The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide - Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray 2nd Cour

Kasamatsu Training Center Academy is located in a deserted area. One Uma Musume appears there. Her name is Oguri Cap. Her overwhelming running style overturns all common sense. Soon, the ash-covered girl known as a "monster" will carve out a new legend.

Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray 2nd cour is based on a manga series by Taiyo Kuzumi. The anime series is streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Sundays.

When I think about Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray, I think about the ferocious competitor/confused smol bean Oguri Cap. So I wasn't expecting the second cour to kick off with its focus on a different ash-gray racer. It turns out this Fujimasa March sequence is a full adaptation of "The Mermaid Left Behind,” a spinoff manga short about Oguri's first rival back in Gifu. March still has her sights set on facing Oguri on the national stage and angry grape Yamano Thousand thinks she should snap out of it and find a new rival (hinting at Yamano herself). Though Oguri Cap herself is nowhere to be seen, this amped up A-part is a return to form for Cinderella Gray: a high-octane, fierce fight to the finish line that puts the adrenaline of racing front and center.

Really, Oguri Cap herself didn't feature much at all in “A New Hill To Climb.” If anything, she was the comic relief with her deadpan reaction faces. There were far more hotblooded competitors in this episode strutting their stuff, from Dicta Striker picking fights (that Oguri barely seemed to notice, to my delight) to Sakura Chiyono O focusing on her comeback so hard that her trainer admonishes her to take breaks. Oguri's main rival, Tamamo Cross didn't feature at all in this episode, but this short horse girl has a long shadow that hovered over the episode nonetheless. And don't get me started on Super Creek, who did nothing but wordlessly cross paths with Dicta in the hall, yet nonetheless provided foreshadowing for her no-doubt fearsome upcoming debut. Here, the show's gacha game origins pay dividends into the classic sports anime formula. Anyone could potentially have what it takes to win the next big race, because each of these horse girls is somebody's favorite and has her own fully-fleshed out training arc in the game.

This episode was a bit of a bookend between arcs as the second cour gets up and running, with March's story as a breather before we rev up to the main event. I was expecting more reflection on Oguri's part—the last time we saw her, she had been blindsided after her winning streak was cut short. To surpass Tamamo Cross, she will no doubt need to exceed her current limits, but in this episode, it's clear that supporters Belno Light and Roppei are still in the planning stage before Oguri is ready to take action on her training. It's interesting that instead of diving into Oguri's recovery from a devastating loss, the episode focused on March doing just that—about her far earlier loss to Oguri. March was still struggling with that; meanwhile Oguri is back to her old self and cracking a multilingual mayonnaise joke right after losing to Tamamo. I'll be disappointed if Oguri never addresses her loss, but there's still plenty of time. Featuring a strong new OP and an ED that's, sweetly and unexpectedly, a duet between Oguri and Tamamo, this episode piqued my interest for another season of this eclectic show that blends classic sports anime tropes with the thoroughly modern vehicle of horse-inspired gacha waifus.

Cinderella Gray returns not directly to Oguri Cap herself, but rather, wisely, goes back to check in on where she came from. True to the timeline as it was, I can see how it might have been disappointing to see the Oguri Cap's rivalry with Fujimasa March cut short. But as Uma Musume's always been good about illustrating, a setback or a shift is never the end of a horse(girl)'s story. March is still running, and what's more, she's still chasing Cap even though she's not directly competing with her. Simply staying aware of that wider racing world is enough to get March to focus on getting her groove back.

It's a comfortable way to bring Cinderella Gray and the viewers a bit more down to earth—coming down from the highs of the previous cour, and contextualizing the gap/gain of Oguri's loss by reminding watchers of her humble origins. It's just nice to return to her old out-in-the-sticks school, see that March has soldiered on beyond her prior frustrations, and confirm the point of the franchise that every racer is the hero of their own story—with their own career path ahead of them.

Granted, March's status as a backup character from a prior arc does consign her race to being less explosively impressive compared to what I've come to expect from races animated by Cygames Pictures. There are several static sliding shortcuts given in close-up throughout the race, with regular run cycles for all the horse girls carrying them through to the finish line. It's likewise absent any of the excellent exaggeration we saw at the end of the previous cour. It means the show isn't putting its best hoof forward in its return, though, then again, I guess it's completely counting on viewers already being invested and engaged enough to keep following this story after only taking a single season off. At least all the horse girls are still getting as customarily sweaty as normal—which I appreciate.

The rest of the episode is more the kind of status quo catch-up I would've entirely expected from this season returner. Oguri's got to decide what race she'll go into next—and the rivals around her from the previous cour who aren't Tamamo Cross are lurking around, waiting to take their shot. Maybe they don't have a chance, due to historical precedent, but the unpredictability of how real-world sports works means they just might. Super Creek's looking to make more of a move this season, and I'm sure all her loyal goo-goo babies are just waiting for her big moments.

Obviously I don't think this is going to be the premiere to convince new viewers if Uma Musume is for them or not, but it shouldn't be—it's the second cour of an ongoing series that new people can easily go and catch up with freely via YouTube. As a reenergizing return after a short break, it does a solid job while still feeling like an advancement alongside an acknowledgement of how far Cap has already come. It gets me excited for what's to come in the new season—which is the main thing a seasonal kickoff is supposed to do.

With Uma Musume breaking out of containment over the summer, I couldn't help but pop my head in to see what the buzz was all about. But how would I go about dipping my hooves into the series' deep, multimedia-filled pool? The game? The original anime series? Northernlion streams? Luckily for me, the freshly wrapped first season of Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray was waiting for me to discover it officially on YouTube.

I'm glad I found it, because Cinderella Gray just might be one of the best sports series of the 2020s. It didn't hurt that the second season was right around the corner, either. That brings us to today.

Cinderella Gray's second season premiere hits the ground running. After narrowly losing to Tamamo Cross in the Tenno Sho, Oguri Cap becomes known far and wide as the overpowering “Ashen Beast.” But before the viewer catches up with Oguri, they're taken back to her old stomping grounds in Kasamatsu for a check-in with her old rival, Fujimasa March. She's fresh off a devastating loss at the Tokai Derby—a race she once vowed to run in alongside Oguri—however, she's got a spring in her step despite that setback.

The Tokai Derby champ, Yamano Thousand, isn't particularly thrilled with March's new sunny disposition. The terse trotter also believes she was cheated out of a real race, chalking it up to March chasing after the specter of Oguri Cap. But in the race that follows, March stuns Yamano by turning that chase into her motivation to become even stronger. Oguri might be racing in the big leagues now, but it doesn't mean that March isn't still right behind her.

Recentering the focus on March for the first half of this premiere went a long way to address my largest quibble with the first season—its pacing. The ferocity of Oguri and March's rivalry is a clash for the ages...that eventually fades into the background with the introduction of Tamamo Cross. And don't get me wrong, I love me some White Lightning, but I felt that March's side of the story had way more gas in the tank—enough for an entire season of its own. However, March's explosive return to the track said to me that she's not out of gas, but rather, she's playing the long game. So, who knows? Maybe viewers will hear whispers of a final race between Fujimasa March and Oguri Cap in a later season—a la Rocky's secret fight with Apollo at the end of Rocky III.

The second half takes the viewer back to Tokyo, where all the training center girls are struggling to process the results of the Tenno Sho. Sakura Chiyono O's just starting to bounce back from an injury, Yaneno Muteki is grinding herself to the bone, Dicta Striker wants to put another loss on Oguri's record, and there seems to be a new trainer-runner pair running around, too. In the meantime, Belno Light and Musaka are cooking up a new training regimen for Oguri. The Ashen Beast is going to need all the help she can get if she's going to surpass Tamamo Cross at the Japan Cup and Arima Kinen. Overall, Cinderella Gray's season premiere is rock-solid, throwing audiences right back onto the track as if there wasn't a three-month break. But luckily for new viewers, the first season is so easy to blow through on a lazy Sunday—especially since it's all on YouTube. And despite that platform, the subtitles present (at least on desktop and the YouTube App for Smart TVs) are very well done. While not all of the on-screen text is presented with the Aegisub wizardry most anime aficionados would prefer, the subtitles fonts used look nice and are easy to read in my experience. Oh man, I'm already excited for next week's episode! Welp, I guess I'm just going to play the new opening theme by 10-FEET (of The First Slam Dunk fame) on repeat till then. We'll see if I can stop giggling at the song's name, though. If you suffer from “Spurt Syndromer,” please talk to your doctor.