What’s it about? Special Week is a horse girl, a special kind of person gifted with incredible running ability. She’s come to the prestigious Tracen Academy in order to be the best in Japan and fulfill her promise to her mother.

Any anime can have an outlandish concept that sounds ridiculous on its face, but it takes work to really sell those ideas beyond a single punchline. It’s not clear if Pretty Derby will get there or sink into being a plain old “cute girls do the sports” anime, but it’s certainly got style.

Uma Musume Belly

Pretty Der—look, I can’t pretend, I’ve been calling it “Horse Girls” this entire time and so have you, probably. Let’s not delude ourselves just because the weird spectacle anime turns out to have been made with a surprising amount of care. Anyway, Horse Girls is a P.A. Works project, so viewers can be assured of a consistent level of basic narrative and visual competency throughout. If your worries are to the tune of “what’s this season’s Maerchen Maedchen,” you’re fine here.

The series is definitely out to catch eyes by being weird. For some baffling reason, this is not a world where all people are animal hybrids of some sort. No no, there are regular humans out there coming to the horse girl derbies. And those horse girls, if they enter the winner’s circle, are rewarded with the chance to give an idol concert, because of course they are also idols.

Uma Musume Pretty Derby

1. Mejiro McQueen (Uma Musume) (13) Gold Ship (Uma Musume) (11) Special Week (Uma Musume) (10) El Condor Pasa (Uma Musume) (8) Toukai Teiou (Uma Musume) (8) Silence Suzuka (Uma Musume) (7) Daiwa Scarlet (Uma Musume) (6) Grass Wonder (Uma Musume) (4) Oguri Cap (Uma Musume) (3) Symboli Rudolf (Uma Musume) (3) Exclude Relationships.
2. Uma Musume Pretty Derby tells about In a world very much like our own, great race horses of the past have a chance to be reborn as 'horse girls'. Check out our Uma Musume Pretty Derby cosplay selection for character Toukai Teiou, Mejiro McQueen, Daiwa Scarlet, Oguri Cap, Silence Suzuka, Special Week from our costumes shops.
3. Special Week's admiration for Suzuka can easily be interpreted as a crush, with Spe's reaction to first seeing Suzuka in action seeming a bit like Love at First Sight. Suzuka isn't at all put off by her admiration so far, and seems to be fond of her as well, even blushing and smiling a bit when she first calls Special Week.
4. Uma Musume Special Week Dead Super Smash Bros Melee Rom Play Home Illusion English Patch Rpg Maker Xp Warcraft Best Free Online Photo Slideshow Maker Regarder En Stemaing Merry Men The Real Yoruba Demons Pro Tools Compatibility Mustang Hardtop Convertible Kit Jungle Scout Pro Cracked.

Uma Musume Pretty Derby galloped into the new season with a truly bizarre premise that hasn't yet drawn much attention. This week, Nick and Micchy make hay about this uniquely equine sports/idol show while it's still sitting pretty in the spotlight.

But I assure you, the hole goes deeper. The girls attend a school that has desks, chairs, and classrooms, but only teaches them racing-related things. They wear school uniforms and special idol uniforms to race in (of course they do!) if the opening theme is any indication, but they also nail horseshoes onto their running shoes.

Uma Musume Special Week Died

And, in by far the most off-putting, unpleasant part of the premiere, Special’s coach, Trainer, is introduced by feeling up Special’s thighs like she’s merchandise. In public. Twice. Tragically, he survives after being kicked in the head. About the only good thing that can be said of Trainer is that the show seems to have played his introduction as a (bad) one-off gag; the groping doesn’t happen again, and he’s quickly maneuvered into the position of inspiring mentor rather than “comedic” creepazoid. Hopefully that remains the case going forward.

The resident horse girls are also all named after actual racehorses, which really just hammers home how absurd racehorse names can get. I would like to share my favorites with you: Sara Poole, Air Groove, Narita Brian, Symboli Rudolph, Mister CB, El Condor Pasa, and… Vodka.

Uma Musume Pretty Derby Special Week

It’s the kind of half-thought-out world-building that takes care to add the sound of rumbling hooves while these teeny-tiny girls are running around the track, but totally fails to think through the implications of what having a whole sub-class of horse people means. We see inside the classroom and none of these girls are learning algebra, so like… where do they go if they don’t end up racing? Is there someone with a big shotgun waiting if one of these girls breaks their leg? Are the dormitories a-whisper with tales of the glue factory? Do retired racers get put out to breeding pasture? All of the school classes are taught by human women, so what aren’t they telling us? Where are the horse women? WHAT IS THIS DYSTOPIAN NIGHTMARE LAND.

The fact that I had time to think of these things while the anime was introducing its enormous, generically cute ensemble cast might not speak well of how the show will fare when it runs out of surprises. The race sequences look undeniably good, and aside from the really unpleasant introduction of Trainer (as well as a weird, awkward game of Twister in Episode 2), it’s basically free of fanservice or uncomfortable framing.

Uma Musume Special Week Dead Body

Heck, sometimes the show’s even funny on purpose, with strange little sight gag flourishes like Special running to school with a carrot in her mouth. Oh! And Special turns out to have two moms, which is nice. It’d be nicer if one of them wasn’t dead, but apparently we’re taking baby steps here. There’s also some minor shipteasing between Special and her roommate, Silence Shizuka, but given the genre and how couched it is in close, platonic relationships built on admiration, I wouldn’t count on it going any further than implication.

Whether the entire run of the show can rise and stay above basic competency for an entire cour is uncertain. I definitely had fun watching this double premiere, but a considerable amount of that was making my own conspiracy theory fun rather than actually becoming invested in the characters and stakes—about a 70/30 split, I’d say. In other words, I had a big ol’ grin on my face by the halfway point, but I seriously doubt it’ll be able to keep that hook for three months.