Reviews

Picture this: the date is July 4, 2019. One day after “Dumbell Nan Kilo Moteru?” is released. You work at a fairly inconspicuous gym, it’s a slow day and all you can think of is going back home to throw back a cold one and pass out. Suddenly, you hear a loud rumbling sound from outside the gym’s front door. You start to panic, New years is still half a year away and you were planning on quitting before the horde consumed you. As the rumblings get louder you hear a faint: “Nice Muscle!” in the distance and you realize what is happening. It’s too late. As hundreds of weebs fill the gym trampling you underfoot like Mufasa in The Lion King the last thought that goes through your head is “So this is the power of anime… not bad, not bad at all”.



Tl;dr I’m going to be 100% real with you guys, back in the year 2017 I started reading this manga because I thought it was going to another generic ecchi anime just with all females. Don’t get me wrong, this show is about 75% ecchi nonsense but underneath all of it, you actually get a pretty comprehensible workout instructional video. The art is really good and while the story is pretty lackluster, does it really need a Shakespearean masterpiece? It’s relatively funny but all in all, it’s definitely not for everyone.


Story 5: Comprehensible, reasonable, funny at times, but above all else mediocre.

Just to rehash what I said earlier, this show doesn’t NEED to be really complex to be enjoyable. There really isn’t much to say about the story besides the fact that the humor SOMETIMES lands, at least I found it pretty funny, but you can definitely see pretty much all the jokes coming.

Art 8: The trojan horse that got millions of weebs into working out

You can make pretty much any weeb do whatever you want by animating a cute anime girl to do it first and this is definitely the case with Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru. I really wish I had statistical evidence to back me up but I’m more than certain that this show has influenced MORE than a few people to get up and start doing a few pushups. And this can be credited to just fantastic art by Doga Kobo. That being said, I gave the art an 8 because the animation just isn't there. It's serviceable, especially during the workout sections but overall there really isn’t too much to write home about

Sound 10: SIDE CHESTO

This is pretty self-explanatory, the opening and ending are basically perfect and hypes everyone within a three-mile radius to jump off their couch and start doing sit-ups or flex in the mirror. Anything that hypes me up this much gets a 10 in my opinion

Character 7: I can’t think of any jokes to be honest

To be honest I feel like almost everyone in this show can be explained with only one sentence (example: Hibiki likes to eat a lot. And Naruzou is really buff). There really isn’t anything I can say besides that, they aren’t bad and they fit the story perfectly but there really two dimensional.

Enjoyment 10: Even with some of the shortcomings I talked about earlier, this show is still an absolute banger and will forever be known as the one show that finally pushed me to try working out for once. Even when I wasn’t pumping iron or running a 20-mile marathon (at least that what it felt like) it still kept my attention from start to finish which is all I can really ask for at this point.

Overall 8: It’s a really good show and even if you’re not interested in sports at all I’d still recommend at least trying the show out for a little bit.