This Week in Anime

Back in the Saddle

Chris
That was a weird couple of weeks. I've been down in the Preview Guide mines this summer, and every time I got to stick my head out, I felt like I must be cruising cartoon boards in 2010, because everyone was talking about colorful horse girls.

Nice to know that, even after all this time, friendship is still magic.

My previous bit aside, I do find that to be one of the odder aspects of this new racing season that's taken off. I haven't been with Uma Musume since the beginning; I hopped on during the storied second season. But even then, it felt like the series had come a long way since that first trailer that got everyone talking (checks) nine years ago?!

You see why some of us are only a little shocked that the franchise has gotten another wind after all this time?

Just one of the many winners they knew they had on their hands, even if they had to wait nine years for Cap to get her own anime.

It's funny and cool to be able to draw lines directly from that first trailer through the recently finished season of Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray. I'm not sure how many people expected this series to have that kind of longevity after the first trailer, followed by the first season of the anime being released a couple of years later in 2018. But it just goes to show what happens when you back the right horse.

Like raising the stats of your favorite horse girl, creating a game like that takes time and patience. As I said, the second season was when I hopped on the Uma Musume horse, and around then, I also checked out the Japanese release of the game, on account of hearing nice things about it. Of course, being a game largely based around navigating menus and managing stats didn't work out for me, given my decided lack of Japanese reading ability.

I managed to roll my faves, Vodka and Sakura Bakushin O at the start, so technically, I'd say I still won.

I haven't been able to make time for the game in my schedule, but I've been delighted to see everyone enjoying my favorite excitable, easy-to-train horse girl, voiced by Sachika Misawa. While the Cinderella Gray anime seemed to do well enough in the ratings, it's clear that the English release of the game is the catalyst for this latest lap of equine enthusiasm we've been seeing the past couple of weeks.

It makes sense; the different medium means it's capturing a new audience compared to what the anime built up. It especially resonates with gamers who come to it, interested purely in the strong training/raising gameplay, and are surprised by how hard the series commits to the concept. They get to have the joyous experience of encountering Gold Ship for the first time.

You're telling me! My initial thinking was that the English release of the game would promote Uma Musume more in the overall weeb market. What I didn't see coming was the notoriety these horses kicked up in the general audience in the past couple of weeks.

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Suddenly, bigger podcasts and streamers were talking about these funny horse girls I'd been sharing memes and fan art of for years. Northernlion played it!

It was wild and also very cool to see, as many people earnestly got on with the characters and the experience of just how hard racing in Uma Musume goes.

Granted, I know this also came with a fresh dose of commentators who had somehow not thought about anime since 2006 getting an excuse to go right back into some of the classic xenophobic "Japan weird?!" takes. Which was, in fact, more embarrassing for them than for anyone else.

I can remember giving the idol performances, our questioning side-eyes from here inside the weeb-isphere way back when the first season premiered. Now, like you said, it's an element they've gotten me to roll with. It helps when they can play with it after having it for so long, as in Oguri Cap's rustic rural attempt after her first win in Cinderella Gray. I take back any snarky remarks I ever made. This is truly amazing.

To be fair, I think that's just the devs knowing that those of us already familiar with this stable would do anything for Rice Shower.

Given the way the horse girls in the anime are constantly losing their built-up progress to catastrophic injuries, I probably could have told you that.

The quality speaks to the fun that many corners of the internet have been having with the game, to say nothing of why Cygames saw fit to finally localize and release it after all this time. The odd commentator aside, I think it serves as an indication of anime's increasing encroachment into mainstream pop culture. Of course, this funny game about racehorse gijinkas could break through so long as the game itself was good enough. Weirder things have happened.

I can see how that influences the shareability that's turned the game into a social media powerhouse, too. My timeline's been flooded with people personifying the training travails of their horse girls. It's cool that Cygames has seemingly captured the high drama that made the best seasons of the anime so addictive to watch. Even if, near as I can tell, they haven't included enough of the screaming stump.

You can always use more of the screaming stump.

I'm so proud of her.

Having spent this week in between premieres, catching up on Cinderella Gray and its often insane races, I can appreciate that they captured those same hype levels in the game.

It's funny, because yeah, this is the same sort of secret sauce that Uma Musume caught us with back in the second season of the anime. And now they've unleashed it on a whole new audience that's ripe for the dangerously addictive cocktail of anime gacha games and horse race gambles. Frightening! But also neat.

I have heard some horror stories about fans enthusiastically getting into gambling and losing money on races after Uma Musume served as a gateway. It's not great! It's important to remember that companies like Cygames are not your friend, and the companies and conglomerates that own these racehorses, especially, aren't your friends. They've even got strict rules about fanworks depicting the horse girls in order not to upset those sponsors. Which is amusing, yes, but also a little scary to consider.

This is true, the mainstream that Uma Musume has now gotten a hoof in is already chock-a-block with even more predatory sports betting schemes. And the flipside of all of that is that the new audience is getting positively endeared to the horses themselves. I'm delighted that a whole new generation is discovering Haru Urara and cheering her on, even in her well-deserved retirement.

She also won a race in retirement!

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— kate bush's husband (@airbagged.bsky.social) July 8, 2025 at 9:59 PM

It's a unique joy that can only come from this fandom filling out around actual, appreciable animals that exist. In my opinion, it's worth worrying about the impact of the gacha economy or waking up to a timeline otherwise flooded with people posting about wanting to be Super Creek's Goo Goo Babies.

Plus, people are posting new art of Vodka for me to see. I will take it.

God, subway-slammin' shoutout to Persona 5 The Phantom X, the other gacha game that came to bafflingly dominate the conversation while we were on break. I swear the memes weren't flying this fast and furious back when the anime was driving Uma Musume's heyday, it's truly been incredible.

Truly, fan engagement is the glue that holds the horse girl experience together.

It's a fun flash to be living through anyway, and as someone who's been a dedicated fan of the horse girls for years now, you know I'll be sticking around regardless. Cinderella Gray has already been announced for a second cour, and I'm champing at the bit for the movie Beginning of a New Era to release in English so I can appreciate Agnes Tachyon on the same level as many others already do. I'm happy to ride this recent wave of heavier mainstream popularity, even as I know it can't last furlong.

Okay, we should probably quit while we're ahead before our editor tells us to rein in with the horse puns.