Out on the edge of a small Western town, a wild horse named Spirit and a girl who has just arrived from the city find each other, and neither is quite the same afterwards. Spirit Riding Free: Riding Academy, a 2020 animated adventure series directed by Aury Wallington, grows out of that friendship.
What is Spirit Riding Free: Riding Academy about?
The newcomer does not know the country, the pace or the rules of frontier life, and the town does not quite know what to make of her. What she does know, almost at once, is that the untamed horse she keeps crossing paths with is not an animal to be owned but a partner to be earned. Spirit cannot be saddled by force, and the slow, patient trust that develops between the two of them becomes the spine of the series. Around that bond sits a circle of friends, each with a horse of their own, and together they ride into the kind of adventures the open landscape invites: rough terrain, bad weather, lost trails, rivals and rescues. The Riding Academy of the subtitle frames this chapter of the story around training and competition, raising the stakes of every ride while keeping the focus on loyalty between rider and horse. Episodes run close to twenty-four minutes, enough room for a complete adventure with a beginning, a crisis and a homecoming.
About the cast
The voice cast includes Duncan Joiner, Roshni Edwards, Georgia Dolenz, Amber Frank, Bailey Gambertoglio and Sydney Park, with Aury Wallington directing. The series relies on its young ensemble to sell the friendships at its centre, and the performances favour warmth and quick humour over melodrama. K-Time does not list which performer voices which character, so individual roles are not attributed here.
Context & significance
Spirit Riding Free: Riding Academy is a United States production that sits in the action, adventure and animation categories. It draws on the long tradition of the American Western, but filtered through the eyes of children: the frontier is a playground and a proving ground rather than a battlefield, and the horse is a friend rather than transport. The series is part of a wider body of Spirit stories that have reached a generation of young viewers, and this 2020 instalment keeps the same core idea of a city girl learning the land through an animal that refuses to be tamed. Its reception has been middling by critical measures, which is common for episodic children's animation, while its themes of independence, responsibility and care for animals have given it a loyal following among families who want adventure without cynicism.
Watching Spirit Riding Free: Riding Academy on Ktime
Spirit Riding Free: Riding Academy is available on K-Time to members who are signed in. It streams in its original audio; the catalogue does not list a Persian dub or Persian subtitles for this title at present. The K-Time interface can be used in Farsi, and the roughly twenty-four-minute episodes make it an easy pick for a family evening on the television or for a child watching on a tablet.