Uma Musume: Pretty Derby

To be brief,it's so inspiring,not only because the facts it bases on, but also the exciting and anxious moment I feel. It really gives me certain power to move on.

This anime is set in a world where instead of horses we have horse-girls. These horse-girls look like ordinary girls apart from having horse ears and tales... they also run like race horses. The series is centred on Special Week, 'Spe-chan' to her friends, a horse-girl who has moved to a school in Tokyo with the intention of becoming the most successful horse-girl in Japan. Here she makes several new friends, including her role model Silence Suzuka. Over the course of the series she experiences both success and defeat as she learns her strengths and weaknesses before competing in the really big races.

This series may be fairly light weight but it is also a lot of fun. It is hard not to root for Special Week and her friends in their races even though we know it is animation rather than a live race! The characters are a lot of fun so it is easy to care about them. The series has some humour and some surreal details... most notably the fact that after the horse-girls win they must put on an idol style concert! Also I wondered why the girls have to nail horse shoes to their trainers; it makes no sense as they have feet not hooves! The names may sound a little silly but they are the names of real Japanese race horses. The character designs are distinctive and the animation is pretty good; especially during the race scenes. Overall I wouldn't say this is a must see but I'd heartily recommend it to anybody after a fun little anime series.

These comments are based on watching the series in Japanese with English subtitles.