How can you not like a series where a girl is running late for school and instead of the inevitable toast hanging out of her mouth as she runs it’s a carrot, because she’s a horse girl?
Yes, this is a series about horse girls, girls born with the soul of a race horse from another world, who are “born to run” and go to special schools were they learn about horse racing. And this is the protagonist, Special Week. She’s from Hokkaido, where she was raised by her mother but had no other horse girls to race with. Now she has made her way to the big city, to the country’s best horse girl school to become the best horse girl in Japan. From the two episodes of Uma Musume released so far, for all the strangeness of the core idea it’s a remarkable straightforward sports story. We got our inexperienced, naive newcomer with raw talent, her senpai she looks up to who turns out to be her roommate and part of the same time as well as remarkable nice and there’s the rival team with a different philosophy to overcome.
In the second episode it’s revealed that Special Week has two mums: her biological mother, who died giving birth to her and the mother who raised her as a horse girl. Her first mum made her second mum promise to raise her into the best horse girl in Japan, which is why Special Week is so driven. On the one hand having the series be so matter of fact of her having two mothers is great, but it’s somewhat undercut by having one of them die immediately. Seeing the training montage scene with the surviving mum trying her best to train her right was hilarious though.
Less hilarious was Special Week being felt up at the racing track in the first episode. She’d gone to watch the races live for the first time, when somebody felt up her legs from behind. This was of course all intended to be a joke about how trainers examine actual horse legs, complete with the requisite kick by Special Week that sends him flying. It’s still obnoxious though, still sexual harassment as a joke. Fortunately it seems to have been a one-off. In general this is a nicely cheerful series that takes a dumb idea and makes it work.