I kind of feel like putting these short running show into this segment is cheating. I mean, It’s taken me less than 10 minutes to get through the first three episodes of a show that’s clearly not intended for me as its audience. But hey, trying new things was the whole point of me starting this series. And you never know, this could have awakened my inner Brony I never knew was there.
The story behind UMAYON is actually more interesting the show itself in a lot of ways, which might seem a little mean of me to say, but this is a three minute long slice of life gag short remember. UMAYON is a spin-off of Umamusume: Pretty Derby, which itself is an anime adaptation of a iOS and Android game that never actually came out.
Set in a world where humans and “Horse Girls” live side by side, we follow a group of girls who attend Tracen Academy, a school that educates the horse girls, trains them as idols and also trains them to be race horses?
This spinoff of that series just shows a chibi styled realisation of the characters doing about their lives in this school, where it seems like it focuses more on the mundane aspects of school life over the fact that they’re horse girls training to race. I guess that’s what the main anime is for though eh?
The first episode is probably the strongest one of the three, following three of the girls taking a makeup exam, all filling in the answers using different methods. The gag being that there’s a couple of other girls commentating on them as though they were racehorses on the track.
It’s a cute joke that works perfectly for the short run length, ending on the gag being that finishing first isn’t actually what the girls should have been aiming for in an academic exam. At this point I thought it was going to be this kind of gag in the following episodes, but 2 and 3 ended up being more relatively normal school girl situations.
One being about recording promotional videos for the academy and the other about not giving up on your dreams, even if they seem out of reach. It’s cute and wholesome and not for me honestly.
Verdict: Turns out I ain’t no Brony
The weird completionist tick in my brain that become activated when I realised this was a spinoff of a 13 episode anime from 2018 made me instantly reject the idea of continuing this. If I want to watch this, then obviously I’d need to watch that beforehand. Because that’s how my brain works.
But even if that weren’t the case, I would not have kept this one up. It’s nice and cute and stuff, but it’s just not for me. Hence why I kind of felt like it was cheating bringing it up.
I do want to shout out to the show that gives all the girl’s ridiculous race horse names though like Special Week, Air Groove and Symbol Rudolf. Funniest thing about it.
A Richard Wood Text Adventure 