satono Diamond. That should be a tee-up for the storytelling to come up short.

What I can't ever count Uma Musume out on, though, is its ability to embody a mood. The placement of this episode in the story clears it from the beginning to dial the bittersweetness up to 12. It starts with one of the franchise's patented horse girl press conferences, which should always be inherently hilarious. But Kitasan's matter-of-fact announcement of her impending retirement lands with the proper punch of any sports story. It pointedly mirrors the stepping down of Gold Ship from earlier in this season while making a point about the concept of "endings." It's respectable to see Kitasan choosing to end her career on her own before something as immediately drastic as an injury does it for her.

It's something Uma Musume has teased at previously but has yet to deliver properly: What does the end of a horse girl's career look like? There are the injury-riddled risings and fallings of characters like Tokai Teio and Meijiro McQueen, who were still racing towards a hopeful competition with each other. Even Gold Ship stuck around just fine this season, continuing to train and run in other instances despite no longer participating in the Twinkle Series. For Kitasan, this all seems like it might be her last hurrah, with little indication of if or how her career will continue after her final two races (Who is screaming "Check the wiki" at my house? Show yourself, coward. I will never check the wiki.).

The case for Kita quitting is made by how hard her body is fighting her. It's communicated via the painful, ragged breathing delivered by voice actress Hinaki Yano. But the finality is also expressed in how others react to her decision. Her fans in the shopping district, as indicated last week, have resolved to support her through to the end. Kitasan's fellow competitors grapple with more uneven feelings regarding the situation. Duramente has to deal with Kita departing just as she sees her as a genuine rival. Dia can't bring herself to compete against her friend following her defeat in France. And then there's Cheval Grand.

Cheval seemed like she was supposed to be more fully fleshed out, akin to Rice Shower from Season 2. But that's not happened. Her regretful intoning about how she's never beaten Kitasan only brings me to sarcastically respond with, "Girl, you have barely done anything in this show!" It feels like whatever they did with Cheval by this point, while the audience is so honed in on the sunset of Kitasan, would be too little, too late.

But then this is still Uma Musume, after all. Kitasan's career, the way she's burned bright and fast, led to her stumbling into being one of the best ever to do it. That allowed the writing to analyze the characters in her orbit simply because of that proximity. Suppose Cheval is defined at the eleventh hour and twelfth episode here simply by her inability to beat Kitasan. In that case, that adds elevating context to Kitasan's decision to continue competing against her peers to the bitter end. She's not just giving herself a couple more chances to win; others get their last shot at proving themselves by beating her.

It's the emotional and conceptual converging on another solidly animated race, boosted by a remarkable insert song in the background. Kitasan's breathing is a continued auditory feature as well. But mostly, Cheval's genuine desperation and realization of what competing with Kita means to her puts her over for me despite this being the most she's done in the series by a country mile. Aspects of it recall Twin Turbo's unforgettable run from Season 2. And while this race can't wholly recreate the tear-jerking alchemy of everything set up by that dark-horse win, the spirit is still very much the same. This deep in, Uma Musume is a series that can still run on emotionally devastating vibes even when its actual writing is clearly less calculated. That should be the expected magic of a show that got me to care about anthropomorphized cartoon horses this much in the first place.

Rating:

Uma Musume Pretty Derby Season 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is excited to be back for the mane event, and is hoping he won't have to be a neigh-sayer. You can catch him horsing around on his blog, as well as Twitter, though he doesn't expect that to be around furlong.