Honestly I should review something else, as it’s just the second half of the first series. BUT WOW… Cinderella Gray Second Cour is my anime of the year, as in 2025… since you’re reading this in at least 2026. It’s what you often see in series that what would be 2 hours long is now split into two halves, but still the tale of Oguri Cap told here won me over so immensely it’s time to look into the second half of the story… what could be the first part of the story since the manga is only just ending and there’s plenty more that can be adapted.
For a quick refresh, Umamusume is a gacha game by Cygames that turned famous race horses in Japan into horse girls, which a lot of us just call Uma in the west, even though Uma is just Japanese for horse.
Oguri Cap is an Uma from the Rural town of Kasamatsu that was so impressive during earlier races that she was selected to run in National races and was winning over many people, but her biggest race against her now Rival Tamamo Cross she lost at the end of the first half.
The first episode is your standard soft reintroduction as we see what has happened to her old rival from Kasamatsu Fujimasa March which itself is adapted from a spin off chapter of the manga before we get into Oguri’s next goal, to enter and win the Japan cup a race that will contain racers from outside Japan as well, but primarily Oguri is focused on it as she can race against Tamamo again who during the previous race tapped into a sort of zen like state called “the zone” which left Oguri feeling so out classed.
The build up to it and the Japan cup race itself is the focus on this first half while the second half is the build up to the Arima Kinen, another of the big races.
Since watching the first 12 episodes and looking forward to this second batch, I learned just how much adapting the story of the real life horses the anime and game did. A racer who wins or loses in a race, that’s what happened in real life, it’s a surprisingly well researched bit of work to then adapt into stories that as someone not into horse racing and originally thought little of the show as just another anthropomorphising gacha stuff, found very well written and immensely engaging.
It’s become a common trend of people talking about this show with the phrase “they didn’t need to go this hard!” shocked by how good it gets. The penultimate episode of the second season got a higher rating than the finale of My Hero Academia! Trust me it’s worth it.
Rating: 🐎🐎🐎🐎🐎
