English Dub Review: How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? “How Are You Spending New Year’s?”

Overview:

The girls visit a new shrine for the new year.

Our Take:

Coming off the Christmas episode is the new years episode.

We learn a little more about Machio this time, surprisingly. It turns out that Machio’s family comes from a family of priests, so he helps out at the shrine during the new year. His shrine helps with good fortune, romance, and bodybuilding… it seems like Machio was truly destined to become a buff guy, huh. Even if he hadn’t, he’d at least have a strong set of legs for having to walk up that massive staircase.

Shrines in the mountains or atop hills often have to pave the way to make themselves accessible, usually through massive staircases. Machio’s temple is that and then some. I couldn’t imagine myself going up those as a child, even if I would only have to do that journey a couple times a year…

The parks problem is… definitely real. Most of the parks in Japan, from what I recall, are more like empty lots than anything else. There is definitely space for recreation, and some parks certainly do have equipment, but usually it’s more equipment for children vs the gym equipment that can be found in parks around the US. As such, the wide open spaces are good for things like tai chi, but you certainly wouldn’t be able to do things like work your legs or use a pull up bar.

The minor exercises are actually quite helpful! With the exception of the pose that Hibiki pulls off, most can be done while stationary, but also don’t take up a lot of room. Some yoga poses, actually most yoga poses, certainly help build strength, but that requires you to have some place to stretch out your body. Depending on the layout of your house and what you have where, that might not be too easy to pull off. But most of the exercises shown could even be done sitting down. It reminds me a lot of the stretches used to prevent wrist pain and hand cramps, things that are small but have significant effects down the road.

The show seems to be keeping up the ‘girls on their day off’ segments, and I’m still having fun with them! I’m glad they went from relatively distant from one another to willing to hang out with each other on the holidays. It’s a small kind of growth, but it’s still very cute nonetheless.