Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray Season 2

Episode 21

And they're off! Eventually. It takes a little bit for the horse girls to actually line up and leave the gates in this episode of Cinderella Gray. Fair enough for dramatically drawing up this level of climax around the Arima Kinen, a race that generally lasts barely three minutes in the real world, to make it into as much of a multi-episode arc as possible. I appreciate that the scheduling means that this race, taking place on December 25, might actually appropriately wrap up on-air while the Christmas season is still upon us. Giddy-up, jingle horses, pick up your feet.

The dramatization is also earned, as it so often is in Uma Musume, thanks to the number of stakes and players being arranged. All the major competitors being followed are still being lined up right until the starting pistol in this episode. Dicta Striker, Super Creek, Tamamo Cross, and Oguri Cap herself, of course, all get their own moments in that leadup as final reminders of why they're here and what their personal stakes are…mostly. This also helps keep viewers concentrating on who is and is not important. Sure, Dicta name-checks the likes of Lord Royal, who's even holding the lead for much of the race this episode. But come on, Royal hasn't been followed in the narrative the way the others have, and she's not even an officially incarnated Uma Musume (being another name-changed stand-in, this time for real horse Legend Teio). She almost certainly has no chance against the characters with actual backstories.

This plays off Uma Musume's overall ideas with regards to sports storytelling, its unpredictability, and Musaka's specific point in this episode. There's never anything that has to happen in a given competition. Just because there's a frontrunner or a favorite doesn't mean they "deserve" to win. The one who deserves to win is, ultimately, the one who pulls out the win. That pithily applies to poor Lord Royal, naturally, but it also, more pertinently, applies to Tamamo Cross, who has worked hard not just to win the race but to make it all about her.

The irony there, of course, is that the audience still isn't entirely sure why the race is all about her. Tama's retirement is a major factor, but her reasons haven't come out yet. The narrative plays with this point cleverly, but it can also be frustrating at this moment. Oguri's renewed challenge to Tama—her assurance that she'll beat her- that gets snapped back at by Tama, rather pointedly countering that Oguri acting as her rival doesn't actually mean she knows anything about her. It's honestly a good point, and a reminder of the limited interactions some athletic rivals can have with each other, pushing through purely in competition. They can't all be the romantically charged long-term relationships that other challenging couples like Tokai Teio and Mejiro McQueen or Daiwa Scarlet and Vodka have. Oguri's just been chasing after Tama like so many of her previous rivals, and doesn't know, as viewers still don't know, precisely what's driving the little thunderhorse.

By that same token, it can feel frustrating for Cinderella Gray to keep watchers in the dark as to what Tama's damage is that's dictating her retirement. Theories can be inferred that it has something to do with the fate of her old father figure and the last chance she's giving herself to prove her ability to stand at the top. But in the thick of the competition, where all the horse girls pointedly have to put this all out there, it feels limiting to hold some of these details back. Now, my hedged bet on this point is that I'm watching this show as it airs, so it's extremely possible that Cinderella Gray paces out reveals with the race itself for maximum impact that will make perfect sense in the long run. Again, this is a race that barely lasted a few minutes in real life, and even the most egregious anime time will chafe under dramatically drawing that out too much. Some strategically placed dramatic flashbacks might very well fill the structure out nicely.

Regardless of the details, the intent of the confrontation between the two gray Cinderellas still comes through clearly ahead of the race starting: this is the last chance for Tamamo Cross to race against herself. The same goes for Oguri, who is no longer defining herself by racing against Tama. After last week's episode insinuating what the crux of Oguri's breakthrough was, the presence of her previous friends, allies, and rivals at this race spells it out: she's kept running past all of them, and she's going to continue to do so. She's even gotten past some of her previous, more indirect obstacles, as Symboli Rudolph formally apologizes for her prior bureaucratic roadblocks and acknowledges how far she's come. It's a sincere moment, alongside others like Tama hugging her trainer, that Cinderella Gray is so powerfully able to allow itself to unironically include—and build up to so well with its longer, multi-cour structure.

That also means major mini-plots can pop up within the arcs for these grander arcs. The tense, still visuals of the horse girls waiting for the starting moment of the race, followed by the invigorating first-person camera kick-off, that's an impactful initiation. But then it gets played with through the reveal that Dicta Striker actually hit her head on the gate, got a late start, and drew blood in that action. Uma Musume is necessarily no stranger to depicting some of the rougher aspects of the sport, but it's still intense to see so much of the red stuff pouring from Dicta's head, trickling away from her as she attempts to strategize her way through the situation. And then even those logistics get blown out as Tamamo Cross decides she's just going to assert herself as the center of this race ahead of the home stretch via her horse Super Saiyan 2 powers. This is still the beginning of this climactic race. If it can keep throwing upsets and swerves like this, I'm sure I'll be enraptured through its technically short run-time—regardless of how oddly it might slot in motivational details.

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Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray Season 2 is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Chris backed the horse girls before they were cool, and he's so happy they've spurted off the way they have now. You can follow him reskeeting fanart of Vodka, Michelle My Baby, and the other cool ones over on his BlueSky.