Shows Like Umamusume: Pretty Derby
If you loved Umamusume: Pretty Derby's Animation and Comedy storytelling, these series deliver a similar experience — chosen for tone, narrative quality, and viewer satisfaction. Each includes where to stream it now.
★ Top Picks
Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki
Tomozaki is one of the best gamers in Japan, and in his opinion, the game of real life is one of the worst. No clear-cut rules for success, horribly balanced, and nothing makes sense. But then he meets a gamer who’s just as good as him, and she offers to teach him a few exploits…
Hungry Heart: Wild Striker
Kyosuke Kano has lived under the shadow of his successful brother Seisuke all his life who is a professional soccer player.
Kageki Shojo!!
The curtain rises on Sarasa Watanabe, a starry-eyed 5'10" student who hopes to perform as a male lead role in the all-female Kouka Acting Troupe. She forms a friendship with her new roommate, a former idol. Together, they’re in for the role of a lifetime.
Iwa Kakeru! Sport Climbing Girls
Sport climbing is a sport that makes use of both the body and the brain to climb walls. Kasahara Konomi, a master at puzzles, just happens to discover her school’s climbing wall, and it looks almost like a colorful sort of puzzle in her eyes. This fateful encounter brings big changes to Konomi’s life! With her teammates in the Hanamiya Girls’ High School Climbing Club, Konomi races for the top in this passionate climbing story!
Maison Ikkoku
Godai is a ronin (someone who has failed university entrance exams) living in a run down apartment house called Maison Ikkoku. Among the other residents are the nosy Ichinose, the sexy Akemi Roppongi, and the mysterious Yotsuya. The others are given to having wild parties which makes it difficult for Godai to study. Into this mayhem comes the recently widowed Kyoko as the new live-in manager. Godai falls for her, but doesn't have the nerve to tell her. As time passes, their relationship slowly develops amid life at Maison Ikkoku, despite all sorts of romantic hurdles.
Seton Academy: Join the Pack!
Seton Academy, a school where animals of all species gather to live and learn together. A sacred garden of learning, where students hone their primal instincts and the laws are of the jungle. Where species pit against species in a daily struggle for survival... Now enter the animal-hating human Jin Mazama, and the lonely wolf Ranka Okami. When man meets wolf in an encounter for the ages, this food chain is about to be shook. “Species shmecies! If we’ve shared face-licks, you’re a friend to me! Welcome to the pack!”
SHIROBAKO
In a school in northeastern Japan, five friends in the animation club, Aoi, Ema, Shizuka, Misa, and Midori swear to complete a new anime called "Shinbutsu Konkou SHICHIFUKUJIN" with some donuts. Since then, day after day, the five spend all of their time on anime production. The awe of going from rough sketches to animation, and the awkward acting in the after-recording session... The final product was finished at the cultural fair six months later. After they graduated they still pursued animation and swore on some donuts that they would make another anime together.
WATAMOTE ~No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys Fault I'm Not Popular!~
Fifteen year old Kuroki Tomoko has dated dozens of boys and is easily the most popular girl around-- inside her dating games. In reality, she gets tongue tied just talking to people, and throughout middle school she's only had one actual friend. As she enters high school, she desperately wants to be popular, but doesn't understand that real-life doesn't work like her games. Her artificial successes pave the way to real folly and failure. But why drop this strategy when there's always someone else to blame?!
More Shows Like Umamusume: Pretty Derby
The Dangers in My Heart
Kyotaro Ichikawa, a boy barely clinging to the bottom rung of his school's social ladder, secretly believes he’s the tortured lead in some psychological thriller. He spends his days dreaming up ways to disrupt his classmates' peaceful lives and pining after Anna Yamada, the class idol. But Kyotaro's not nearly the troubled teen he pretends to be…and it turns out Anna's a bit odd herself!
Bakuman
Moritaka Mashiro and Akito Takagi are pretty much foils of each other. Mashiro, an average 9th grade student but talented artist, and Takagi, an overall advanced 9th grader and aspiring writer. After great convincing, Takagi convinces Mashiro to join him in becoming the greatest mangakas Japan has ever seen. Takagi, with his gift of writing, hopes to become a successful mangaka, and Mashiro, with his gift of art, hopes to marry the girl of his dreams, Azuki Miho.
His and Her Circumstances
In His and Her Circumstances, like a drug, Yukino Miyazawa was addicted to admiration and praise from those around her. She worked hard to become the perfect student, the perfect girl. But that was before… him. Souichirou Arima. The instant she met him, she hated him. Without even trying, he snatched the very glory from her hands by easily acing the high school entrance exam that should have made her the class representative. To take back what is rightfully hers, Yukino is putting all her efforts into plotting her revenge – but was love part of the plan?
Real Girl
Tsutsui Hikari (a.k.a "Tsuttsun") is a high school student who is content with his virtual life of anime and video games. One day, he gets stuck cleaning the pool with Iroha, a real live girl who is stylish, sassy and known to be easy with boys ... and she aggressively approaches him! Tsuttsun, who has few friends and lives in his own world, finds himself smitten by the confident and wild Iroha ... and his whole world is turned upside down!! It's the awkward and pure love story of a boy who experiences relationship for the first time.
A Centaur's Life
Kimihara Himeno, also known as "Hime," goes about her life, love, and studies just like any ordinary high school girl. The only difference is that she's a centaur. She enjoys her school life along with classmates of many unique shapes, including Nozomi the draconid, Kyoko the goatfolk, an angelfolk class representative, and Sassas-chan the Antarctican. Hime's younger cousin Shino-chan, her friend Maki-chan, and the class representative's four younger sisters also join the cast in this very cute slice-of-life story about girls who are human, yet aren't!
The Gymnastics Samurai
In the year 2002, the formerly powerful Japanese men's gymnastics team member Jotaro Aragaki is no longer able to compete. Even though he trained strenuously daily, he is asked about retiring by his coach Amakusa. However, a certain encounter alters Aragaki's fate.
DON'T TOY WITH ME, MISS NAGATORO
"A girl in a lower grade just made me cry!" One day, Senpai visits the library after school and becomes the target of a super sadistic junior! The name of the girl who teases, torments, and tantalizes Senpai is "Nagatoro!" She's annoying yet adorable. It's painful, but you still want to be by her side. This is a story about an extremely sadistic and temperamental girl and you'll feel something awaken inside of you.
Outbreak Company
What starts out as a simple job soon becomes an adventure in an alternate world when otaku-expert Shinichi Kanou is unknowingly sent as an otaku-culture ambassador to the land of the Holy Eldant Empire.
More than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers
The story centers on third-year high school student Jiro Yakuin, who gets saddled with his gyaru classmate Akari Watanabe for the class's "marriage training" project about practicing to be a married couple. Jiro is the complete opposite of Akari, but the two know that if they do well they will be able to switch partners to end up with their respective crushes, and so they force themselves to act like the perfect married couple.
Rent-a-Girlfriend
Kinoshita Kazuya is a 20-year-old failure of a college student. He managed to kiss his girlfriend once, but was dumped after a month. Completely spiteful, Kazuya uses a certain method to date a girl. He goes to their meeting place and a beautiful girl brushing her long, black hair behind her ear was there, smiling at him. Her name was Mizuhara Chizuru. Something real is born after just a single rental! A reckless rom-com filled with love and excitement is about to begin!
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU
So exactly what’s going to happen when Hachiman Hikigaya, an isolated high school student with no friends, no interest in making any and a belief that everyone else’s supposedly great high school experiences are either delusions or outright lies, is coerced by a well meaning faculty member into joining the one member “Volunteer Services Club” run by Yukino Yukinoshita, who’s smart, attractive and generally considers everyone in her school to be her complete inferior?
THE iDOLM@STER
THE IDOLM@STER follows 13 girls from the 765 Production Studio, whose sole goals is to become the top idols in the Japanese entertainment industry. Along with the laughs, struggles and tears that are inherently part of this journey, you will cheer for the girls of iDOLM@STER as they climb their way to the top!
Why These Shows Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Umamusume: Pretty Derby (2018): Animation and Comedy themes, similar pacing, and comparable production quality. NoBadPicks uses TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface series most likely to resonate with fans of Umamusume: Pretty Derby.
See full details for Umamusume: Pretty Derby (2018)