The key feature of the Monkey Banana Gym, an online fitness club launched last March by Osaka-based sporting goods store Mizuno (https://spocom.mizuno.co.jp/fitness/banana_gym/), is the animated cartoon monkeys. These cute rascals walk you through 10 basic exercises, all the while giving helpful advice in Japanese (in word balloons) like “Keep your shoulders flat.” When you enroll for the free service, you get assigned your own monkey. But he’s hungry, so you need to start working out. For each set of exercises you perform and mark on your online calendar, your monkey gets a banana. Work too little and he cries; work too hard and the bananas go bad. The goal is to earn your monkey 200 bananas in six months.
Why monkeys? “We could have used [human] models, but users don’t find them too helpful because they represent unrealistic bodies,” says Mizuno’s Toru Uegaki. The monkeys don’t look realistic either, but at least they’re not threatening.
