While hanging out at the mall, Nana shills recommends her older sister’s clothing store to the club. There, Mako tries on a new skirt but to her horror, the skirt doesn’t fit and she realizes that she’s gained weight from all the food she’s been eating. Mako then decides to go on a diet in order to revert back to the weight she had at the start of university. In hindsight, this kind of scenario seemed inevitable. Mako is a sucker for good food and anyone watching the show will notice that a lot of the stuff she eats ought to be high in calories. At some point, her habits was going to come back to haunt her.
After explaining her predicament to the others, Nana proposes hitting the gym with her. Shinon and Kurea can’t join as they get busy fulfilling paperwork for an upcoming club promotion run by the school. Upon learning that these duties fall on them because Tsutsuji filled out the application form and wrote them as the club leaders, Kurea has Nana take Tsutsuji to the gym as payback. It sucks for Tsutsuji but it’s a solid joke to send the least athletic member of the club to the gym.
I really wanted a cheesy training montage with an insert song but alas, that’s not what we get. Actually, the episode kind of skims over the exercise part of the storyline. Like, Mako and the others works up a sweat for a minute or two and that’s about it. Much of the gym segment actually has the girls chilling in the gym’s bath and sauna. At first, I figured this is for the sake of fanservice but the girls are pretty covered up so I’m not sure if that’s actually the intention. There’s some good laughs here, though. My favorite is Tsutsuji achieving “bath enlightenment” after struggling to alternate between cooling off in the bath and sweating in the sauna. The trippy visual of her chibi head is on point.
Eventually, Mako is able to wear her new skirt just fine. Not wanting to gain weight again, she decides to keep up her dieting and exercising though this leaves her rather unhappy. The club is then told to provide pictures of them eating food for the promotion, what with them being the Food Culture Research Club and all. Shinon proposes using a coupon at a fast food joint so that the club can take pictures. Mako’s naturally hesitant but agrees to go when Tsutsuji encourages her to have a cheat day. I really like that the ending does address a negative side to Mako’s dieting. It’s good of her to be conscious about what she eats but it’s also clear that it’s killing her inside to neglect her biggest passion. Seeing her indulge again is honestly a relief and seeing her cry tears of joy is pretty heartwarming. Admittedly, this episode ends with Mako potentially overindulging but you know, that’s something we can worry about later (or never because it wouldn’t surprise me if this show doesn’t go heavy with continuity).
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