The Uma Musume Pretty Derby franchise is going after a Guinness World Record. The staff announced that the new short anime series Umayuru Full Gate! is being submitted for the record for “Most Speaking Characters in a Short-form Animation Series Based on a Video Game,” with Guinness World Records set to confirm in March 2027 whether the record has been broken.
Umayuru Full Gate! is the sequel to 2022’s Uma Yuru, and it premiered on the franchise’s official YouTube channel on Friday. Episodes follow broadcasts of PakaLive TV, so the series is designed to run as companion content alongside the franchise’s existing streaming schedule rather than as a standalone seasonal show.
What the record attempt involves
The category itself is the interesting part. Guinness World Records does not hand out records for quality — it measures countable things, and “most speaking characters” is a countable thing. For Umayuru Full Gate! to break the record, the short-form series would need to give voice roles to more distinct characters than any other short-form animation based on a video game.
That is a natural fit for this franchise. Uma Musume Pretty Derby is built around a very large cast of horse girls, each with a distinct name, personality and racing identity, so giving many of them speaking lines across a short-form series is a structural advantage rather than a stunt. The verification process is also slow by design: Guinness World Records will assess the claim and reveal the result in March 2027, which means the record will either be confirmed or quietly not mentioned several months after the show has aired.
The franchise behind it
Uma Yuru premiered in October 2022, and the Uma Musume Pretty Derby mobile game inspired both it and the new Umayuru Full Gate! The game launched in February 2021 for iOS and Android, after originally being slated for winter 2018 and being delayed to raise its quality. It arrived on PC via DMM Games in March 2021.
The English version launched for iOS and Android in June 2025, and the game won Best Mobile Game at The Game Awards 2025. Its concept centres on Uma Musume — horse girls endowed with exceptional running ability who aim to become top idols and compete in a national sports entertainment show called the “Twinkle Series.” Players take the role of both teacher and trainer at the Nihon Uma Musume Training Center Gakuen, helping the girls make their debut.
On the anime side, Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray, the franchise’s most recent full series, aired for two cours with a break in between from April to December 2025.
Why it matters
Record attempts like this are marketing, but they are not empty marketing. A Guinness World Record gives a franchise a hook that travels beyond its existing audience — it is the kind of line that gets picked up by general entertainment press because it is objectively checkable, unlike a claim about a show being good. For a series whose short-form episodes are released on YouTube rather than on a streaming platform, that extra reach has real value.
It also highlights how the Uma Musume project has been managed. Where most franchises treat their theatrical or television anime as the main event and everything else as promotion, this one has kept a steady pipeline going: a game that is now global, a full television series, and a YouTube-based short-form line that runs continuously alongside live broadcasts. The record attempt is the visible part of a fairly disciplined release strategy.
For a look at where the rest of the anime calendar sits, our Fall 2026 anime season guide covers the current line-up, and the 2027 anime releases guide collects everything already dated for next year.
Source: Anime News Network
Featured image: Guinness World Record announcement art for Umayuru Full Gate!, via Anime News Network.
