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!
Cinderella Gray can be watched, legally and for free, on It’s Anime By REMOW on Youtube. A link is provided below for your convenience. The descriptive blurbs for these articles are taken from those of REMOW’s Youtube uploads.
In a way, the episodes of Cinderella Gray that feature an actual race are usually the easiest to write about. This is where the series’ theory turns into practice, where the character work that it winds into a tight coil finally springs. This is where the excitement and the action are. Everything else in the show leads up to this.
It is perhaps a little surprising then that the first half of the episode is devoted to reinforcing all of those stakes. Even so, it’s actually quite effective. The Kasamatsu squad show up in person to witness the most important race of Oguri’s career, leading March to marvel at her first rival and reflect on how her growth has spurred on her own (something we saw in action back in episode fourteen). Kitahara Jo, as Oguri’s first trainer, is immensely proud that she’s here at all. There is a sense here that Oguri runs not just for herself, but for everyone who believes in her. This has always been true, but it’s meaningful that the show seeks to restate it now, right before the big race.
It’s not true of just Oguri, either. The three other major contenders in the race, Tamamo Cross, Super Creek, and Dicta Striker, all get at least a little screen time with their trainers before hitting the field. Tama’s fails to hold back her tears. Super Creek’s reminds her that this is not a clash of three titans, but four, and to not discount herself. Dicta’s, silent hulk of a man that he is, merely offers her an approving nod as she makes her way to the starting gate.
It’s Dicta Striker herself who notes that it’s not just the big four, everyone at the Arima Kinen is a monster in their own right. (Including characters who are essentially background faces to us, like say Lord Royal, also here to avenge her loss at the Fall Tenno Sho.) If it seems like I’m talking in circles about this a little bit, I’ll admit that I am, but I do just think the way Cinderella Gray is so intent on making sure we understand exactly what these races mean to the girls who run them is one of its strengths. (Sometimes this extends even to girls who aren’t presently running. A brief aside tells us that Japanese Derby champion Sakura Chiyono O is currently tending to a foot injury. She, Mejiro Ardan, and Yaeno Muteki get a brief, but sweet scene together in the stands.)
This is reinforced even further with our protagonist’s pre-race activities. She runs into Symboli Rudolf, who congratulates her on how far she’s come and the two more or less make amends from that whole spat way back in episode seven. Oguri Cap’s most important conversation before the race though is, of course, with Tamamo Cross.
Initially, Oguri’s attitude seems almost apologetic, and she’s clearly still kind of stunned that this will be Tamamo Cross’s final race. She talks about how Tamamo Cross, faster and stronger than even her, was once the goal she sought to surpass, but, as Tama’s own sepia-toned flashbacks play across the scene, Oguri hits a nerve when she says that she can tell that Tamamo Cross loves running as much as she does. As Tamamo’s thoughts flash back to the sickly old man who has been on her mind this entire time, she flips.
The brief back-and-forth here is certainly the angriest we’ve ever seen either of these characters. But, in a twisted way, it’s also them at some of their most charismatic. There’s a very raw vein of bitter anger running in both directions here, and this brief scene is one of my favorites in the entire series for managing to say so much with so little, I’m glad the anime was able to capture it this well. Even Tamamo Cross’s parting remark is captured perfectly, owing as much to Oozora Naomi’s performance as anything visual.
The Arima Kinen, both the race and the episode, is thus set up as the most important of the series thus far. Here, on a bright, cold Christmas day, Oguri has to settle her score with Tamamo Cross. She won’t get another chance.
Oguri shudders and shakes as she enters the gate. There are trumpets, and then, there’s a long, lead-heavy moment of dead silence and raw tension.
And then, they’re off.
As front-runner Lord Royal takes first place in the earliest part of the race, we follow our four “titans” one at a time. We focus, first, on Oguri Cap herself. Belno Light’s study of running form, a major component of last week’s episode, is here revealed to be the sole actual stratagem that Oguri is bringing to the Arima Kinen. The idea is simple: by leaning even lower than she normally does, Oguri offsets some of the difficulty of the track’s inclines. Other than that, she is, at Roppei’s encouragement, running mostly on instinct here. (In an amusing bit of prodding at the fourth-wall, he even dismisses the whole pace chaser / late surger dichotomy as a simplification for the sake of “the viewers.” He means the viewers of the races, in a Watsonian sense, but it’s funny nonetheless.)
Super Creek gets only a little focus as the race begins, although we can see how her large, bounding strides might help her with a track this tough even without the show directly calling attention to such. It’s really Dicta Striker who gets the lion’s share of the focus in the latter half of the episode as the race really gets started.
We haven’t known Dicta for nearly as long as Oguri or Tamamo Cross, and it’s fair to say she hasn’t been characterized quite as much as Super Creek either. What we do know is that, all else aside, she seems like a bit of an adrenaline freak. She actually bashes her head against the starting gate as the race starts, and it takes her a bit to realize just how badly she’s hurt herself. To my recollection, this is the first-ever depiction of blood in an Umamusume anime, which is not exactly shy when showing other kinds of injuries.
There is a lot of it, enough to be genuinely pretty worrying! But Dicta soldiers on, her rapid, kicking gait not letting up as she tries to ignore the amount of blood she’s losing and keep herself in the race.
While she does, at least for now, valiantly keep herself up and running, her thoughts of strategy, where to time her last spurt, and so on, turn out to be for unintentional provocation to another racer in the back. Our fourth titan, so to speak, gets annoyed at how slow and conservative the race has been so far. She didn’t come here to coast to an easy victory. She came here to win.
In one of the wickedest cliffhangers Umamusume has made use of to date, a streak of white lightning strikes the racecourse for the third and final time. Tamamo Cross will not go quiet.
Next Week: The Lightning Legend vs. The Gray Goliath, for the last time!
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