Let’s Watch is a weekly(?) recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire(?) runtime. Expect spoilers!

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I have not written a recap article for a currently-airing anime in nearly two years. It’s a surprisingly tough thing to nail down, at least if you want to write a good one. One has to capture the literal events of the episode, sure, but also nail its essence. What does the episode mean? Where is the show going from here? How does it fit into the contemporary landscape? What trends does it point to, present and future?

It’s a lot to consider, and that, combined with the inherent time pressure, is why I’ve largely dropped them from Magic Planet Anime. We’re making an exception today, because Cinderella Gray is, very plainly, the best thing airing right now. Despite—or perhaps because— of the fact that it’s “just” a very, very good sports series. There is a lot of great stuff airing right now (none of which I’m trying to knock), so that’s a big claim, but I stand by it. I haven’t really been beating the drum about the show as hard as I feel like I could be, and not everyone who reads these articles necessarily follows me on social media. Thus; this article. Hopefully the first of many, we’ll see.

It’s been a few weeks since I first wrote about Cinderella Gray, so let’s get up to speed real quick. After the first episode’s blowout, the second saw Oguri Cap take on Fujimasa March, the other extremely gifted, ash-haired horse girl at their school. That episode ends on a cliffhanger, and the third revealed that March narrowly edged Oguri Cap out of the victory in their first race together. The win wasn’t so definitive that she couldn’t attribute the victory to outside factors and, indeed, she becomes a little obsessed with trying to prove that she can beat Oguri fair and square. (This isn’t even an unreasonable thing to think; we also learned that Oguri’s old racing shoes were in absolutely terrible condition.) Episode three also saw Cap win a different race, absolutely demolishing the other racers and winning both the race itself and—I’m just gonna assume anyone reading this recap on my site is as yuri-brained as I am—the heart of gyaru horse girl / bully Norn Ace. Later, some more training led her to have a long, extremely shonen rival-y conversation with March, who directly challenged her to the Junior Crown.

This little conversation sets something inside Oguri alight. And that’s more or less where we begin this week. There’s a short sequence at the very top of the episode where Belno Light, Oguri’s gal pal and teammate, enters her own first race and loses quite badly. But I imagine we’ll be circling back around to her own story at a later date, as the vast majority of this episode is about Oguri, March, and this rivalry that’s grown between them.

It’s worth zeroing in on March’s line from the third episode; Without a peak to aim for there’s no point in climbing the mountain. We can make our little jokes, obviously—“peak” has taken on an adjectival meaning in English anime fandom over the past half decade, and it’s one that suits this series quite well—but it is really important that we don’t lose sight of this central metaphor.

When first asked about it, Oguri Cap is just grateful she can run at all. We already know from past episodes that when she was younger she could barely walk at all and it took active intervention on her mother’s part to turn her into the athlete she is today. This is great on its own of course, and it’s genuinely touching how truly grateful she seems to be that she can exert herself in the way she can, but this is a sports series. Oguri feels she has something to prove now.

There is an immense amount of appeal, in fact, just in watching Oguri do her thing, whether training or actually running. Aside from being a massively-endearing protagonist in the “strong but a bit of a doofus” mold (like dozens of classic shonen characters), there is a real joy to seeing her determination harden and sharpen now that she has a rival. At one point in this episode, she reveals that she’s been training with extremely heavy cleats on, a modern update on the whole “weighted clothing” trope from countless battle manga (which is promptly called attention to).

When the actual Junior Crown begins, Oguri’s trainer Jou takes note of her newfound motivation, self-deprecatingly quipping that he sometimes wonders why he’s there at all. This promptly gets him an earful from the episode’s new character; Jou’s uncle Musaka “Roppei” Ginjirou [Ootsuka Houchuu], also a horsegirl trainer, unexpectedly in town from Tokyo on vacation and scoping out the Junior Crown apparently on a whim.

Oguri Cap isn’t the only one training, of course. We get a look at March doing some “image training” (a minor obsession for this series, it played a fairly big role in Season 2), trying to imagine every possible scenario on the racetrack and conceiving of how to beat Oguri every single time. She claims to have thought up 100 different possibilities by the end of this scene, and given the fun visual of her dreaming up the blue and red colored ghosts of Cap and herself in the void of her own imagination, it’s easy to believe her.

There’s also an interesting contrast drawn between the relationships Oguri and March have to their trainers. Despite Jou’s self-effacing remark, it’s clear that Oguri likes and trusts him, and he has in fact contributed somewhat to developing her strengths. March’s trainer, meanwhile, gives her a presentation on the race, which she completely ignores in favor of her “concentration,” even going so far as to tell him to shut up. Whether this is something the series will continue to focus on as it goes forward is for those reading the original manga to know, but the difference is interesting, perhaps remarking on trust between trainer and athlete as just as important a component in a well-rounded competitor as anything else.

All of this leads up to the race, of course, and the Junior Crown is probably the show’s high point thus far. The race takes up a decent chunk of the episode, and we can basically break it down into two main parts, structurally-speaking. Firstly, there’s the race itself, which visually focuses on the actual motions of the racers as well as their mentalities while on the field, including a few full-on flashbacks to provide motivation, context, and color. (And toward the end we get some of the truly spectacular “auras” literally coloring the racers, a favorite technique of this series.) Secondly, there is the commentary, mostly coming from Jou and Belno who are watching in the stands, but also occasionally from Ginjirou and from an observing Tamamo Cross [Oozora Naomi], an uma musume visiting from Tokyo, who attends Tracen Academy, the prestigious racing school that is also the main setting of the three mainline Uma Musume seasons.

The race is spectacular. There’s a really great exchange between Cap and March just before the race begins, where Oguri interrupts March’s image training (which she’s still doing even as she prepares to run the actual race!), to say this.

I could write an entire separate article about the absolutely incredible character work the show has done with Oguri Cap so far. She’s goofy and silly often enough, and for just long enough, that as the audience we get sort of tricked into forgetting that she’s also basically Goku. This single line, probably the closest thing Oguri has offered so far in the series to a taunt, has more character in it than some anime’s entire casts. March, for the record, offers a shocked expression, but then a grin. This is largely a battle between the two of them, and they both know it.

Following on from the first three episodes, the racing in Cinderella Gray is a little less overtly fantastical than the approach taken in some more recent material from the series (certainly it’s quite a bit more grounded than the fantastical imagery in, say, New Era). But this isn’t a criticism, the grittier approach works really well for Cinderella Gray, and this race is probably the best demonstration of it yet. Particular attention is paid to Oguri Cap’s unique, low-to-the-ground stride, pointed out as a distinctive feature of her racing style as early as episode one.

Throughout, the race is a tug-of-war between Oguri Cap and Fujimasa March. (Spare a thought for Okan Maker, an extra who’s in the lead for a decent bit of the race but ends up left in the dust by both of them.) Accordingly we hear a lot from Fujimasa March. We even get a flashback showing how she’s been dedicated to winning her entire life, starting from when she was a child. In fact, much of the tone during the latter half of the race seems to sell the idea that March is going to inch out a win. She’s ahead of Oguri—admittedly just barely—starting after they both launch into a burst of speed at the same time. But what every single thing and person in the episode raising the flag that this is March’s race doesn’t understand is that Oguri Cap is….I mean, there’s no way to put it politely. She’s a monster.

The very last stretch of the race is spectacular, and here Cinderella Gray does lean into the more overt, battle shonen-esque stylings of some of its predecessors. That it’s only in such a short burst actually heightens its impact; just as March thinks she’s cinched the win, Oguri pulls a second burst of speed out of nowhere, treated with all the suddenness and gravitas of a warrior revealing a secret technique, and just like that, March is simply done.

Oguri Cap storms to victory, and the first arc of the series comes to a close.

After the race, March, initially in complete disbelief (and quite understandably pissed off) demands to know how she did that. Oguri speculates—as though she herself cannot entirely account for the power within her—that it was, in some way, March’s own doing. By directly challenging Oguri, she gave her something she didn’t have before. Oguri, of course, is quite grateful for all this, and we must imagine that the two will meet on the racetrack again in the future. Oguri directly offers such.

In doing this, Oguri seals the two’s relationship as rivals spurring each other to greater heights. I doubt March will be the last of these she picks up on her journey.

The episode’s denounement is fun, including the post-race concert, an oddity of the series that’s always felt a little tacked on—and at worst, reminiscent of the bottom of the barrel of the “idols but also other stuff” genre—here, in a relative rarity, it actually feels meaningful. Oguri has improved vastly as a performer since the previous episode where she listlessly danced to enka music and inspired Norn Ace to give her some dance lessons. (You know you’re living the sports yuri dream when all three of your former bullies show up to cheer you on at your race and one of them went out of her way to teach you how to dance. If we include Belno—and why not include Belno?—by my count Oguri has three different girls with their eyes on her. Four if we count Tamamo’s intrigued parting remark in this episode.)

The next decision to be made in Oguri’s journey is where she will race next. Jou wants to take her to the Chukyo Hai. Ginjirou advises him to skip it—he doesn’t directly say why—but Jou seems pretty determined, seeing it as an important stepping stone to Jou and Oguri’s mutual goal of winning the Tokai Derby. It might turn out to be a good thing that he’s so insistent, since an interesting post-credits scene reveals that another horsegirl attending that race—to observe, mind you—is Symboli Rudolf [Tadokoro Azusa], the Triple Crown winner that Uma Musume treats as the unofficial ur-horsegirl, president of Tracen Academy’s student council and looked up to by just about everyone. One of the final moments of the episode is a meaningful shot of the placard displaying Tracen’s motto, an artifact originally introduced way back in Uma Musume‘s first season. The motto itself is cryptic (and grammatically shaky) as always, but the shot imbues it with a certain power. Oguri Cap has much higher to climb. Both she, and her show, are just getting started.

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