Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray Season 2

Episode 23

And so Cinderella Gray completes Uma Musume's Super Saiyan transformation into that shonen-style arc structure by using this season finale largely to set up the antagonist for the next saga. I don't mean that as dismissive or condescending at all—the potential to make the most of this vibe was always in this franchise's DNA, it just took the layered adaptation of the tale of Oguri Cap to fully tap into that, like an athlete finding their proper, most effective stride. "To Be Continued…" as it is, this finale is still thus a winner's circle, a victory lap, one more racing metaphor I can crowbar into my writing here at the end of this leg.

It's cool, because Uma Musume was built for the kind of introduction given to Inari One in this episode from the beginning. I've commented on the series's intent to show how "everyone has a story" multiple times before. Going over Inari's life story so far before she storms the stage, Oguri's standing on both perfectly teases her as a looming threat and fits with that theme of every horse being the hero of their own pony-tale. And it's not like Inari's story is extra-unique compared to so many of the challengers that have come and gone so far, seeming a particular mirror of Oguri herself. She's an upstart from her own smaller area who beat the odds and preconceived notions to arrive as a challenger for the new era.

Inari's most distinctive aspects are that she was seemingly raised by some flavor of mob from the Edo area, and that her presentational personality absurdity represents one more uptick on the scale as stories like these necessitate. There have been some crazy horse girl faces rendered by CygamesPictures through their entries, but Inari looks downright feral most of the time she's racing. Horses are not carnivores; she should not have that many teeth that are that sharp in her mouth. Her training has already helped her come a long way, signified in her exploitable immature impulses being tempered just in the sample race shown in this episode. And for all the extreme edge she might be teased as bringing, she's not above Uma Musume's style of silliness. "Someday I'll be the biggest and the strongest," she declares, before a match fade-in shows her standing in the starting gate between two noticeably taller horse girls. Perfect, no notes.

Inari, like Oguri, has come a long way. Cinderella Gray has interrogated where the next "peak" for those who excel lies once they achieve nebulous greatness. Tama sought to prove herself with a crown she wound up driving Oguri to, and so exited the story. Her old man is shown to still be alive, anyway; maybe spending quality time with him is ultimately more important to her than chasing achievements with what little of that time is left. Dicta Striker and Super Creek had extenuating circumstances that stymied their possibilities of reaching that peak. It's endearing that Dicta, who's been but a bit player in this saga, delivers the most blunt analysis on where to go next: "Regrets are just a waste of time. Better to reflect on where you went wrong and try to do better next time." True for a lot of things, least of all this kind of ongoing career competition.

The convergence of Inari's upstart career and Oguri's lofty new place is that "next time." Defending a title is very different from trying to claim it. While Inari is the representative of those looking to take Oguri's crown, she absolutely won't be the only one. Like the rise of Inari herself, this idea is both a satisfying place for the narrative to reach at this pausing point, and a tantalizing tease of how it might escalate as the series continues. Oguri herself has a portioned-out role in this finale, but her being the critical center of it shines through even in her Comic-Sans-font-subtitled goofiness (and she's not the only one, REMOW's YouTube subtitlers have really been playing around with things lately). It's sweet to see Oguri recognize what Belno Light has done for her through this stage of her career. And Oguri's recognition of her love for racing, with how it was instilled in her by her mother in childhood, puts a nice bow on this arc, alongside the flashback effect in the last episode. Will that thematic vibe continue to be iterated on in the next arc, or is there more of a clean break since the dawn of "a new era" (something that seems to happen a lot in horse girl racing) is coming? I trust Cinderella Gray to make it work either way.

Given the streak the series has been on, I will be shocked if there's not another season of Cinderella Gray coming. Oguri Cap is the main anime vanguard of the franchise at this point, and why shouldn't she be? She represents the show's modern form, heralded by butt-rock openers and strained, sweaty facial expressions. Drawing from a superlative manga take definitely gave this anime a boost, but the elevating touch of CygamesPictures shouldn't be ignored. It's an approach that already proved itself with a net anime special and a movie, and now it's effortlessly powered an anime series twice as long as any of the previous self-contained "seasons." There's still a lot of track left for the horse girls, and this season finale (which is also, by the way, a Christmas episode) shows there's still plenty of joy left for them to get out of running it.

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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.