Review of Umamusume: Pretty Derby Season 3

Season 3 of "Uma Musume: Pretty Derby" is another solid entry into the series, but lacks the emotional investment and impact that seasons 1 and 2 had. To generally summarize, season 1's theme was about becoming the greatest. Season 2's theme was about suffering tragedy when you are the greatest. Season 3's theme seems to be about feminine first-world problems. The main issue with season 3 is the character it almost completely focuses in on, Kitasan Black. She is one of the least compelling and interesting characters in the Uma Musume franchise. Her entire deal is that she reallylike festivals, is a really strong racer, and is a big fangirl of the last season's protagonist, Toukai Teiou. She also has the emotional stability of the average fangirl as well. When Kitasan faces even the smallest setbacks, she responds with outbursts of crying and massive spouts of discouragement. Meanwhile, every other Uma she is surrounded by suffer even larger setbacks, but are constantly working harder than Kitasan (with little to no crying and distress). There were lots of crying and discouragement faced by characters in the previous seasons, but these scenes were reserved for when something ACTUALLY detrimental to the character was occurring (or at least shortened to under 2 seconds if not too detrimental). Kitasan's instability is especially prevalent if you watch Season 3 back-to-back with "Uma Musume: Cinderella Grey", as the main character in that series, Oguri Cap, actually goes through real struggles, but remains emotionally strong and focused throughout the entirety. It's just hard watching Kitasan when there are good, fun-to-watch characters that make brief cameos such as Sakura Bakushin O, Gold Ship, Twin Turbo, and Nice Nature that would have made for a far more enjoyable season if any one of them were the main character.

The music and animation are slightly worse than the previous seasons. There's some training montages that the music doesn't match the pace/intensity of the training scenes. There is one ugly crying scene that ends an episode that is completely unwarranted and goes on for 12 seconds too long. Unlike in every prior Uma Musume season, Season 3 has no change to the opening animation to match a major even in the story, which was a bummer. The main races still have great animation as usual though.

If you love the Uma Musume series as a whole, you'll probably still enjoy this season. The production is still higher quality than most anime airing. Just don't expect to get as invested in the main characters as in the 2 prior seasons.

PS Props to the artists who managed to sneak in both a "Nice Boat" and a "Naruto run" reference in episode 5. Respect.