Web Animation / Umayuru

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Umayuru is a series of animated shorts set in the Umamusume: Pretty Derby universe. The series consists of 24 3-minute episodes focusing on the Slice of Life and school antics of various umas in and around Central Tracen and can be considered a Spiritual Successor to the Umayon 4-koma comics.

The series first started running in 2022, with a short 4-episode sequel called Umayuru: Pretty Gray running during Golden Week in 2025 alongside the anime adaptation of the manga Cinderella Gray. It can be found on the PakaTube! channel alongside other Umamusume content.

Compare with BanG Dream! Girls Band Party!☆PICO of BanG Dream! and Petit SEKAI of Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!, both of which are a gag spinoff from an idol franchise with chibi format.

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Umayuru contains examples of:

• Affectionate Parody: "Solved by Breakfast" and "Yatsuhashi Blight — the Seiun Case Files" are both pastiches of Japanese detective dramas, with a group of eccentric detectives (Teio, Fukukitaru, Tachyon and McQueen in the former, Seiun Sky and King Halo in the latter) attempting to solve a mystery in a sleepy rural area.
• All Just a Dream: "The Claw Of Cataclysm" turns out to be a nightmare Daiwa Scarlet has of her and her friends being turned into prizes for a giant crane game... Or Was It a Dream?
• Battle Rapping: Episode 13 is a rap battle featuring T.M. Opera O, Grass Wonder, Narita Taishin, Winning Ticket, and a mysterious final guest (Yukino Bijin, Playing Against Type)invoked. True to the series' emphasis on Friendly Rivalry, the "battle" aspect is downplayed; competitors mostly hype themselves up rather than putting their opponent down. The only exception is Narita Taishin, who tries to provoke Winning Ticket into verbal combat — only to grow increasingly flustered as Winning Ticket instead uses her verses to gush about how much she values their friendship.
• Beginner's Luck: Vodka plays mahjong with Sirius Symboli, Nakayama Festa, and Tanino Gimlet in Episode 20, despite not knowing a thing about mahjong. She manages to win by sheer luck, with Nakayama name-dropping the trope.
• Big Damn Heroes: In "Curse of the Umamusume", Matikanefukukitaru saves Special Week and King Halo from an evil spirit posing as Seiun Sky during their slumber party.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In episode 1 of Pretty Gray, Tamamo Cross and Oguri Cap set up a takoyaki stand at the school festival in competition with Gold Ship and Mejiro McQueen's yakisoba stall. After Tama and Oguri start to run low on ingredients due to Oguri eating too many samples, the two stalls join forces to make takoyakisoba for the festival.
• Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: A non-romantic example (maybe) in Episode 5 "We're Over!": Vodka and Daiwa Scarlet's bickering reaches a point where they declare they are "done" with one another and start ignoring each other. They barely last a day before they go right back to bickering again, much to the relief of Tokai Teio, Mejiro McQueen, and Twin Turbo.
• Chew-Out Fake-Out: Episode 17 ends with Fine Motion and Symboli Kris S cornering Agnes Digital, who has been following and taking pictures of them all day during their ninja training course. Digital stammers out an apology for stalking them, except Motion and Kris are actually impressed with how stealthy Digital is and conclude she's an actual ninja.
• Cooking Show: "Spe & Oguri's Pony Pantry" from Episode 22, with Matikanetannhauser acting as an assistant. The three are tasked with making a hamburger steak dish, but putting two of the franchise's Biggest Eaters onto a cooking show quickly proves to be a bad idea as they get carried away and eat all their ingredients before they can finish making the dish.
• Dating Sim: Agnes Digital plays one in Episode 23 centered around the Symbolis, but ditches it near the end because she doesn't want to pair herself with any of them, but wants to see them "dancing" with one another.
• Denser and Wackier: While the franchise isn't especially serious to begin with, the game and most other adaptations at least somewhat grounded while Umayuru fully dips into Gag Series territory.
• Escalating War: Agnes Tachyon and Air Shakur get into one in "Unlike Terms" as they both begin using each other as human guinea pigs for various experiments, starting with Tachyon locking Shakur into a giant centrifuge and spinning her around to check her pulse under stress, to Shakur putting Tachyon on a treadmill facing an industrial fan and throwing various objects at her to test the aerodynamics of Tachyon's floppy sleeves, to Tachyon loading down Shakur with several metric tons of weight, to Shakur tossing Tachyon into a Shark Pool...
• Face of a Thug: Episode 2 is all about numerous umas (Special Week, Matikanetannhauser, and Meisho Doto) getting scared by Symboli Kris S's stern face when she shows up behind them (Kris S doesn't do anything else and assumes the other girls are being really nice to her).
• Fake Muscles: In "Tsuyoshi's Glow Up", Tsurumaru Tsuyoshi wants to get stronger, but regular training methods fail her. Agnes Tachyon gives her a serum (a placebo) that knocks her out for a while, and when she wakes up Tsuru finds herself having gained the physique of a bodybuilder (Tachyon actually stuffed her into an inflatable muscle suit). Tsuru does get a boost of power and confidence up until Sasami Anshinzawa offers to do acupuncture for her which pops the suit and sends poor Tsuru flying around the infirmary.
• Funny Background Event: Hishi Akebono is often shown as a Giant Woman just existing and having fun in the background while the rest of the plot goes on around her.
• Gag Series: Like Umayon, Umayuru consists of shorts featuring Chibified version of Umamusume, focusing more on gags and character interactions rather than adapting historical horse races.
• Giant Woman: Hishi Akebono's huge size tends to be exaggerated for gags here as all of her appearances show her as a giant.
• Giving Up the Ghost: Tsurumaru Tsuyoshi does this after her failed training run at the beginning of "Tsuyoshi's Glow Up".
• Homage: The lyrics in the closing verse of "#UmaRAP" are taken almost verbatim from Naughty By Nature's hit song "O.P.P."
  You down with UMA RAP?
  (Yeah you know me)
  Who's down with UMA RAP?
  (Every last homie)
• Ice-Cream Koan: "If you gaze into the noodly abyss, the noodly abyss gazes back into you!" Said by Gold Ship about frying yakisoba for the school festival.
• Letting the Air out of the Band:
  • The triumphant music in the beginning of "Tsuyoshi's Glow Up" peters out when Tsuru staggers after King Halo and Haru Urara on a training run before her weak stamina causes her to pass out.
  • Played for Horror in "As the Golshis Will". The "Girls Legend U" portion of the soundtrack slows down and becomes lower in pitch as a pissed off Grass Wonder approaches Gold Ship with bad intentions in mind.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Poor Twin Turbo is left confused in Episode 5 when Scarlet and Vodka seemingly break up and refuse to talk to each other, watching it all go down from the outside. Eventually she cracks and tries to make the two reconcile. It turns out they were already back together before Turbo noticed.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: In Episode 4, Tsurumaru Tsuyoshi participates in one of Agnes Tachyon's experiments and gains an absurdly buff body as a result (or so she thinks; Tachyon actually just knocked her out and stuffed her in an inflatable muscle suit while she was unconscious). This turns Tsuyoshi into a powerhouse obsessed with building up her strength...only for things to fall apart once Sasami Anshinzawa shows up.
• Mob War: "Tracen Turf Warz" features three mobs co-led by three: Brian's Bandidos (Vodka, Tanino Gimlet, and Mayano Top Gun), the Sunday Syndicate (Special Week, Silence Suzuka, and Daiwa Scarlet), and Tony's Angels (Winning Ticket, Tosen Jordan, and Air Groove). However, just before either one of the three mobs' members attempts to land the first strike, Tazuna appears with a riding crop and asks them to lay it off. The girls initially doubled down, but Tazuna remained unfazed and insisted that the girls behave with immediately lest she revoke their training privileges right then and there. They run away in fear and agree to make up to keep their training privileges alive.
  Tosen Jordan: Mind your own business!
  Tazuna: How about you mind your manners? [cracks her crop on the ground] Otherwise, I miiight just take away your training privileges.
  All: A-anything but that!
• Mundane Utility: Fine Motion uses her elite security detail to get a variety of fences for Tanino Gimlet to smash and revive her creative spark.
• Mythology Gag: In Episode 19, Tazuna and Director Akikawa try to escape their locked room by opening their door, like they do in the game's trainee gacha animation.
• Nosebleed: Agnes Digital bleeds like a fountain twice in Episode 23 when all the Symbolis seduce her in a Dating Sim, almost passing out by the time she finds Kris S.
• One I Prepared Earlier: In "Spe & Oguri's Pony Pantry", Special Week, Oguri Cap, and Matikanetannhauser accidentally eat all the hamburger steaks they were preparing as part of their cooking show. Machitan tells the others not to worry as she made a sample earlier just in case this happened... except Oguri ate that one too, assuming they weren't going to need it.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Turns out that wasn't Seiun Sky scaring Spe and King with ghost stories during their slumber party...
• Rage Quit: Agnes Digital does this in a Dating Sim she's playing because she doesn't want to pair herself with any of the Symbolis and would rather see them paired off with one another instead.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Air Shakur is this in the video for "Dance 2 Endless Beat", starting the video in her androgynous Monad outfit and looking incredibly flustered after she's forced to put on the same skimpy leather dress as the other girls.
• Shout-Out:
  • Episode 9, "Initial Derby" is an extended Homage to Initial D.
  • Episode 19, "As the Golshis Will", draws influence and its title from horror manga/film "As the Gods Will".
• Three-Point Landing: In "Tracen Turf Warz," Tazuna drops from the sky like a green meteorite, sticking a perfect superhero landing just in time to defuse a brewing gang fight.
• Training Montage: A failed one in "Tsuyoshi's Glow Up" as Tsuru tries to get in shape only to wipe out on a treadmill, drown in the pool, and faint after trying to pull a giant tire.
• Uncertain Doom: It's not shown what exactly a pissed off Grass Wonder did to Gold Ship at the end of "As the Golshis Will"^note though it was likely violent, given that she can faintly be seen wielding her naginata◊ in the scene where she breaks Golshi's door down, but whatever it was, it left El Condor Pasa traumatized.
• Weather Manipulation: Intentional or not, Symboli Kris S and Tanino Gimlet's face off in "The Stormbringers" generates such aura that a thunderstorm with a tornado rolls onto campus, scattering the other assembled umas (and sending poor Tsurumaru Tsuyoshi flying into the atmosphere when she gets snagged by the tornado).
• Wheel o' Feet: Happy Meek has them in "Initial Derby", while the other runners' legs are animated more properly.