The Fall 2019 Manga Guide

How Heavy Are The Dumbbells You Lift?

What's It About? 

Some people have sweet tooths, some people like, bitter more complex, tastes. Hibiki is someone who likes all foods of all styles, anytime, anywhere. In fact, she eats so much it's starting to concern her as she is gaining weight, with her waistline expanding and people starting to take notice. After some failed attempts at dieting, she decides to check out a nearby gym. And so begins a long and difficult road to weight loss, as Hibiki learns the various means of working out, how to use equipment, and even makes a few friends, like her class president peer and one of her teachers. It might take a lot of effort and stamina, but Hibiki is determined to build her preferred body. Maybe not if she has to give up snacks, though.

How Heavy Are the Dumbbells you Life? is an original manga series written by Yabako Sandrovich and illustrated by MAAM. It available from Seven Seas and will release in late November, retailing for $12.99 physically. A 12 episode anime adaptation began airing in summer of this year, and is currently available on Funimation.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

How Heavy are the Dumbbells that you Lift is a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, it's got very good intentions: weight training is something a lot of people enjoy, it can help you get into shape, and the instructions in the book are nice and clear. On the other hand, the way that main heroine Hibiki is drawn in no way looks dangerously overweight (or even all that pudgy to begin with) and the constant labeling of foods with their caloric content is dangerous ground to tread, especially since recent studies have shown that it has an adverse effect on people with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. As several members of my family have eating disorders, this is a major concern for me personally.

But that in no way means that the book shouldn't exist or that other people shouldn't enjoy reading it; it's just One Piece of it that you should be aware of heading into it. The bigger issue is that the volume doesn't have a whole lot of plot to carry its exercise substance – Hibiki's (awful) friend tells her she's getting fat, she goes to a gym, meets another girl from school, and they start weight training. There's an entertainingly muscular trainer with a handsome (baby)face, a teacher from school with a secret cosplaying habit, and a pretty good gag about Fist of the North Star, but otherwise the book is basically a lather-rinse-repeat of someone feeling fat and starting to work out. There's nothing wrong with it, but the gags aren't quite enough to hold it together.

Things do slowly improve as the book goes on, with us seeing Hibiki make progress in her strength and coming to understand that her friend Ayaka isn't just someone with no boundaries (although I still don't think she had any right to say anything; it's not like Hibiki looked unhealthy), but my concerns both content and storytelling wise end up outnumbering the elements that succeed. If weight training is your niche, this might be more fun, but if you don't really care about it, I'd suggest proceeding with caution.

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Faye Hopper

Rating:

How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? is a manga with a lot of genuine, helpful insight into working out that is founded on a basis I am not sure I'm comfortable with. On the one hand, it's not as gross and uncomfortably judgmental about our lead's weight as it could have been. There's no real fat-shaming, no one at the gym mocks her or forces weight loss means down her throat. And yet there's an implicit assumption here in the basic premise that being chubby is somehow aberrant (especially given how the inciting incident is Hibiki's friend remarking to her that ‘she look like she's gotten fatter’), a deficiency that needs to be corrected. The choice to work out and lose weight is an entirely personal one, based on your own wishes and comfort level with your body, and having some body fat is healthy and normal across many different body types. There is never any acknowledgment of this abiding philosophy despite this being a manga specifically about the culture of exercise, even though everyone I know who works out holds it as sacrosanct. Even though this isn't a manga that treats its lead badly or ever looks down on her, this lack of a simple allowance to let people be who they want to be (Hibiki enjoys food and snacking, what's so bad about that?) makes me a little uncomfortable.

But I also just don't find How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? very entertaining. Its structure is basically an excuse to introduce a new method of working out every chapter, and maybe a new character or two. It would be one thing if it was funnier, if the jokes were more inventive, but they're mostly just based on our lead's brusque reactions to absurdity (like a running gag where her gym trainer, usually drawn with normal proportions, bursts out his close to reveal washboard abs and rippling muscles), and other characters having quirky personality affectations (like Hibki's classmate having a ‘muscle fetish’). I do give the manga credit for giving the characters interests and passions outside of exercise, so they feel more like well-rounded people (Hibiki is into action movies, her teacher who starts attending the gym late in the volume is into action movies, etc), but as someone who really doesn't find page-long descriptions of how to properly use workout equipment all that interesting when that's most of the volume, it's not enough.

How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? isn't gross on its face, but it does have a lot about it that gives me pause, and even if I were to ignore that there isn't much here that charmed or captivated by me. It might have more appeal for gym-goers as a cute reflection of an everyday routine, but otherwise there just is not much here. It's not really bad. Not at all. Just kind of flat and unremarkable.