We start off with the story yet again mentioning that the world it is set in is one filled with swords and magic. But then the North Pole is shown and then a Polar Bear just starts talking. Global Warming is causing the polar bears to becoming endangered and at risk of becoming extinct. Just like any normal character, they suggest a plan that is completely normal and they want to do a Global Freezing. But they have no money and somehow has a computer to use in the North Pole, so their grand plan for the Global Freezing is to go into the global online exchange and obtain fifty million yen.

Once again, the fifty million yen is a Call-Back and the polar bear loses all of their initial investment because investing is in fact quite hard to get into and stuff. It's very very easy to go into the red and very very hard to go into the green, it took me atleast a year to have any returns. Sure, my whole game plan was investing in mutual funds and investing into stocks that give dividends.

Just before they end up going over the edge, a... horse rides in from afar and out of their natural element. They're not just a normal horse nor a normal racing horse, they're a horse part of a endangered-species-protecting organization. They intend to race in the Hell Derby and win the prize money, with the intentions of donating the money to preserve the North Pole.

Then we go through a huge segment where Horse is doing a special training before the day of the Hell Derby. For the Hell Derby is not a race where horse run back and forth, but it is where horses do wall-climbing, platforming that normal horse cannot do.

After jumping around the training area like a ninja, Horse is ambushed by a.... cow. not just some normal cow but a Demon Cow - they're not really demonic, that's just their brand I guess. Horse nearly dies in their confrontation with Demon Cow after the latter's Motive Rant. They have as much of a reason as Horse's, seeing that cowkind has suffered an epidemic and was blamed by the humans for it and it left them... angered.

Soon after the trouncing, Polar Bear saves Horse and imbues them with the sacred power of the North Pole. Turning our platforming-ninja-wallrunning racing horse into a Mighty Glacier.

The Hell Derby comes and the race starts promptly. Horse jumps all over the place, firing machine gun rounds like they're in a action movie with explosions everywhere. Then things get really weird as they combine their skills and the power of the North Pole, turning them into a spinning frozen Beyblade.

They soon are met with a totally normal inventor called Mr. Kawagoe, promptly replacing Horse's gun with a super powerful sniper rifle. Teaching the basics of firing it like a pro. The moment Horse is back on the field, the race turns into a pinball machine as sniper rounds bounce around everywhere.

Then Horse and Demon Cow are the only two who have reached the end of the race. This time, Horse beats them with relative ease. Demon Cow returns home a loser, arriving at MooMoo Farm and delivers the bad news to his family.

Obviously, his wife and son use the same cow image but mirrored, and... Demon Cow entire goal was to buy a vaccine for his family. He wasn't in it for the cows but for his family, you gotta let that sink in that Horse's gaols are far more noble than his by a mile. But then... Horse arrives on the farm and intends to help the cows too because... they're also part of a farm-animal-protecting organization.

But soon after injecting the vaccine, Demon Cow's entire family explodes like ballons. With a "Ku Ku Ku Ku!" coming out, a man that is similar to Mr. Kawagoe comes into the plot.

Lilium, Minister of Agriculture is here and he bombshells those present. Basically, any cows within a ten mile radius needs to be purged and it can't be stopped, the vaccine has a low chance of even working, and they've resorted to purging the cows as the only means. Then he Title Drops the title of the entry and a giant robot appears.

It promptly defeats Demon Cow since it was built and designed around fighting cows. But just as Demon Cow goes, Horse and Polar Bear come in to save the day until they themselves get beaten. Then Professor Kawagoe steps in.

For he is the brother of Lilium and he is displeased of his brother's descent into darkness. Lilium of people went on vacation when the epidemic started, purposely returning home late. Instead of assuming responsibility lik a normal human being, he instead built ERORIDER 01. The one who spread the epidemic was actually Lilium himself.

He goes on a Motive Rant, telling his brother that he wanted to continue creating ERORIDER 01 and use it to remove the Americans from Japan. His entire reasoning is for... World Peace.

Right after spilling the beans, the dialogue box just goes super fast to skip the nonsense that was spouted out. I mean, I would do that if somehow the villain's entire endgame was nonsensical too. I'm reminded of Partia 3's main antagonist - dude gets built up as a super cool badass and just turns into a Card-Carrying Villain because the writer didn't write the last few chapters of the game's story.

Like a good brother, Professor Kawagoe stops his brother and destroys ERORIDER 01. Delivering the Aesop and closing the story on a relatively high note.

This entry has multiple protagonists and/or has characters with equals amount of time and is thus an Ensemble Cast, and almost everyone is a Talking Animal. I'll do this in the order of which they appear in to make things easier.

You have Polar Bear, a polar bear who finds themselves in a desperate situation. Seeing their beloved home on the brink of collapsing due to Global Warming and their kind endangered, they set out to initiate a plan to reverse the damage. But their plans for a Global Freezing fails because they decided to do investing and blew all their money literally in minutes/under an hour. Dude was about to go through a Despair Event Horizon until Horse comes trotting through.

Polar Bear's character is as you'd expect for a starting character for a Kuniko Takahashi story. They're weird, wacky, and supportive to Horse. They also somehow have the power to imbue someone with the sacred power of the North Pole which is kind of an Ass Pull but this series does this on the regular.

Horse is the story's main character and protagonist up until the last few minutes, they are a racing horse that is part of an organization that helps endangered animals in their time of need. After Polar Bear's investing fails like a Day Trader on a bad market day, Horse trots in offers them a solution to their problems. Joining the world's most dangerous race called the Hell Derby in order to help the polar bears and the North Pole. But they find themselves at a crossroads when Demon Cow swoops in and establishes themselves as The Rival.

Horse's entire character can generally be summed up in one word; noble. Their entire screetime is all about serving and helping others in their time of need like some sort of knight. They never really resort to anything evil and stay the way they started.. if you ignore the fact that they need to use deadly force in order to race safely in the Hell Derby.

Demon Cow is the primary antagonist for much of the story's first half and The Rival of Horse. They entered the Hell Derby for unknown reasons at the start of the story, nearly killing Horse outside their motivations around huamnity's treatment of cowkind. Despite the Hell Derby being a race meant for horse, they were able to enter and become one of the two to arrive at the end of the race.

In fact, Demon Cow's character is alittle bit more layered than Polar Bear and far more than Horse's. They are a Anti-Villain with a Freudian Excuse, and... Even Evil Has Loved Ones. But you do have to question why they even acted like a villain and a jerk in the first place.

Then you have the true villain of the story, Lilium, Minister of Agriculture. Dude comes out of nowhere and isn't exactly built up but he actually has a reason to exist. He is the man who caused the entire conflict between Horse and Demon Cow to exist in the first place, by which I mean the epidemic. He serves as the Greater Scope Villain and the Hero Killer, managing to kill off Demon Cow, Horse, and Polar Bear with ERORIDER 01.

His character is.... complicated to say the least, think of him as the Zombeef Company Manager but with less sensible reasons and motivations to being evil in the first place. His whole game plan basically is to obtain world peace by developing ERORIDER 01 into a weapon of mass destruction. Which is quite insane because he caused a bunch of cows to die, a bunch of his fellow humans to die, and ruined parts of Japan.

Then you have the real protagonist of the story, Professor Kawagoe who is the brother of Lilium. He exists to provide Horse the means to beat Demon Cow, to cause a Cain And Abel dyanmic, to resolve the plot, and to deliver the Aesop.

Most of the comedy and funny bits in this entry are namely tied to the action segements. as the Hell Derby turns a serious story into a funny action movie where physics do not apply nor make sense. While the plot is very straightforward with some twists and turns being relatively tame and wacky at the same time.

Almost every character is developed and tied to either each other or the narrative at large. Almost everyone shares the same amount of screentime with each other where they all get the time to shine.

I think most people would enjoy the action segments since the Hell Derby is one long action scene. It starts as a normal situation where the stakes are high but then it just becomes comical the longer the Hell Derby continues.