Uma Musume Pretty Derby Season 3

Episode 4

What other five-star anime are you watching? Vote on the latest episodes here: Your Score.

I don't believe in much, but I do believe in jinxes. So, on some level, I can understand Satono Diamond's concerns. Even if there's no technical basis for an unseen force of rotten luck stealing away your success, even if you outwardly reject its possibility, the anxieties swirling within can still impact you. That fear of failure is relatable and intersects well with Kitasan Black's ongoing story in this week's Uma Musume. Kita's still dealing with concerns about her shortcomings and inability to win a race, and this plot positioning sketches out the idea of her and her filly friend supporting each other in overcoming their respective hurdles.

However, there is one major stumble in crossing that finish line, and that's how lopsided the showcasing of this pair has been so far this season. Dia hasn't been given the space to be developed to the same ingratiating level as Kita, and it's impossible not to feel that in any of the glimpses the show gives her. As she was in Season 3's first episode, Dia is a member of the Satono family; she is concerned about the jinx that affects the family's success. She is best buddies with Kita, and that…is about it. The audience hasn't even been given much space to appreciate her connection to Kita, as the latter has spent her time growing alongside other characters like Nice Nature and Gold Ship. Hence, we have to take the duo's friendship at face value. Maybe it helps to recall that they've been seen hanging out together since they were baby horse girls in previous seasons, but not by much.

However, if all this limits Dia as an engaging character beyond the base relatability of "Dang, losing sucks," which is already being carried by Kita, Uma Musume still finds some clever ways to do the most with the hand it's dealt itself. The early weeks of this season are still a fine enough place to prioritize Kita, so the story uses her as another vector for that mind-over-matter approach to achieving victory. It's also an opportunity to engage with a past assumption: Kita's confident remarks regarding her superhuman (super-horse-an?) durability. This belief led to her request for harsher training, immediately invoking the kinds of injuries that Silence Suzuka and Tokai Teio suffered—who were right in the room. The audience has seen this story before, and it accompanies many ill-fated racehorses. Surely, to retake this tack would be beating a dead, well, you know.

Despite the importance of imparting that responsible lesson to the next generation, Trainer winds up moving from rejecting Kita outright to something more nuanced: Asking for assistance with a more mindful approach. Mihono Bourbon's crushing yet calculated regimen is a far cry from the more irresponsible pushing seen in previous seasons. She enforces strict care and maintenance accompanying Kita's efforts and even brings in Rice Shower to provide accompanying meals. And since I love Rice Shower, I'm as happy to see her here. The careful component of this harsher training is also underscored by Uma Musume keeping up its signature sense of humor throughout. The reveal that Bourbon had abducted Kita in her sleep, bed and all, out to the training course? Perfect, especially as the bed lingered in the background afterward. Similarly, Kita's late-episode dash towards inspiration is accompanied by an aside detail of her having to run 180 kilometers to the racetrack.

That's all in service of Uma Musume embracing its unique storytelling status around this season's peculiar choices of starring horses. Dia may profess not to believe in jinxes, but even she can't outrun history. And while the audience hasn't been afforded the space to be invested in Dia herself, framing her as the source of Kita's energy to keep competing instills a sense of significance in the race anyway. And it also communicates the sting of disappointment when she inevitably loses. Dia's resilient professionalism and her insistence on not blaming anything except her ability for her loss speaks to the constant question spurring Uma Musume, both in this season and the ones that came before: How do you build an engaging narrative around the established, documented results of sporting events? In this instance, it's a simple case of Dia not giving up, thus inspiring Kita not to give up and then having to run back another 180 kilometers.

It all highlights what might be a different approach for Uma Musume's travails for Season 3 (though I can't be entirely sure; I'm not spoiling myself by checking the wiki). The issues afflicting Kita and Dia are more mental blocks than physical afflictions. It's akin to Kita's early-season worries that she couldn't live up to her predecessors but concentrated on now worrying about coming up short for herself. There are still some meta aspects to this storytelling, as there pretty much always must be with this series, mainly in the idea that Dia's jinxed fate might already be written. But overall, this episode effectively demonstrates a different kind of wall for a different kind of protagonist to get over. So even as the training montages can come off a bit stretched out across this episode, that final, triumphant one rings out past all the unevenness. It's to the point that there's little dissatisfaction in Kita's resultant race win, being very briskly skipped over in an end-credits montage for this episode. Compared to so many races in this series, it's not the victory itself that was important, but how she got there.

Rating:

Uma Musume Pretty Derby Season 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is excited to be back for the mane event, and is hoping he won't have to be a neigh-sayer. You can catch him horsing around on his blog, as well as Twitter, though he doesn't expect that to be around furlong.