At first glance, Uma Musume: Pretty Derby - BNW no Chikai (hereafter BNW ) appears as a neat, self-contained appetizer to the sprawling mobile game and the more melancholic second season of the anime. It is a 3-episode OVA focusing on the “forgotten generation” of horse girls: Inari One, Winning Ticket, and the focal point, Smart Falcon. Yet, to dismiss BNW as mere franchise padding is to miss a startlingly mature meditation on what it means to compete without the possibility of victory. While Season 2 of the main series dealt with the tragedy of injury and the glory of overcoming a rival (Tokai Teio vs. Mejiro McQueen), BNW operates in a quieter, arguably more painful register: the purgatory of being good, but not great . This essay argues that BNW no Chikai is not about winning races, but about the construction of identity in the shadow of failure, the burden of collective memory, and the radical act of redefining a promise. The Tyranny of the Archive The OVA’s narrative engine is driven by a ghost that never appears: the so-called “BNW” generation of the past. The title itself, “The Promise of BNW,” is deliberately ambiguous. Whose promise? To whom? Superficially, it is the promise between Smart Falcon, Inari One, and Winning Ticket to face each other in the Japan Cup. But historically, the term “BNW” refers to the trio of Biwa Hayhide, Narita Taishin, and Winning Ticket’s own mother—legends whose rivalry defined an era.

For a franchise that often relies on the easy catharsis of victory, BNW no Chikai dares to ask a harder question: What are we, when the race is over and we have not won? Its answer—complex, melancholic, and ultimately hopeful—is that we are the promises we keep to each other, not the records we leave behind. And in that, it is not just a great sports anime. It is a great human document.

By the final episode, the promise is no longer about the race itself. It is about the act of promising . To promise, in the world of BNW , is to declare one’s existence to another. When Smart Falcon waits at the finish line for her two rivals, even after she has won, she is not celebrating her victory. She is honoring the bond. The promise becomes a secular prayer, a ritual that transforms competition into communion. The OVA’s closing shot—the three heroines walking away from the track together, not as first, second, and third, but as friends—visually argues that the horizontal bonds of camaraderie are ultimately more enduring than the vertical hierarchy of rankings. In the end, Uma Musume: Pretty Derby - BNW no Chikai is a work of profound anti-nostalgia. It acknowledges the weight of the past (the original BNW) but refuses to let that weight crush the present. Smart Falcon does not become a copy of Biwa Hayhide; she becomes herself, precisely by honoring her own, less glamorous generation. The OVA suggests that the only way to truly honor a legacy is not to replicate it, but to build a new one—even if that new legacy is defined by near-misses and quiet friendships.

Instead, BNW proposes a radical thesis: failure is a form of completion. Inari One’s greatness lies not in her record but in her presence. She is the necessary other, the wall against which champions like Smart Falcon must define themselves. The OVA’s most poignant moment occurs after the Japan Cup, when Inari One, sweating and exhausted, does not cry. She smiles. It is not a smile of satisfaction but of resolution. She has run her race, given her absolute limit, and the result is irrelevant to her sense of self. This is a profoundly anti-capitalist, anti-meritocratic message in a genre obsessed with “becoming the best.” BNW argues that the best thing one can be is not the strongest, but the most authentic. Inari One’s identity is not contingent on a trophy; it is intrinsic to her effort. The titular “promise” undergoes a crucial metamorphosis across the three episodes. Initially, it is a competitive pact: “Let’s all meet at the Japan Cup.” This is a promise of ambition, of rising together. However, as the narrative progresses and the trio’s trajectories diverge—Falcon aiming for world domination, Ticket struggling with injury, Inari One accepting her secondary role—the promise fractures.

This is the OVA’s first profound insight: the past is not prologue; it is a cage. Smart Falcon spends the entire narrative trying to escape the gravitational pull of a history she never lived. She is not merely a competitor; she is a monument built to replace the original BNW. The pressure to “live up” to a legacy that is both her inheritance and her prison creates a fascinating psychological dissonance. In one striking sequence, Falcon trains alone at night, replaying footage of the past BNW races. The screen flickers—not with hope, but with the uncanny horror of an impossible standard. The OVA suggests that for athletes (or horse girls) in the shadow of giants, the archive is not a source of inspiration but a haunting. To be compared to a ghost is to fight an opponent who cannot be touched, and more cruelly, cannot be defeated. Where the main series glorifies the champion’s comeback, BNW sanctifies the runner-up. Inari One is perhaps the most radical character in the entire Uma Musume franchise: a horse girl who is explicitly not the best. She is talented, earnest, and doomed. Her arc does not culminate in a victory lap but in a beautifully animated, devastating loss in the final race. The OVA refuses to offer her a last-minute power-up or a narrative convenience.