Episode 18 – Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray Season 2

A major question at this Japan Cup, and one that broke through at the end of last week’s episode, is “What does it mean to obey your master’s orders?” tradeSure, she seems like a happy troll, at odds with the serious focus of many of the other international guest horses here. But she’s also primed for Tamamo Cross as a stalker, and that storyline makes her in no uncertain terms someone to watch out for. So, in the gap between last episode’s game-turning point and the rest of the game, Uma Niang: Cinderella Gray Taking the viewer through a review of how to obey your master… deciding she will become the Joker. How American.

The jokes basically write themselves, but that’s the thing with Obe’s wildcard status Uma Niang Yes. After all, that’s where the term “dark horse” comes from. Obey Your Master is based on the American racehorse Pay the Butler – renamed like all international horses because they can’t seem to get image rights like Japanese Uma Musume (?) – whose only claim to fame is its huge victory in the Japan Cup. Cinderella GrayWhat she did that allowed her to win was not a fluke, but a completely intentional, carefully planned move. After all, this series is very much about strategy, and Obe’s approach was to engineer everything in her favor after learning that the Japan Cup’s turf happened to be the perfect fit for her style of play.

Uma Niang often about pure series resonance There’s a spirit of never giving up on winning a game, and it’s wild and refreshing to see “Obey Thy Master” subvert that spirit and win on your own terms. They pointed out that her sudden turn late in the race violated the rules of horse racing, but overall she broke the “rules” of sports storytelling in the series. Her spoof was specifically designed to get Kota to temporarily let her guard down; she’s now eclipsed Oguri’s own place in the story, and she’s even admitted that this won’t be the start of a turnaround for her career or winning record. Obe knows her overall talent isn’t enough to define her era, but here, in this particular scene, she can win now. This is the complete opposite of how Joker operates in the game, as she definitely didn’t get pulled here by accident, but rather sows chaos within the team through: It seems Just like she did was a big part of her plan.

This means that, in a story carefully calculated around its strategy and setting Cinderella Grayseeing it all come together would make for exciting television. The push and pull between Obe and Tama keeps viewers on the edge of their seats, and they’re shocked when Shun Oguri roars back from a near-inconsequential role. This in itself is a shocking change of strategy, as it turns out that Oguri’s deal with Mousaka was to return to her regular running style if the race got too out of control – which is exactly the sentiment people inside and outside the anime expressed last week! This begs the question: How much of a contender could Oguri be if Shun Oguri had run like this from the start, instead of trying to catch up when everyone was already a Horse Super Saiyan? Even so, maybe she only got to where she is because of mistakes like Tony Bianca breaking her leg. That’s why it’s important to run in the right shoes.

The horse super saiyan effect is the easiest polished part of this episode to point out, but the whole thing is played over the top CygamesPictures‘ game with Uma Niang. Design flourishes accompany each person as they work on the game, paying special attention to how they “obey your master” at any given moment. Uma NiangNever put too much emphasis on how it depicts Horse Girl, but I like to assume that not having direct depictions of her real-world inspiration gave Obe more room for insanity. Her voice actor must also receive special recognition, Shizuka Ishigamithoroughly distinguishing the difference between her apparent personality and her true self. It definitely hit the mark the way it needed to, convincingly unsettling Tamamo and making it clear how carefully planned her whole plan was.

Those computational layers in this collection are useful for Uma Niangbut the message and themes remain true. The idea that everyone has their own story is a point of real-life sports that the series has always focused on, as evidenced by the intersection of Obe’s plans with the efforts of Tamamo, Shun Oguri, and others. This was Obe’s moment, one she worked extremely hard to get, but which in turn fueled the machinations of other athletes that would later pay off in their own ways. This goes back to the theme of the season that Shun Oguri seems to be marginalized from in her own show: the wider world of the horse girls and their interactions, let alone adhering to real-life competition records, which means she cannot A spotlight winner every time. But the series can still hone in on how other people’s stories shaped hers, and the rest of the world in which she wrote it. This is recursive.

Even though “Obey Your Master” isn’t a character that audiences are used to rooting for, and even though, as I said last week, I wouldn’t be crazy about seeing Team America win, after knowing her full story, it does make me happy for her, at least a little bit. There’s no way I can directly convey that jump of “Oh my God!” without directly streaming my immediate reaction of, “Oh my God!” – the level of hype that this show inspires when it shows a match like this. Regardless of the candy-colored anthropomorphic anime horse girl design, regardless of the consequences that have been dictated at least twice due to real-world consequences and the fictional writing process, it is the truest form of sports. Putting Obe’s plan on top of all of this just makes it more of a set-up, but that’s fine too since her whole thing is keeping up with kafabe anyway. This is a huge win for this storyline, and another win for the show as a whole.

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Uma Niang: Cinderella Gray The second season is currently airing
Amazon Prime.

Chris backed the pony girls up before they could calm down, and he was glad they were sprinting like they were. You can follow his fanart recreating Vodka, Michelle My Baby, and other cool creations on his website blue sky