Horse girlsnote . They're born to run. They inherit the names from another world, whose histories were sometimes tragic and sometimes wonderful, and run ever forward. That is their fate. No one knows how the races waiting in the future of these horse girls will end.
Named after the racehorses of a different world, the Uma Musume (ウマ娘, horse girls) dedicate their lives to running. For many of these young women, their biggest dream is to participate in the Twinkle Series, run alongside Japan's fastest, and shine on the winner's stage.
Special Week is one such horse girl. She strikes out from her small countryside home to make it at Tracen Academy, the premier school for aspiring racers. Despite being a newcomer to the competition, she hopes to become Japan's best horse girl. But in this new, competitive environment, will she stick to her guns despite the pressure and fulfill her lifelong dream?
Based on the mobile training game by Cygames, Uma Musume: Pretty Derby is P. A. Works' animated take on the horse girl racing scene.
On December 15, 2018, it was announced that the spinoff 4-koma Manga Umayon will be getting an anime adaptation, with its first airing on July 7, 2020. A second season was later confirmed in September 2020 and began airing on January 4 2021 with Studio KAI producing the animation. The second season focuses on Tokai Teio instead of Special Week. A third season focusing on Kitasan Black began airing on October 5, 2023. This season was produced once again by Studio KAI.
In 2023, Road to the Top, the web anime, produced by CyGamesPictures, featuring 1999 Japanese Classic Races in an Alternate Continuity, was released via YouTube.
Has a character page that needs love.
Uma Musume provides examples of:
- Affectionate Nickname: Special Week is called "Spe", while El Condor Pasa is referred to as "El".
- Ambiguously Related: McQueen, Ryan, Dober, and Palmer are all part of the Mejiro family. But it's unknown if they are siblings or cousins.
- As Herself: The regular second commentator/analyst during the anime races is Junko Hosoe, a past jockey who is now a real life racing analyst (so her role is similar to Newscaster Cameo). She has a page on the Japanese Wikipedia
. She is voicing herself and is duly credited. - Bag of Kidnapping: Gold Ship, Daiwa Scarlet and Vodka use one to bring Special Week to their team. The gag is repeated in the second season — with Special Week joining in — to nab Rice Shower.
- Balloon Belly:
- Special Week, who ended up eating a little too much after a victory in episode 3. Only it comes back to bite her as her derby-uniform's skirt no longer seem to fit despite losing most of the weight beforehand.
- Oguri Cup as the resident Big Eater almost always have a giant belly after eating tons of food.
- Big Eater:
- Special Week. She has a giant box filled with carrots and eats so much that she gets a Balloon Belly. In fact, when on a diet, she is noticed by another to have less rice then normal, even though it was still a bigger serving than anyone else ate.
- Oguri Cap wins an Eating Contest without really trying, even when another competitor cheats by quickly dumping half of her plate over on Oguri's. And in a later scene, she's going for more! In the BMW OVA, she finishes a thousand bowls of noodles in a sitting!!!
- The Big Race: There is a race in every episode. A few are just intra-school things for training (or, in once case, for selecting a member for a team); but most races in this anime happen on racecourses and have a significant audience.
- Bland-Name Product: Judging by the backs of the cards, the card game played by the Spica girls during the anime's ending credits is known as Uma.
- Blatant Lies: When Trainer tries to deny he's nervous about the Derby, he's using the binoculars the wrong way.
- Book Ends: Special Week's Mom gets off the train early by mistake in episode 12, and is directed on her way by the same station attendant that directed Special Week back in episode 1. In both cases, they run the remaining distance to the race track.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Seiun Sky may spend most of her time sleeping or looking dozy, but when she puts her mind into it, she's an incredibly good runner.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Trainer might be eccentric, but he certainly knows how to make the girls run.
- Butt-Monkey: Haru Urara is named after a horse who was famous for never winning a race, and she's clearly not a particularly good racer.
- Career-Ending Injury:
- Subverted. Silence Suzuka breaks her leg during a race, just as her namesake did. While such an injury is a death sentence for real horses, Suzuka is hospitalized and not more seriously injured because of Special Week's help. Her trainer warns that she may never fully recover from her injury. However, by episode 11, after a year in rehab, she returns and wins convincingly.
- Season 2 begins with Tokai Teio trying to recover from a leg fracture, and tests her resolve to keep racing when she breaks it two more times, showing it could become a recurring injury. Then, in episode 12, Mejiro McQueen develops suspensory ligament desmitis, preventing her from running.
- Season 3 sets up a rivalry between Kitasan Black and Duramente in the first episode, only to then cut it short just one episode later when Duramente breaks a leg offscreen.
- Casting Gag: TM Opera O, a boisterous and proud tomboyish horse girl, is voiced by Sora Tokui, who also voiced Applejack in the Japanese dub of another famous show about girls who are horses.
- Cathartic Scream: Tokai Teio and Special Week watch Hishi Amazon doing this on a tree trunk after losing. Special Week and Trainer use it too in episode 3 after losing.
- Cerebus Retcon: Gold Ship's eccentric behavior. Season 1and 2 played it off for humor and as an endearing quirk. Season 3 gives it more gravity and her unfocusness are why she loses in some of her races.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Gold Ship tends to do and say odd things every now and then.
- Combat Stilettos:
- The Horse Girls wear heeled shoes when racing, with a horse shoe nailed to their soles. In reality, heels would be the last thing a professional runner would choose to wear.
- It was worse in the trailer, where the heels were shown to be narrow. Anime heels are wide and not too high, something pretty convenient for a certain sport... riding, not running.
- Comic-Book Time: Although it is not stated exactly how many years horse girls are generally supposed to spend at Tracen, Symboli Rudolf in particular seems to have been frozen in time. She had her prime racing career while Tokai Teio was around 10-11 years old, then Teio - just as the other girls - appears to be at least in her late teens as a student, and the first and second season take place over at least a couple of years with several annual races being shown or mentioned. Yet by the end of season 2, Symboli Rudolf is still a part of the school as the Student Council President.
- Conspicuous CG: Quite visible in Season 2, especially in the long shots. The scene of the school entrance ceremony in Episode 3 is a particular standout because it uses a relatively-small set of models to represent about eight hundred students, with about thirty conspicuously-similar copies of each model.
- Darker and Edgier: Season 1 deals with a terrible injury on the race. After recovery, the focus was back to Special Week. By contrast, Season 2, due to it dealing with the history of Tokai Teio and Mejiro McQueen, deals with Teio being injured repeatedly, resulting in the dread of crushed dreams happening more often to the protagonists - Teio's legs fracturing roughly every three episodes leave her unable to have the race she and McQueen hoped for, McQueen then gets upstaged by the total newcomer Rice Shower, and Rice Shower, despite setting world records just about every time she runs,
promptly gets demonized by the spectators for outperforming their favorites. - Dark Horse Victory: During the lead up to the Takarazuka Kinen, focus is given to a returning Duramente and whether or not a much more skilled Kitasan Black could beat her. The race ends up being won by River Light.
- "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The opening and ending themes are sung by the seven members of Team Spica.
- Doomed by Canon: Silence Suzuka's racing career is cut short when she breaks her leg, exactly like her namesake did. Unlike her namesake, she survives and hopes to recover eventually.
- The Drag-Along: Gold Ship always drags Mejiro McQueen into whatever activity comes through her mind.
- Eating Contest: There is one in Episode 6, with three participants. For added fun, it references a Real Life horse race.
- Epic Fail:
- At the beginning of episode 3, despite winning their respective races, every member of Team Spica minus Suzuka does something embarrassing during the victory concert. So Trainer asks Tokai Teio to train them to improve their performances.
- In episode 10, after training non-stop to be ready for the Japan Cup, Special Week has a newfound confidence everyone notices, but then ends up in seventh place for the Kyoto Daishoten. It's also one for T.M. Opera O, who was following Special Week and ended up in third.
- Even the Girls Want Her: When the horse girls from the Rigil team dress up as butlers and set up a cafe, women of all ages come swooning. A lady even faints, for Pete's sake.
- Everybody Calls Him "Barkeep": The Trainer is always referred as such.
- Evolving Credits: The ending credits for the second season closes with a shot of a young Tokai Teio chasing after Symboli Rudolf, representing how the latter is a distant and lofty goal made by a child. Following Episode 6, which has a heart-to-heart talk with Mejiro McQueen where she and Teio reaffirm their Friendly Rivalry, the closing shot is replaced by that scene, representing how McQueen is providing a more mature Teio with a realistic and sensible goal. Episode 12's credits then flips its composition and singers to portray it from McQueen's perspective, and how Teio is now the one supporting her.
- Expressive Ears: The horse girls have those, just like real horses. And their tails are sometimes expressive, too.
- Expy: The French horse girl Broye is one of Lady Oscar.
- Eye Scream: Every time Gold Ship tries to compete over something with Mejiro McQueen, she gets hit in the eye. In Episode 9, she gets Genre Savvy and wears a helmet with an eye shield before attempting a prank.
- Failed a Spot Check: In Episode 9 El Condor Pasa shows Broye's signature on her guidebook, thinking that Broye mistook her for a fan. The writing is in French, which El-chan does not understand... but if we zoom in onto it, we see it clearly includes the word "Condor".
- Fanservice: Unlike what was widely expected from the initial trailer, the show averts it in many cases, outright lampooning cliches where it is expected.
- In Episode 6, the "mandatory Beach Episode" makes an appearance... as a one-minute montage, with one of the girls lampshading its mandatory nature: Why do we have to do this at the beach?!
- In Episode 7, the girls arrive to a hotel with an onsen and Trainer tells them to take a bath... then the anime cuts right to a scene where they are wearing fluffy dressing gowns after having the bath.
- Feminist Fantasy: In a surprising twist, considering that it's a Moe series. Besides the above-mentioned aversion to Fanservice, the series leans more towards a true Sports Anime with a focus on the athletic prowess of the girls, and their relationships as friends and on-track rivals.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: In episode 7, Suzuka's left shoe's clasp comes undone. During the race, she ends up injuring her left leg.
- Fix Fic: The way this anime treats Silence Suzuka, compared to real life.
- Foe Romance Subtext: Appears to exist between Trainer and Hana (the lady trainer of Team Rigil). Played up a bit in Episode 6.
- Foregone Conclusion: In season 2, Tokai Teio wants to win the Triple Crown undefeated like Symboli Rudolf. It all be for naught since the real Tokai never achieved it.
- Food as Bribe: In Episode 9, when Team Spica refuses to participate in the triathlon during the training camp, Trainer decides to reward the winners to a dessert buffet, and it worked!
- Fragile Speedster: Horse girls are incredibly fast, mentioned to be capable of running 70 km/hour. However, it's also mentioned that a fall while running could actually kill a horse girl. This is Truth in Television, as real thoroughbreds are known for being incredibly fast at the cost of being more fragile. Silence Suzuka breaks her leg mid-race, from the strain of running at top speed.
- Friendly Rivalry: The series runs on this trope, with many of the girls forming close friendships with their on-track rivals. Teams Spica and Rigil share numerous friendships, and demonstrate concern for each other as well as celebrating the others' victories.
- Friend to All Children: Hishi Amazon and Narita Brian are shown to be rather easygoing with children.
- Frothy Mugs of Water: in Episode 3, Symboli Rudolf suggests "having a drink" with Air Groove. There is a close-up of a couple of bottles that look like wine bottles and have a French label on them. However, upon closer inspection◊, it turns out that the bottles contain 100% carrot juice, made in France. Justified, as the characters are horsegirls and, if we judge by Special Week, really like carrots, just like horses in our world do. Besides, it is a school, and drinking age in Japan is 20 - so no school pupil, even the President of the Student Council, can legally drink.
- Funbag Airbag: A minor case occurs when Special Week bumps into Gold Ship.
- Gender Flip: A lot of the real life racehorses that the characters are based on, including Special Week and Silence Suzuka are/were actually stallions.
- Go-to-Sleep Ending: At the end of the ending credits scene, all the horse girls lie down and rest after doing all the random fun activities.
- Gratuitous English: Taiki Shuttle likes talking this way. El Condor Pasa occasionally does this as well. Justified in that both were born in America.
- Halloween Episode: Most of Season 2, Episode 11 takes place during Halloween. Teio and McQueen have a festive costumed date, and a trick-or-treating Kitasan Black and Satono Diamond accost them for candy.
- Here We Go Again!: The series begins and ends with a Naïve Newcomer watching a Winning Concert, and getting felt up when Trainer tries to scout her.
- Heroic BSoD: Both Special Week and Silence Suzuka suffer one after the later breaks her leg. Special Week becomes too focused on helping Suzuka recover so that they can run together, causing her to lose repeatedly because she can't focus on the race at hand. Suzuka, meanwhile, is afraid of injuring herself again and can't bring herself to run at full speed even after making a full recovery. The fact that Special Week is running herself ragged helping her doesn't help things either, causing Suzuka to feel like she's holding her back. Trainer manages to break them out of it by having the two view each other as rivals.
- Heroic RRoD: Just like with real horses, this is a potential danger for racing. In the 7th episode, Silence Suzuka runs so fast that she ends up breaking her leg in the process.
- He's Back!: Special Week and Silence Suzuka both perform poorly in the aftermath of Suzuka's injury, too worried to focus on their running. When he sees them lagging behind the other girls in a training run, the trainer gives them a Rousing Speech about considering the other girl their rival. The girls are inspired and take off running, quickly catching up to the rest of the team and leaving them struggling to keep up.
- Historical Domain Character: The real horses were famous champions from the last 30 years of racing, many of them Hall of Fame inductees. Unlike most examples of this trope, many of them were still alive at the time when the anime premiered.
- Impractically Fancy Outfit: Horse Girls have a formal outfit they wear during major events, as opposed to the simple t-shirts and shorts worn during most races. The vast majority run on pure Rule of Cool, ignoring the reality of how a Badass Cape, a heavy jacket, a Pimped-Out Dress, and/or fancy heels would make running nearly impossible.
- Improbably Female Cast: Besides Trainer and some background characters (spectators, race announcers, a man walking a dog), there are no other male characters in the anime.
- Just the Introduction to the Opposites: In horse girl racing idol anime, horse pets you.
- Kick Chick: Unsurprisingly, horse girls do this when upset, and they tend to be as strong as an actual horse when they kick backwards. Special Week in particular has a habit of using her kicks as a form of Pervert Revenge Mode.
- Late for School: Instead of the traditional slice of toast, Special Week runs to school with a carrot in her mouth.
- Leg Focus: Given the story concept of horse girls running around, the primary form of Male Gaze (among what little fanservice there is) involves shots focusing on the girls' decently well-built legs, particularly their thighs. This is especially prominent when Trainer feels the legs of potential talent.
- Lighter and Softer: The series makes some nods to the real dangers of racing, mentioning that accidents on the track can be fatal. However, it avoids the harsh reality of racing injuries simply because Horse Girls are bipedal, and therefore a broken leg isn't a death sentence to them. Other dark sides of horse racing, like the grim fate that sometimes awaits failed racehorses (who are not Haru Urara) and the pervasive gambling, expressly do not exist in that world.
- Little Bit Beastly: Horse Girls sport the ears and tails of a horse, but are otherwise completely human in appearance.
- Manly Tears: Trainer-san (and much of the audience) in Episode 11 when Suzuka returns to racing.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": Played for Laughs. All of Team Spica have this reaction when they come across a pronounced curve during their training race, and they realize they're running too fast to stop. They keep running until they land on the ocean.
- Missing Mom: Special Week's biological mother died after she was born, so she was raised by her friend, which kind of counts as Interspecies Adoption since her adoptive mother is human.
- Moe Anthropomorphism: Of racehorses. Arguably, manages to work well.
- Naïve Newcomer: Special Week is the latest transfer to Tracen, having never participated in races beforehand back in the country.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The original trailer was different in many ways from the anime. This is apparently not a case of a misleading trailer, but rather the concept being developed between the 2016 trailer and the 2018 anime.
- Some of the characters were reworked or dropped.
- The horsegirls eat vegetarian food in the trailer, but the full range of human food in the anime.
- In the trailer, the horsegirls run in the normal human pose. In the anime, they have a special bent pose, explicitly different from how humans run.
- In the trailer, Special Week falls during a race with no apparent consequences. In the anime, it is explicitly mentioned that such a fall is very dangerous.
- Horsegirl shoes in the trailer have a narrow heel, which is replaced by a wider, more practical heel in the anime.
- In general there are more hints at Fanservice in the trailer than what happens in the anime.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Kitasan Black's father is based on Japanese singer Saburō Kitajima who actually owns the real Kitasan Black.
- No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: El Condor Pasa's victory in Tenno Sho in Episode 7. She did want "revenge" on Suzuka, but not that kind of revenge.
- Not This One, That One: Episode 9 has Team Spica get excited about the nice place they're staying...only for the bus to move and reveal the crappy place where they're really staying.
- One-Gender Race: Horsegirls, apparently. The anime does not explain exactly how they are conceived, and
Word of God states their fathers were completely normal. (Pregnancy and birth are explicitly mentioned.) - Opposing Sports Team: Team Rigil serves as a Lighter and Softer example of this trope. While they are the #1 ranked team with the best players, and Hana's training methods are very strict as suits the trope, they are close friends with the opposing teams.
- Passionate Sports Girl: Lots and lots of them, and various motives for their passion are explored.
- The Power of Friendship: Special Week saving Suzuka from possible death in Episode 7. In Real Life, Silence Suzuka was hurt so much he had to be put down. If the fate of horsegirls in the anime world is tied to that of the horses in our world, then that scene is "power of friendship, or of love, defeats fate itself".
- Put on a Bus: While Silence Suzuka recovers from her seemingly career-ending injury in season 1, she spends a majority of season 2 on a training course in America, only making small cameos via Special Week's phone. A case of Real Life Writes the Plot, as season 1 covered all of the notable races Silence Suzuka took part in before his accident and death.
- Real-Person Cameo:
- Yutaka Take, the legendary jockey who rode Special Week and many other prototype horses to their best victories, appears As Himself as a real-time commentator at Nippon Derby in Episode 5, also voicing himself, also credited. His facial expressions show him rooting for Special Week; in the corresponding real-life race he was riding Special Week. There's an extremely oblique reference to his birthday, March 15, in Season 2 Episode 3: the real race depicted in that scene, in which he was riding McQueen, took place on March 15th 1992. For no other apparent reason, Special Week therefore has a slice of cake on her head. In the rain.
- The regular second commentator/analyst during the anime races is Junko Hosoe, a past jockey who is now a real life racing analyst (so her role is similar to Newscaster Cameo). She has a page on the Japanese Wikipedia. She is voicing herself and is duly credited.
- The old man standing next to Gold Ship in Episode 3 of the second season is Takatoshi Imanami, who was Gold Ship's groom.
- Yutaka Take
- Real-Place Background: Lots. All featured public race tracks are faithful representations of originals. And other places, like the onsen hotel in Episode 7 and the train station in the opening, have also been found in Real Life.
- Related Differently in the Adaptation: Mejiro Ryan and Mejiro Dober. In real life Ryan was the sire of Dober. The anime, while still related, gives them a more ambiguous relationship.
- Related in the Adaptation:
- Mejiros. Both Mejiro Ryan and Mejiro Dobernote are related to McQueen. And because the Mejiros are a well known family name, that implies that every known racehorse with Mejiro in there name are related in the show. To be precise, Mejiro Ryan and Mejiro McQueen are somewhat related in Real Life. A mare named Cheryl is the dam of Ryan's dam and of McQueen's sire. When McQueen asks Ryan not to tell "grandmother" about something, this might mean that Cheryl exists in the world. But the dialogue does imply that Mejiro is an outright family name.
- Season 2 actually shows the Mejiro grandmother. She is not a horsegirl, and appears to be a reference to the real life Kitano Miya, known as "Mejiro no obaa-san", "Mejiro Grandma".
- Season 2 actually shows the Mejiro grandmother. She is not a horsegirl, and appears to be a reference to the real life Kitano Miya, known
- Season 3 has the Satono family consisting of Diamond and Crown who in real life have zero relations in their breeding pedigree. Though, they are own by the same person in Hajime Satomi in real life.
- Mejiros. Both Mejiro Ryan and Mejiro Dobernote are related to McQueen. And because the Mejiros are a well known family name, that implies that every known racehorse with Mejiro in there name are related in the show. To be precise, Mejiro Ryan and Mejiro McQueen are somewhat related in Real Life. A mare named Cheryl is the dam of Ryan's dam and of McQueen's sire. When McQueen asks Ryan not to tell "grandmother" about something, this might mean that Cheryl exists in the world. But the dialogue does imply that Mejiro is an outright family name.
- The Rival: So many that it be easier to mention those who aren't rivals. Pretty much anytime a horsegirl pulls off an impressive win, the loser will see them as a rival.
- Rule of Glamorous: The formal racing outfits seem to run on this trope, completely ignoring the laws of physics and biomechanics in favor of the girls wearing pretty outfits. No one has trouble running in high heels, gets slowed down by their heavy jackets or capes, or struggles with long hair getting in the way.
- Running Gag:
- Every time Trainer tries to touch the legs of a new horse girl, he gets kicked.
- In most races, when a fast girl passes some other girl at incredible speed, the other girl reacts with a loud "muri", usually translated as "Impossible" or "I can't". Also when a girl is preparing to "make her move" hoping to with the race, she will exclaim "ikeru" ("I can do it"); in one race, four "ikerus" are heard in quick succession. The "muri" even makes an appearance in the Eating Contest in Episode 6.
- The girls getting hit in the eyes with something is a regularly recurring gag.
- Season 2 has a recurring gag throughout the episodes where a customer kept getting her hair accidentally cut by her hairdresser because the latter was distracted by the race of the episode, to the extent that the former had to wear a helmet midway through the season. It culminates in the season finale in where the customer cuts her hairdresser's hair during the race. After the race is over, both women are shaved bald.
- Horse girls casually dishing out pro wrestling moves.
- It begins in season 1 episode 2 when Vodka performs a headlock on the Trainer.
- Episode 6 has Goldship doing a Cobra Twist on Teio. At this point McQueen deduces she could be roped into Team Spica's comedy antics and tries to leave, but is too late and is left accustomed to delivering most of the wrestling gags. Since hers are all recreating scenes from Kinnikuman, see the Shout Out section.
- Other horse girls continue getting in moves like Scarlet's armbar in episode 8.
- Ship Tease: A staple of this anime. Special Week/Silent Suzuka is closest, but also a few others.
- Shown Their Work: In spades. The amount of elaborate reality references in the anime is staggering, and they are found in surprising places sometimes, to the delight of the fandom.
- Sibling Rivalry: Both Narita Brian and Biwa Hayahide are sisters who consider each other as rivals. It's treated as a way for the two to be closer to one another.
- Somewhere, an Equestrian Is Crying: Despite the unrealistic premise, this mainly was Averted with a vengeance, with one notable exception - Trainer regularly approaching horsegirls from behind and suddenly feeling their thighs. It does get him well-deserved back-kicks, but he seems to be protected by a thick layer of Plot Armor. Do Not Try This at Home - if you do it with an actual horse, even the friendly and quiet kind, you might end up killed.
- Special Edition Title: Episode 8 of the second season's opening changes the scene of a timid looking Rice Shower to a much more serious looking Rice with a ominous night background. The episode itself dealt with a ultra focus Rice training to beat Mejiro McQueen at the next Tennou Sho.
- Spit Take: Trainer does this when Tokai Teio announces she's joining team Spica.
- Sports Story: The anime broadly fits the genre.
- Student Council President: Symboli Rudolf has this role, and is the winner of the Triple Crown race.
- Stunned Silence: In episode 7 when Suzuka breaks her leg mid-race, nearly everyone watching remains quiet in shock.
- A Taste of Defeat:
- Special Week experiences this in episode 3.
- El Condor Pasa loses against Silence Suzuka in episode 6.
- Team Power Walk: Team Spica do this as the enter the racecourse in Episode 13.
- Tears of Joy; In episode 13 of season 2, everybody were crying in happiness when Tokai Teio won the Arima Kinen after a year absence.
- Theme Music Power-Up: In the bonus episode of season 1, "Make debut!" plays during the homestretch of the Winter Dream Trophy.
- Toast of Tardiness: Special Week does this in Episode 2, but with a carrot instead of a piece of toast.
- Training Montage: During episode 4 Team Spica gives Special Week all sorts of training. The training montage is used in a few other episodes too, as one would expect in a series about sports.
- Unrelated in the Adaptation: A large majority of the horse girls are not related given their young appearance. However, they do have some type of strong ties to one another.
- Mejiro McQueen was the grandsire of Gold Ship, but the two are unrelated friends in the series. Gold Ship is instead a Loving Bully always seeking McQueen's attention.
- Maruzensky was the grandsire of Special Week, but the two are unrelated in the series. Instead, they merely have a friendly interaction.
- Symboli Rudolf was the sire of Tokai Teio. In the series, Tokai Teio looks up to Rudolf, and is driven to prove herself by surpassing her idol, while Rudolf patronizes Teio benevolently, even saying "I guess you're growing" in Episode 10.
- Many of the actual horses were related to each other, being descendants of the prolific "sire of sires" Silence Sunday. Among his descendants were Special Week (son), Silence Suzuka (son), Fuji Kiseki (son), and Gold Ship (grandson). None of these characters are related in the series.
- Vague Age: While the horse girls are clearly teenagers in design, it's unclear how old they actually are number wise. When Kitasan Black and Satono Diamond appeared in the beginning of season 2 they look like kids. But a one year skip in the last episode has them being teenagers.note
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The racing history in this anime generally follows the horse protagonists' racing seasons, though not without significant deviations. See the ShoutOut page for details.
- Vitriolic Best Buds:
- Daiwa Scarlet and Vodka are constantly arguing with each other in the opening and are not averse to exchanging stingy remarks in the anime itself, but are really good friends in Team Spica.
- Hishi Amazon and Narita Brian.
- Worldbuilding: Sometimes the anime gives a lot of attention to detail of horse girl life as different from ordinary humans. Notably, horse girls prefer old-style telephones with big handsets - they can hold the ear piece to the horse ear while the microphone is close enough to the mouth. A retro phone, located in Special Week's family home, first appears◊ as a Freeze-Frame Bonus in Episode 1. Then in Episode 9 we see a similar phone, with an even longer handset (probably specially adapted for horse girls), in Tracen. On the other end of the line, El Condor Pasa in France is using a full-on antique style phone handset.
