Umamusume: Pretty Derby - Road to the Top

This review is spoiler free!

I think that a lot of people get turned away from the Umamusme series because of the base plot alone. It's a show about kemonomimi horse girls, who race each other and are also idols. The characters are based on real racehorses, and their stories roughly follow the stories of said horses's careers. As someone who’s been riding horses and watching anime for years, I fucking adore it.

Road to the Top is a perfect bite-sized sample of Umamusume, as well as a showcase of how far the series has come. I’m going to point out the animation first, as WE GOT A HUGE FUCKING UPGRADE HELLOOOOO THANK YOU JAPANESE CITIZENS FOR BUYING ALL THOSE DVDs. It’s dynamic, it's expressive, it's perfect for a show about movement. In comparison to the other works in the series, the style has been softened, and the colors and line work have been tweaked to give a more stylized look, which works very well with the lighting effects that they’ve implemented. It gives the anime an almost dream-like quality in some shots while being balanced out by using darker black lines and smear frames during more action-heavy sequences. The opening is a perfect display of all of these points if you want a sample of the animation if you have any doubts.

While the animation has been improved, the sound design remains impeccable as always. It's something that you might not notice right off the bat, but then you hear the screams of applause from the crowd, the booming crack of Vega pushing off from the turf, the soft twinkle of Opera O’s metal tassels on the back of her cape as she runs, it pushes Umamusme: Road to the Top from being good to great. This is just in addition to the soundtrack, wonderfully produced by Tetsuya Uchida who once again knocked it out of the park with his work on the series. The score manages to heighten the already exciting moments while adding a somber and more heartfelt tone to the quiet ones. Where it really shines though, is through the races.

I’m about to get very cheesy so just bear with me for a second. I think a big part of why this show makes me emotional (to the point of crying) is that Umamsusme makes it a point to highlight the passion that drives each of the individual girls on their Road to the Top (HAH). Narita Top Road runs for the people who support her, Admire Vega runs for her sister, and T.M. Opera O runs because she’s cool as fuck. Each of them has a driving force for why they do what they do that's fleshed out to the best of the writers' abilities since this is a four-episode OVA. I would have loved to have seen this be a full season but SEASON THREE IS COMING UP BABYEEEEE WOOWOOWOO. I’m so so so excited to see what the uma team has in store for us.

Umamusme: Road to the Top is a victory lap for all that the series has accomplished so far and will continue to achieve. It fucking rocks.

Thank you so much for reading!! I hope you got something out of this review and if you didn't actually read it and just scrolled to the very bottom of the review to see my score (like I do >:D) helloooo you should go back and read it now now now now. Please :)