Uma Musume: Pretty Derby - Beginning of a New Era

Let me start off by saying, the production here is spectacular. The animation, storyboarding, color, art direction and more are all the best of the entire franchise. You can tell they had a lot more manpower to animate the race sequences the best they ever could.

When it comes to the story, it centers mostly around not letting "what-ifs" get in your way and taking on your dreams by your own hands instead of leaving them to someone else's. It's very compelling, and the voice-acting and writing carry the message across very well, even if it's sometimes slightly heavy-handed.

If there was a complaint from my part, there's a section in the middle that carries on for a little too long and has strange pacing, but that's about it. If you're a fan of the franchise, give it a watch, and even if you're not there's a lot to enjoy if you can get past the concept of horse girl racing :p.

Having watched all 3 season of pretty derby + road to the top, I can confidently say this is the best out of all of them. No doubt being a feature length movie helps in terms of budget but even then, the characters feel much more alive in part thanks to the animation but also due to much improved storytelling on the writers' part. You could feel Jungle Pocket's despair, and Agnes' longing to run. Some things threw me off though, mainly the completely unexplained presence of Manhattan Cafe. All of the other characters and their ambitions are explained in some way shape or form but Cafe's existence felt a bit out of place to me. Some more exposition on her part would have been great. This movie is a great place to start watching Uma, and I hope CinGray keeps up in terms of quality.