Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime.

For the Cinderella Gray column, new installments will be posted either on the Sunday each episode airs, or as soon as possible over the succeeding week. Expect spoilers!

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I’ve largely been pretty happy with how Cinderella Gray has presented its storytelling so far, but there’s an obvious disadvantage to the particular way this series, and really Uma Musume in general, is constructed. Because these stories are loosely built around real events, you don’t have the luxury of really picking and choosing what characters play what role in a given circumstance. Because of this, the Fall Tenno Sho is the first time Oguri Cap and Tamamo Cross have actually competed against each other in any way. And as a direct consequence of that, Tamamo has not gotten a ton of screentime.

That began to change last episode, and the trend continues here. If there’s a single thing this episode absolutely nails, it’s giving You The Viewer, should you perhaps have been skeptical, reason to care about Tamamo Cross. A pretty impressive amount of character work is crammed into these 20-odd minutes, and it’s probably the episode’s biggest accomplishment. In addition to, you know, all of the usual high points that Uma Musume hits.

There are two main techniques at play here. First, the episode opens with a straight-up flashback, depicting a very young Tamamo and her mother as, somewhat surprisingly, vagrants of some sort. To my recollection, this is the first real indicator that poverty as such exists in Uma Musume at all, and it’s a bit shocking to see them break that particular seal so casually. [A rare after the fact edit from me here: This was my initial read, but a friend has since pointed out that it’s possible they were just trying to find a home near a racetrack, and this would explain the more casual nature of the scene while still leaving the stakes roughly intact and honestly makes a bit more sense. This is what I get for writing late at night!] Still, the scene is effective, showing the two attempting to find housing in Kasamatsu and failing. Oguri’s mother even makes a brief cameo, pretty heavily implying that if things had worked out just slightly differently, Oguri Cap and Tamamo Cross would’ve known each other as children.

In addition to being excellent fuel for fanwork, that kind of what-if is meant to tie Oguri and Tamamo even more strongly together, the idea that these two were in some sense always “meant” to meet is a powerful one, and it bleeds over into their interactions in the present day.

Before we get into that, though, spare a thought for Lord Royal [Yamamura Hibiku], who has her first and, if I had to guess, probably last moment of any real relevance in this episode.

Royal, a frontrunner introduced in last week’s episode, is the only one of the other contestants given much attention aside from some jokes. She clearly thinks very highly of herself, and she actually has an impressive, commanding lead for much of the race. Arrogance is a hell of a thing though, and as soon as she starts imagining herself in true royal attire as the race’s obvious winner, she is interrupted by a streak of white lightning to her right.

Most Uma Musume racers, if their style is brought up, are defined by a single approach. As once again laid out by journalist and commentary character Sensuke, you have your frontrunners, pace chasers, late surgers, and end closers. Four different approaches that roughly demarcate how a particular horse girl runs; frontrunners attempt to get to the front of the pack early and stay there the entire race, pacers match the pace of the leading runner from not far behind her and attempt to overtake her at the end, surgers do much the same but from farther back, and end closers attempt last-second bullet zooms as the race comes to a close.

These categories aren’t absolute, but they are the boxes that most race styles fit into. Tamamo Cross, it’s noted, is an end closer. Adopting this approach after an incident during her debut where she collided with another horse girl mid-race. Her reputation as such seems to bother her a bit, as she runs here, she notes being unsatisfied with a style defined by her fear of the pack. (This makes her come off as both brimming with a charismatic, earned confidence, and as a bit of a trickster. The cool factor cannot be overstated.) And accordingly—and unusually—she completely switches her approach for this race, surprising even her own trainer. She keeps pace with Lord Royal for most of the track, and Royal is ahead of her for most of that time, but while Royal has a strategy of her own—deliberately making it seem like she’s tired out, when she in fact still has gas in the tank—she does not have the winds of destiny at her back. Thus, in the final leg of the race, Tamamo Cross passes her with ease. Better luck next time, Royal.

That’s not to say that Tamamo Cross’s victory is a sure thing, because the entire time she’s running, she feels something from behind her. Not the pack itself, but some singular, immense pressure. Like a force of nature bearing down on her. Something….monstrous.

This is, at the end of the day, Oguri Cap’s show. She is the titular Cinderella gray. In this arc people have started calling her “The Ashen Beast”, a title more fit for a Dark Souls boss than a racehorse. We don’t actually see who wins, here, as the episode ends on a truly wicked cliffhanger, but the show is doing an incredible job of making it seem plausible that it could be either her or Tamamo. Roppei points out that all of Oguri Cap’s victories have taught her to trust her raw power; unlike Tamamo, who is performing a dramatic switchup of her style here, Oguri is doing what she’s been doing this entire season, running low to the ground, tearing through the track like a monster, and leaving no survivors.

So who takes it? The White Lightning or the Gray Monster? The Ashen Beast or the trickster with the supersonic feet? Goku or Vegeta? We don’t know! But that kind of edge-of-your-seat tension, simplicity itself in description but impossibly difficult to actually nail, is what makes this series so great. Here, it accomplishes this with a clever perspective flip that effectively makes Tamamo our protagonist for the first part of the final race. It’s enough to leave the results up in the air. The finale, and the finish line, await.

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