Anime Writer's Choice: Winter 2021 Anime Summary Review! 5 works including "Uma Musume Pretty Derby Season 2" and "Yuru Cannon △ SEASON 2" are introduced! Anime Column

The winter 2021 anime roundup features series and related titles. We pick up "Nonnonobi Yori Nonnontompu," whose original comic has just been completed, "Uma Musume Pretty Derby Season 2," whose game has finally started, "Horimiya," which also reached its finale along with the comic, and "YuruCan△ SEASON 2," which has a movie coming out soon! In addition, we will introduce five short animations, including "Young Girl President".

Uma Musume Pretty Derby Season 2

The second season of the sporty anime in which Uma Musume, girls who inherit the souls of racehorses, compete in races, revolves around Tokai Teio and Mejiro McQueen, who were active in the first half of the 1990s. As stated in the message at the beginning of the first episode, "This work is a fiction based on the story of actual racehorses, and we have tried to express it based on facts," the highlight of this work is how the historical facts are cooked up. The anecdotes of the racehorses and their jockeys, as well as the development of the races, are skillfully incorporated into the story, which is sure to make horse racing enthusiasts grin and those who are not familiar with the sport want to check it out.
The film focuses not only on the Uma Musume as they race, but also on the people who watch over them. There are many lovable characters, such as a horse racing geek who suddenly starts spouting off some nonsense during a race, or a hairdresser who is so engrossed in the live broadcast that she misses her haircut, but the highlight is the race commentator, former jockey Junko Hosoe, who has been on the show since the first season. The game released in February has been a big hit, and there are high expectations for further anime adaptations.

Nonnobiyo Nonnostop

This heartwarming comedy depicts the life of Renge Miyauchi, a student at Asahigaoka Branch School, a school of five students, in a countryside full of nature. The restrained direction is still present in the third season. In the first episode, the dialogue is eliminated, and Renge's face is finally shown in the 21st cut after a series of scenes of the countryside with no characters. The calm and relaxed screen presentation, reminiscent of the first episode of past series, leaves a fitting impression for the new beginning of "Nonnonbiyori".
The anime follows the events of the year in chronological order, starting with spring, but in the second and third seasons, the season is returned to spring again, and episodes that were not shown in the first season are supplemented. Therefore, although it appears to viewers that spring, summer, fall, and winter are repeated in each series, it is actually just the same year cut from a different perspective, thus escaping the promise that the characters do not age. A sense of growth should have already been apparent from Renge's behavior in the first episode, when she tries to use a stepladder to grab an object in a high place. The preview for the next episode, in which the sun sets with each passing episode, reminds us that time continues to flow without stopping, and at the same time, it makes us feel a sense of loneliness toward the end.

HORIMIYA

Kyoko Hori is a popular girl in her class, and Isumi Miyamura is a simple, geeky girl. The two had no contact with each other, but a trivial chance brings them closer to each other in this school love comedy. Based on the comic of the same title serialized in "G Fantasy," this is a work with a new composition and drawing of the four-frame comic "Hori-san to Miyamura-kun. Hori-san to Miyamura-kun" has been adapted into an OVA with a different cast than "Horimiya," and the latest volume is scheduled for release in May, a unique development.
In the final episode of the TV anime, Miyamura, who is about to graduate, imagines a "what if" world in which he and Hori had never become intimate. The scene at the school with no couples is refreshing, but Miyamura says, "I am sure that the world will gradually move in the direction I want it to go," and we see him getting along with everyone on the screen. This conviction is not unrelated to the fact that this work has maintained an unshakable identity despite changes in media and even in the voices of the characters.

YuruCan△ SEASON2

In the second season of this hit series about high school girls enjoying the outdoors, all the main characters set off on an Izu camping trip. However, only solo camper Shima Rin drives a moped to her destination, which is a departure from the other members who ride in minivans, which is typical of "YuruCan△. The moped trip is perfect for Rin, as she can enjoy the feeling of solo camping while on the road. The scene where she is looking at the beautiful scenery and thinking about it makes me want to take a trip by myself.
The second half of the final episode is also unique to this film in that it devotes time to the return trip. A movie is scheduled to be released in 2022, and we can't wait to see what kind of journey it will show us.

Young Girl President

This short animation depicts the commotion that occurs at the Mujina Company, a company of which the president is an ordinary five-year-old boy, Rokushina Jimu. The president, who spends most of her time playing when she comes to work, is unexpectedly competent as she fights off complainers with her pure childlike heart and reenergizes a businessman who is tired of his life. (Akiba Research Institute is one of those rare companies that sign a business contract before the first job and send an order form with each request.)
It is nice to be able to enjoy all the episodes on the official website, but the complete OP anime is now being distributed on various video services. It is a must-see with the action in full swing from the very beginning. In the complete version, the length of the OP and the main story are almost the same, but such imbalance matches the high-tension style of the work.

(Text by Katsunori Takahashi)

(C) 2021 "Uma Musume Pretty Derby Season 2" Production Committee
(C) 2021 Atto, published by KADOKAWA / Asahigaoka Branch School Management Association 3rd season
(C) HERO, HAGIWARA Daisuke / SQUARE ENIX, "HORIMIYA" Production Committee
(C) Afro, Houbunsha/Outdoor Activities Committee
(c) Odeko Fujii, KADOKAWA/Mujina Company