‘Terrace House: Opening New Doors’: Everyone Lost Their Minds Over Mayu’s Boobs

Terrace House is a delightful show. The slow pace and low stakes are part of its irresistible charm, and it has without a doubt the greatest love story on all of Netflix. Everyone on Terrace House is polite, and when someone cries, it’s usually because they’re genuinely worried about the well-being of a housemate. While niceness is still the name of the game in the just-released Part 3 of the latest TH season Opening New Doors, there’s one major shift: everyone is totally boob crazy.
From the men in the house to the six hosts that provide interstitial commentary, boob talk takes up a whole lotta screentime in these eight episodes, a development you would have never seen coming considering that holding hands is a major step on this show. Raunchy talk about boobs is a Jersey Shore thing, not a Terrace House thing! But all that changed as soon as new housemate Mayu showed up in the first episode of Part 3, appropriately titled “Sinful Cleavage.”
Mayu arrives as a replacement for Ami, who announced her departure in the last episode of Part 2 from earlier this year. Like Ami (and like established roommates Shion and Seina), Mayu is another model. Sidenote: this show makes me think everyone in Japan is apparently a model at one point in their lives? But unlike the other models in the house, Mayu is described as an “exotic swimsuit model.” This becomes a thing.
When Mayu arrives, 20-something guys Shion and Shohei are the only ones home. They hang out with her, taking her sledding and grocery shopping and then enjoying dinner. When Mayu retires to take a bath, the two basically turn into cartoon werewolves. They pull up her Instagram and check out her, uh, portfolio.

Shion, who at this point has just decided to profess his feelings for housemate Tsubasa, jokingly points out, “This person is currently nude right over there.”
So, two dudes freaking out about boobs isn’t out of the ordinary, I guess even on a show as pure as Terrace House. I will note that I think the first usage of the word “bro” happens while they’re scrolling through her Insta. What’s surprising is how the hosts react, because they also catch boob fever! These adults flip right the F out!
The female hosts start questioning whether or not Mayu is even wearing a bra, which prompts co-host Yoshimi Tokui to ask the absolute weirdest question in Terrace House history:

The most conservative host, the sweet Reina Triendl, notes that the mood became way lusty when Mayu entered the screen. But that can’t be helped, not when boobs are on the move! Yoshimi made a comparison that I just have to put here in full:

“Just like Japanese people can’t resist the call of the taiko drums. But we don’t necessarily think about festivals when they’re not in season. The sound of the taiko will always get us going, though.”

I’ve watched so much Terrace House, that actually makes sense to me?
That’s when the commentary turns towards Shion, one-half of what I called the greatest romance on Netflix. The hosts don’t call it out, but Mayu–an exotic swimwear model–arriving in the house literally right after Shion plans to make a move with Tsubasa is the first and only time that I’ve felt the producers meddling with the story. It’s like they chucked a boob-grenade into the house and waited for it to go off, wrecking all romance. After all, Mayu immediately set her sights on Shion! What the hosts did decide, though, is that they would all totally understand if Shion gave up on Tsubasa and went for Mayu! Well, all but Reina, who said she wanted Shion to think about the long-run and not cave into boob madness. The “Sinful Cleavage” episode ends with the hosts all declaring that Tsubasa knows she’s no match for Mayu, and Shion being absolved of any blame if he responds to the call of the taiko drums.

Thank god none of that happens in the next episode. Shion and Tsubasa’s romance only deepens after his Valentine’s Day confession. Shion is wise beyond his 23 years, and true romance is not dead after all. That’s when the Terrace House hosts realize they all have to apologize… for their boob obsession.

That’s when the two over-40 male hosts, Yoshimi and Ryota Yamasato, realize that a man half their age has displayed true maturity–a maturity they literally didn’t think was humanly possible just an episode earlier. “And, for the first time in the history of mankind, man was victorious over breasts,” says Yoshimi.
Still, boob madness is still spreading, because the other guy housemate, Taka, was away at a convention when Mayu arrived and still hasn’t met her. Shion and Shohei visit Taka, bust out Instagram, and…

Awoo-gah, awoo-gah! Boo-oooiii-ooing!
But no, seriously, Taka made a boner joke after seeing her pictures, asking if he’d need to keep his apron on around the house. What… what happened to this sweet show?! One exotic swimwear model shows up and suddenly there are boner jokes! The most scandalous thing in the first episode of Opening New Doors was that a roommate slept with stuffed toy pandas! Now, boner jokes!
It’s hard to explain how all of this plays out as an American viewer. If this was any other show, I’d probably be disgusted at every man in the house (and all the hosts!) practically salivating over boobs. But truthfully, this blunt breast talk clashes so strongly against the otherwise feelgood, wholesome tone of the show that it’s all just… weirdly funny. It’s like watching a little kid curse or an old lady deliver a dick joke. The boob fascination is so unexpected and treated with such reverence (that formal apology bow!) that… it’s charming?
The boner madness dies down a bit over the next few episodes, as everyone gets to know Mayu and start seeing her for what she is (kind of an annoying housemate) instead of just a pair of boobs. I mean, I guess that’s… progress? Still, it’s not like the guys have forgotten about her “assets.” Halfway through Part 3, Shohei is casually weighing his romantic options with Mayu and Seina since he’s been on dates with both of them. He loves Seina’s personality, the woman she is inside. But then there’s Mayu, and, well…

Boob madness isn’t terminal, but it’s very hard to cure.

Where to stream Terrace House: Opening New Doors