Even though its shorter for the time being, I feel like this surpasses the original Umamusume series in terms of quality, not just in the animation, but also in the storytelling. The drama is a lot more palpable, characters are thrown into situations where they need to make surprisingly tough decisions, and it leads to bittersweet conclusions. It also has a much more grounded tone, it starts off with more humble races, and gradually makes its way into bigger ones very naturally, something that the original series didn't really pay too much attention to, partially because it all took place in the same area.
I will say that the peak of the original series still hasn't been surpassed for me, which imo is the Season 2 finale, and since the anime is based on irl horse-racing I hope that the stories that came out of Oguri Cap's career end up getting better, but even then, as a whole the quality is a lot more consistent all throughout the 13 episodes that are currently out, and I'm really looking foward to seeing what's next.
