How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? is an anime about… going to the gym?!
Most of my regular readers already know that I’m a bit of a fitness aficionado. I hit the weights four days a week, and the other three days I’m doing some type of cardio, like running or riding my bike. As a former fat fuck, I try my best to stay as active as possible. 250 lb AJ will only come back if most of that weight is muscle.
I’ve always found it kind of weird that there’s not a whole lot of overlap between fitness and anime, even though a lot of anime revolves around the MC being strong or in great shape. Sure, we’ve got a fair amount of sports anime, with great shows like Kuroko’s Basketball, Captain Tsubasa, Baki the Grappler, and more recently, Blue Lock. But we really don’t have much in the way of weight training or bodybuilding.
I understand why there isn’t really any anime about lifting weights, I guess it’s kind of hard to depict weight lifting as being exciting. Is it amazing what the human body can do and look like with the right training? Hell yes. But watching someone lift things up and put them down a bunch of times doesn’t carry the same excitement as watching a fast-paced sport like soccer or basketball (side note: We need a hockey anime).
How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? doesn’t try to project any excitement on working out, and I think that’s why it works as well as it does.
I stumbled across this anime through Spotify of all places. While perusing the app for new music, one of the playlists had a song called “Onegai Muscle”. It was upbeat, catchy, and very obviously about working out. I added it to my liked songs, so Spotify could ignore it in favor of playing the same 20 songs it always plays because their shuffle is algorithm-fueled garbage. I didn’t realize it was attached to an anime until I saw it mentioned on 4chan one day.
It’s pretty good for what it is.
The series focuses mostly on Hibiki, a high school girl who wants to get in shape. Hibiki joins Silverman Gym, where she runs into a classmate, Akemi. Under the tutelage of trainer Naruzo Machio, the girls learn about the basics of weightlifting and dieting. The girls are eventually joined by Hibiki’s friend Ayaka, their teacher Satomi, and a Russian girl named Gina who came to Japan to compete in an arm wrestling contest but stays after losing to Hibiki.
Other than the girls trying to get into shape, there’s no serious overarching plot. Most of the episodes are self-contained stories that usually revolve around the girls learning a new exercise in order to benefit them in another aspect of their life. For example, Hibiki wants to beat Akemi in a relay race, so Machio suggests bicycle crunches to train the hip flexors and boost her speed and endurance.
The show is incredibly on point with the information it provides. The advice Machio gives the girls is spot-on, and the workout instruction segments depict the exercises with good form while making sure to explain in detail how to properly perform each exercise safely (“It’s your muscle bro, Machio!”). Also, whenever Hibiki eats something, the number of calories is shown on the screen, showing the viewer how easy it is to overeat if you’re not careful.
In a way, How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? is more like edu-tainment. It’s a slice of life series first and foremost, but it’s also a valuable resource for someone looking to begin their own fitness journey. One could learn more about the basics of working out from watching this anime than they could from most of the videos on Jeff Cavalier’s YouTube channel, where every thumbnail is “STOP DOING THIS!” and he takes ten minutes to explain how to do a basic dumbbell press.
I really wasn’t expecting much in the way of humor, but I found myself laughing a lot more than I thought I would. Comedy isn’t the driving force here, but it’s definitely there, and it’s actually pretty fucking funny. When we’re first introduced to trainer Machio, he just looks like some regular guy in a track suit. But then he bursts out of his outfit to reveal that his body is fucking jacked:
Throughout the series, Machio is constantly breaking out of his clothes, to the point where other characters are commenting on how absurd it is. Machio referees an arm wrestling match between Hibiki and Gina while wearing nothing but his posing trunks, and Gina thinks to herself, “Why is the referee in his underwear?”, then chalks it up to being a Japanese cultural thing (it’s not). We find out later in the series that Machio trained under famous actor and bodybuilding legend Arnold Schwarzenegger Harnold Dogegenchonegger, and is training to be his successor.
The series is full of cheeky little parodies like this. “Harnold’s” secretary is “Jason Sgatham” (Jason Statham), and Gina speaks fondly of “Comrade Poutine”:
And in case you didn’t catch it earlier, Silverman Gym is a parody of Gold’s Gym.
The series is short, coming in at only 12 episodes, but in those 12 episodes the characters make a decent amount of progress. The girls have all realistically improved their physical capabilities, and while Hibiki still overeats a little bit, she’s gotten noticably better at portion control and eating better foods.
How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? is an entertaining and realistic portrayal of someone’s fitness journey, and if you’re an anime fan that’s looking to start their own fitness journey then I recommend watching this series. I give it a solid 8/10.
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