Well would you look at that, the new season has already started, and you know what that means: checking out the new stuff and deciding what's good! So without further ado, as the first show I'm covering of the season, it's none other than Doga Kobo's seasonal cute girls goodness, 'Dumbell Nan Kilo Moteru?' Which is a show about... weight lifting?
No, you didn't misread my previous sentence, this show is about cute high school girls doing weight lifting and excercising. The 'cute girls in high school' genre is plentiful with diversity in subject matter, and while often doesn't translate to differences in the content of the actual show, I'm always excited whenever I see a new combination, and this was one I definetly didn't expect to see. Doga Kobo is a studio well known for their shows focused on cute girls in high school, as they are responsible for shows such as 'New Game', 'Himouto Umaru-chan', and 'Gabriel DropOut'.
I suppose I should start off with a proper synopsis for this show. Hibiki is a high school girl, and she's been putting on some weight lately. Therefore, she wants to get fit by the end of the summer. She tries excercising at home or running outside, but because of her weak will and lack of motivation, she quickly gives up. Thats when she purchases a membership at Silverman Gym, and hilarity ensues.
The best thing about this show is that it actually isn't just any other cute girls show but with a different subject matter. 'New Game' and 'Gabriel DropOut' may have had game development and supernatural beings as their respective subject matter, but there's no denying their extreme similarity to basically every single other show in the same genre. Now granted, both of those are really good, but in terms of standing out from the crowd, they don't have anything else except their subject. This is exactly why I'm happy to say that 'Dumbell nan Kilo Moteru' is anything but that. The show even borders on being just straight up edutainment most of the time. But don't let that be seen as a negative, there's still plenty of screentime where we just watch the two main characters work out.
The two main characters, Hibiki and Akemi, are plenty adorable, and so are the supporting cast. Hibiki's best friend Ayaka has a super adorable design, and her seiyuu does an amazing job. To be honest, all of the seiyuu do a great job in this show. Voice acting is a super important part of anime, and when the goal of a show is to be cute and adorable, weak performances by the seiyuu especially stand out. However, I absoloutely love all of the performances. Which isn't suprising, considering that the voice actor for Akemi is none other than the voice actor for Aqua from 'KonoSuba'. She's also one of the main characters in 'Nanatsu no Taizai', Amamiya Sora. The all star cast doesn't end there however, as Ayaka is also the voice actor for Bruno Bucciarati from 'JoJo Part 5', as well as the main character Thorfinn from the currently airing 'Vinland Saga'. She's also starred in a lot of other popular shows, a truly prolific voice actor indeed. All of this is why it greatly suprised me when I looked at the list of roles for Hibiki's seiyuu, and found out that it's actually her first voice acting role ever. Doga Kobo often uses a lot of newbie seiyuu in their shows, but it was a bit of a shock when I saw how many roles the others had starred in. The OP and ED are also super catchy, and really good.
As I stated previously, the show often borders on being edutainment, with plenty of the episodes runtime being spent on explaining the logic behind excercise rutines. There's still a lot of comedy, which while I didn't find that funny in episode 1, had me laughing through all 22 minutes of episode 2. My hopes were initially lukewarm for this show before the start of the season, as the subject matter and what I had heard of the manga didn't seem like it would appeal that strongly to me. I'm now really excited though, and I hope Doga Kobo will be able to turn this into one of their stronger shows. For as much praise as I give them, it's not secret that they've produced some total duds before. Shows like 'Anima Yell' are what I meant when I talked about cute girls shows being the same with a different coat of paint most of the time. However, 'Dumbell Nan Kilo Moteru' is definietly a strong home run for Doga Kobo's ever increasing cataouge of shows about adorable cute girls.
_______________________________________________________________________
Thanks for reading! I'm usually not that proud of my writing about seasonal anime, often because I don't really have that much to say, but I really liked how this piece turned out. The season seems to be great so far, and I promise, after not really having written anything for a month, it's time to get back on the grind! Check me out on Twitter @tes_star for updates and links to my other stuff. Sayonara ;)
Comments