The blog’s been getting 1000+ hits per day for a couple of days, so it ocurred to me to write a quick index of all the ways you can consume™️ Uma Musume: Pretty Derby as of this writing.
First a couple of disclaimers.
This list won’t be updated later, this is a blog, not a wiki. While the list might become obsolete from future releases not being included, there’s still plenty to go around.
Also this list won’t include collabs in other games, it’s explicitly about stuff you can read, listen to, or play that’s directly an Uma Musume thing.
It’s also not an index of doujinshi creators because otherwise this would never get published in a lifetime.
Get it? Got it? Good. Let’s start.
Games
Uma Musume: Pretty Derby
Duh.
It’s available in English now though, so there’s no excuses.
Uma Musume: Pretty Derby – Party Dash
Available in basically every platform except phones (unless you know how to finnagle with remote play), ウマ娘 プリティーダービー 熱血ハチャメチャ大感謝祭！(Nekketsu Hachamecha Dai Kansha-sai/Hotblooded and crazy Thanksgiving Festival), also known in english as Party Dash (since it was the first game released in English) is a completely different kind of game, a party game with specific minigames to be more specific. The story is also more limited compared to the main game.
My recommendation
So let’s assume I gotta sell Uma Musume to someone via a game. It would depend on the person. Some find the idea of a one-and-done game more appealing than the looming expanse of a gacha. Some find a “free” gacha game better than a game you gotta pay money for.
Hachauma is, regardless, a pretty good introductory point for two reasons:
The first is that the characters get concentrated into their essentials very nicely, you get what each character is in a shorter span of time and that might sell you onto wanting to play the full game.
The other is that if you’re a sicko about Japanese videogame history (like me), Hachauma is such a good homage to old Kunio-kun party games that it borders on unofficial sequel territory sometimes. And if that’s what you’re into, the full game is just full of that sort of thing to the brim also.
Anime
There’s eight different anime by now, I’ll sort them in groups rather than any specific release order.
Season 1
Released in 2018. It covers Special Week‘s career. A series of OVAs was released later that cover some elements of the BNW trio.
Season 2
Focused mainly on Tokai Teio and Mejiro McQueen and released in 2021. It actually released in such a way that it started before the mobile game released and ended after the game released, so there was some anime-related events corresponding to that.
Season 3
Came out in October 2023. It’s mainly focused on Kitasan Black and Satono Diamond’s runs. It was preceded by a short anniversary animation in 2022 that effectively teased the existence of the season and some of the characters. Regrettably, it was upstaged by the time it came out by…
Road To The Top
An ONA that released for free on Youtube in April 2023. It covers in four episodes the Classic season of 1999 with Narita Top Road, Admire Vega, and TM Opera O. It was later recut into a single theatrical release with some extra scenes.
Beginning Of A New Era
The Movie. It was released in May 2024. It mainly covers the trio of Agnes Tachyon, Manhattan Cafe, and Jungle Pocket (plus Dantsu Flame), but it’s also a sequel to Road To The Top, covering TM Opera O’s dominance and making Meisho Dotou more of an active participant.
Poor season 3 announced the movie on its finale and it erased any lingering feelings in favor of hype for the movie.
Also yes that poster is real. Sadly it didn’t go beyond posters.
Cinderella Gray
Starting on April 2025, it’s an adaptation of the manga (look further down). As of this writing the second cour was announced for October 2025.
Umayon
So from 2018 to 2021 Cygames published a series of 4-panel comics about Uma Musume in their Cycomics website. There was an original run of 12 short episodes in 2020 and an extra 12 were added when the Bluray released in December 2021.
Umayuru
Like Umayon, but newer. It premiered in October 2022 without an accompanying comic. A sequel of sorts released on April 2025 called Pretty Gray (which is the one shown up there). For context, CyGames tends to make some gag about Golden Week where they replace Golden with another word with G (predictably one of the first was Gold Ship Week). This year, with Cinderella Gray on air they made Gray Week focusing on girls with white or gray hair and Pretty Gray makes episodes focusing on said girls.
By the way, ever since they implemented her, Christmas has had some “Merry Kris S” thing going on.
My Recommendation
Road To The Top.
Cinderella Gray has a slower start (which is good, but keep in mind the context of the recommendation), Beginning of a New Era is clearly picking up tone-wise where RttT left off, Umayon and Umayuru are gag shows, and the anime seasons are… full anime seasons.
If I’m gonna try and recommend a starting point I say Road To The Top because the four chapters take you through all the highs and lows in a very concentrated fashion. If the hypothetical person just getting into it wants more show them Beginning of a New Era since that one was often a double feature with RttT.
Also RttT is literally free to watch on YouTube, there’s no excuses that you don’t have Uno installed.
While I wouldn’t say the anime seasons are bad, their format feels very scattered and unfocused nowadays. And make no mistake, as much as I bully season 3 I do like season 3… but basically in the current environment season 2 and 3 are watches when you’re already invested in the characters and season 1 is more of a relic.
In that same vein I’d put Umayuru over Umayon because… long story short Umayuru doesn’t have to waste time doing the thing early uma Musume stuff did where they’re like “here’s a historical nod!”.
Manga
We’re actually going to start with an outlier for the sake of being thorough.
Haru Urara Ganbaru.
This is TECHNICALLY an Uma Musume manga but it’s discontinued.
I talked about it when I talked about Urara ages ago, but it’s effectively like a completely different thing entirely, like a gijinka manga about Haru Urara (not the current Uma Musume character, mind you) that they put the Uma Musume name to.
It was briefly online again after the game released but it’s not available right now, though I’m sure someone somewhere backed it up.
Okay let’s move to the more proper answers.
Cinderella Gray
Beginning serialization in 2020, Cinderella Gray is a manga about Oguri Cap and its time in horse racing, a period people nowadays call “The second horseracing boom” (for those curious, the first was with Haiseiko, and a third with Deep Impact in the 2000s).
This requires a whole post of its own that’s probably better saved for when the manga ends, but I truly believe Uma Musume’s current, more athletic tone in its storytelling owes itself to Cinderella Gray specifically.
It has 19 volumes as of this writing and I kinda calculate at the pace the story goes it’ll probably hit 25-27 by the time it ends.
Starting Gate
It began serialization in 2017 but didn’t get a physical release until 2021.
It’s basically a comic version of the Starting Gate Drama CDs (more on them later).
Umayon
As mentioned, it ran from 2018 to 2021. There’s no physical version per se, but the Bluray did include all of the comics compiled in a booklet.
Star Blossom
The other main manga, which started in 2023. It focuses mainly on Sakura Laurel and the power trio she builds with Mayano Top Gun and Marvelous Sunday.
The tone is very different from Cinderella Gray, but it’s not bad! If you expect the same down and dirty girls bleeding by the time they start the race tone as Cinderella Gray you’ll be disappointed, but if you take it as its just-as-competitive but less bloody self you’ll find it’s great.
Umameshi
Now we’re in the “you’re already into the franchise anyways” territory. This one started in 2023 and has 5 volumes as of now.
Umameshi is what the name suggests: Short comics about the girls having a good meal. They might not be the deepest stories but it does give screentime to girls that haven’t had much of a chance yet in printed form.
Comic Anthology
Short comics by a variety of artists. They started being published in 2024 and have three volumes as of now, subtitled: Forward, Friends, and Vacation respectively.
Comic Anthology Star
Similar to the earlier one, though this one has been around since 2021. They’re currently at Volume 10.
The stories are more comedic in tone (almost like the Support cards in the game, even) and the covers are always comissioned to big artists. Case in point, the one I show up there was illustrated by motherfucking CLAMP.
Pisu Pisu Supi Supi Gorushi-chan
Uma Musume but as a Corocoro Magazine gag manga.
For some of you that is the most concise explanation ever, for the rest of you it means nothing and I’m sorry to the latter group but I don’t know how else to explain it.
Starting in 2024, this is a manga about a kindergarden inflicted with one (1) Gold Ship and you might think it’s a prequel but then other girls from McQueen to Oguri start showing up as small versions of themselves and honestly by that point the madness was already long set.
That’s the thing, Corocoro is a magazine with a very specific brand of humor (think how Shonen Jump stuff always smells of Shonen Jump) so you’ll either love it or not get it.
My recommendation
Cinderella Gray, come on.
There’s an argument that could be made that if Cinderella Gray and Star Blossom were being published at the same pace and were currently the same length it’d be a matter of preference, but in the reality we live in the fact that Cinderella Gray shows what the long-term narrative looks like is of more value.
Also, to be honest, in the context of Japanese horseracing, Cinderella Gray is covering a more impactful period. As a small example, Oguri being accepted by popularity is what allowed TM Opera O to participate and win the Satsuki Sho.
Novels
Half for being thorough and half as a joke, but there ARE novels. There’s a novelization of Beginning of a New Era and the Blurays for the first two seasons included short novels in each and I recommend none. The movie one is a very “I wanna see the movie but I’m busy and can’t go to the theater”, and the ones in the Blurays are more of a curiosity (that I will, nonetheless, explore in the future).
One of the latter did almost become a manga and after going through it I’m glad it didn’t, though.
CDs
Starting Gate
I bring them up all the time. The short of it is that they’re the earliest piece of Uma Musume media released, a series of Drama CDs with some songs thrown in there.
If you’re curious, you can just read the manga, it’s the same content in the end.
Soundtrack
Okay so I’m gonna do this checking my shelf, if I don’t mention something assume it’s because I misplaced a CD
Starting Gate Unit Song Collection.
Yes, Unit, like in idol things. It’s not even like nowadays where there’s generations and whatnot, one such unit is Biko Pegasus, Sakura Bakushin O and Tamamo Cross. It’s basically a compilation of the songs in each volume of Starting Gate where all are involved.
Anime OST
Every anime season and the movies have soundtracks released. Notably during season 1 they spread them out like Singles, but ever since then they’ve just compiled all of it in a single place when possible.
Winning Live
The main series of CDs, they span everything from singles to the proper OST for the game. They come out regularly and the latest preorder as of now is actually Winning Live 29. There will predictably be quite a few repeated songs if you collect them all.
Paka Age Mix
A more limited run (in the sense of release frequency, not sales number) that remixes a lot of songs. Even cooler are the animations not included in the CD but posted on YouTube to promote the CDs.
Concerts
If you’re like me and hate crowds, they do release Blurays of the concerts.
It should be noted that these start from the second one called Sound Fanfare in 2018. There was a first one in 2017 but the only thing from it is commemorative merch that goes for insane prices.
Stage Show
No, really.
Sprinters’ Story is a stageplay that focuses on Daitaku Helios, Yamanin Zephyr, KS Miracle, and Daiichi Ruby. Instead of running, a choreography involving tapdancing where the position of each actress reflects their position in the race is used.
Thankfully there’s a Bluray of it that even includes behind-the-scenes stuff.
You should also read Midori no Makibao.
I don’t even say it as a recommendation or a requirement, you just should.