Umamusume: Pretty Derby Season 2
ウマ娘 プリティーダービー Season 2 (Uma Musume: Pretty Derby Season 2)
- Sports
- Anthropomorphic
- Racing
- Episodes
- 13
- Duration
- 23 min per ep
- Aired
- Jan 5, 2021 to Mar 30, 2021
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
Team Spica’s horse girls are riding a wave of success in the racing world, and none draws more attention than Toukai Teiou. Bright, confident, and blessed with remarkable speed, Teiou sets her sights on a daunting goal: an undefeated Triple Crown, achieved by winning three consecutive G1 races—something only the legendary Symboli Rudolf accomplished years ago.
As Teiou pushes toward that milestone, the road proves anything but straightforward. Familiar competitors and new challengers test her resolve, and the intensity of those rivalries soon gives way to choices that could reshape the course of her racing career.
Otaku Consensus
Season 2 earned its reputation as the franchise’s critical breakout: Kei Oikawa’s direction and Cygames’ series composition turn a gacha-origin sports property into a tightly paced 13-episode character drama, with fan reviews repeatedly singling out its rewatch value, race-aftermath scenes, and the Teiou/McQueen pairing. Studio KAI’s expressive character animation and the ending theme “Komorebi no Yell” help sell the emotion, while the most common reservation is that the kemonomimi-idol premise and occasional CGI remain a filter for viewers who want conventional sports realism.
Why You Should Watch
Watch Season 2 if you want the pressure-cooker emotional payoff of a sports anime without the usual tournament-arc sprawl. It scratches the same itch as Haikyu!! in how it treats competition as character writing, but its tone is closer to an idol-adjacent ensemble drama: training, public expectation, rivalry, performance, and recovery all feed into the same emotional machine. You do not need to care about horse racing beforehand; the hook is how precisely the series makes victory, injury anxiety, and fan expectations feel personal. Viewers who dismissed Uma Musume as a cute-girl gimmick often point to this season as the one that proves the concept can carry serious athletic melodrama while still keeping the franchise’s stage-show brightness intact.
Key Characters
- TToukai Teiou
Season 2’s emotional engine is her mix of showy confidence, idol-like charisma, and sports-anime stubbornness, which makes her more than a mascot for the franchise’s racing conceit.
- MMcQueen
Her poised presence gives the season one of its most discussed character dynamics, reinforced by the Teio-and-McQueen ending theme “Komorebi no Yell.”
- SSymboli Rudolf
She functions less as a standard rival than as a living benchmark, giving Teiou’s ambitions a historical weight inside the series’ racing world.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
Studio KAI handles the animation for this 2021 season, and fan rewatch commentary specifically praises the character animation rather than only the race spectacle.
- 2
Cygames is credited both as original creator and for series composition, which helps explain why the season feels tightly integrated with the broader Uma Musume multimedia identity instead of reading like a detached tie-in.
- 3
The season’s 13-episode structure gives unusual weight to what happens after races; reviews call out the post-race material as some of the most rewarding viewing.
- 4
“Komorebi no Yell,” the ending theme associated with Teio and McQueen, is repeatedly singled out by viewers as part of the season’s emotional aftertaste rather than just a closing song.
- 5
AniList’s tag spread captures the show’s unusual blend: Athletics at 99%, Kemonomimi at 97%, Primarily Female Cast at 95%, plus Idol at 59% and CGI at 43%.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- Umamusume: Pretty Derby Season 2 aired as a single cour from January 5, 2021 to March 30, 2021, finishing at 13 episodes.
- Fun fact 2
- The credited character designers are Yousuke Kabashima and Tomoko Tsuji, while Masaru Obata, Jun Nakajima, Yuusuke Souen, and Kouki Shikiji are listed as main animators.
- Fun fact 3
- Its MAL score of 8.32 from 61,470 votes and rank of #312 stand out against a much lower popularity placement of #2204, suggesting a smaller but highly satisfied audience.
- Fun fact 4
- AniList records the season at 83/100 with 3,044 favourites, closely matching MAL’s strong reception and reinforcing its status as the franchise’s best-regarded TV entry.
- Fun fact 5
- The core staff listing keeps Cygames unusually visible: the company is not only the original creator but also credited for series composition.
Studios
- Studio KAI
