Didn’t see this coming, did you. The fact is the first and second episodes of the newly airing Yuru Camp third season are the only anime I’ve watched in about a month, the rest of my leisure time taken by the Persona 3 remake and fucking Balatro, which has been both fun and painful (fuck gold stake, which taught me the limitations of going for flush runs with the checkered deck. I just got lazy. I did get a 20 million point hand in a five-of-a-kind run, though, so I feel like I came as close to beating the game as I can hope for.)
So here’s a nice lazy topic for me. I’ve written more posts about Yuru Camp at this point than any other anime probably. Strange to say for an anime with not much plot compared to most, at least in terms of scale, but somehow “girls go camping” gives me a lot to talk about. It’s a meditative kind of show, or at least I feel that way about it. Might explain why I take the opportunity in so many of my reviews to go on about personal feelings, even though nobody but me could really give a shit about them — I like this kind of contemplative anime, even if it’s not extremely complex in its message. The sincerity of it all more than makes up for that.
Rin in the first episode, making a fire the hard way
Since there are just two episodes out so far, not too much has happened yet, but talking about things happening in a slice-of-life show like this is a little weird anyway when there’s barely any conflict in here by design. In the first episode, Rin thinks back to her days as a kid, when her grandfather began teaching her about camping. I always liked Rin’s solo camping and the series’ positive attitude about it, that wanting to be and to travel alone sometimes is legitimate and not a sign of depression or self-hatred or whatever else. Rin’s contemplation on this trip leads her to try to start a fire with two pieces of wood alone like her grandfather did, where she learns just how exhausting that method is and sympathizes with him — another nice example of how Yuru Camp can make mundane tasks feel emotional in a way that isn’t cheap or overly cheesy.
The show is masterfully made, that’s why I write about it
I think part of that has to do with the show’s style of humor. It’s not a pure comedy series like Azumanga, Nichijou, or Asobi Asobase are, but Yuru Camp has a heavier slice of comedy than I think most other slice-of-life anime does, which I appreciate. The third season isn’t a letdown in that sense so far, with the usual observational humor and tight comedic dialogue. Just the thing if you grew up with Seinfeld and old Simpsons like I did — from those to The Office to Yuru Camp, a progression I never would have guessed at if you told me that’s where I was headed 20 years ago. (Though I did first watch Azumanga 20 years ago. What a depressing fucking thought.)
Club teacher advisor Toba, still a wild alcoholic, though she’s pleasant when she’s sober. I still don’t get these characters who always have their eyes closed, though. They’re all over the place if you start noticing that trend.
The series continues on to the Outdoor Activities Club, Rin’s friends, classmates, and camping colleagues (is that right? Camping buddies, or comrades?) and to a lot of that humor that comes especially from Chiaki being overly excitable and dramatic, Aoi being an outrageous liar, and Nadeshiko being too gullible not to believe Aoi’s lies for at least a minute. These three are always gold together, and with Rin and her other friend Ena and her dog Chikuwa (an important character in himself) they’re better. Though I also hope to see their teacher Miss Toba going out and being stupidly irresponsible and drunk on a trip in the woods with them. Maybe they can finally have a fucking intervention for her and get her some help.*
Soon enough, of course, we get to the food. Yuru Camp is partly a cooking show and can’t go ten minutes without bringing up what the characters had for breakfast and what they’ll make for lunch and dinner, which they’ll probably make on screen. That’s something this series has in common with Type-Moon stuff, weirdly enough. At least with Fate/stay night — no wonder they put out that cooking spinoff (it’s very good, I reviewed it here so check it out too.) I also appreciate all the food and cooking in Yuru Camp, since it contributes to the camping theme and it’s nice to see good food on screen even if it means you get a craving for tempura udon or whatever they’re making.
Having grown up not eating pork, I never had any taste for sausage. I don’t even like bacon that much. But tonkatsu is good enough for me to feel like breaking the commandment every so often.
The only minor complaint I have so far is with the changed look to the show. Yuru Camp passed from C-Station to 8-bit for its third season, and while I have no idea about anything else either studio has done, I miss the slightly blobby look the characters sometimes had before. They look a little less distinctive to me now. But maybe I just got used to how they looked before and this isn’t actually worse.
But that’s a very minor complaint in any case. The real appeal to Yuru Camp for me is in its characters, and they’re just the same as before, which is a good thing. Same source material with the same manga author writing the original story, so there’s no reason to think the third season won’t also be great. Just watch Yuru Camp, because you may end up liking it even if you think you wouldn’t. It converted me at least partly to the slice-of-life genre, coming from a purely action/sci-fi/drama watcher along with the more typical kind of comedy.
Thank you for existing, good SOL anime; you make life a little less unbearable
That’s all I have for the beginning of this new season. Maybe I’ll dig around for still another OVA I might have missed, but I think I could be entirely caught up by now. This is an anime worth keeping up with, and easily, since there’s no real conflict and characters change and grow gradually more like they tend to do outside fiction. It’s all very relaxed, and that’s the major positive for me.
The review section is over, but since this post has been extremely self-indulgent so far anyway, I may as well go all the way and add a couple of general updates I couldn’t shove in anywhere else. The first is that I watched Dune Pt. 2, the first film I’ve seen in a theater for five years, and though it doesn’t need my praise on the massive pile it has already, it was very well done. I’m generally not into these massive franchises; I quit Star Wars years ago just out of fatigue and frustration. Same with Game of Thrones, which I couldn’t possibly give a shit about anymore beyond still holding out a little hope that we’ll get The Winds of Winter, which I will buy on the off-chance we actually get the damn thing (helps that Martin drew a clear distinction between the books and all the HBO stuff.) I’ve heard similar sentiments from friends about Marvel, and though I was never into Marvel, DC, or western comics in general, I can relate to the feeling.
I’m on board with Dune, though. I’m wary of hype, but I don’t think this movie has been hyped more than it deserves, and thankfully there’s a lot of source material written by Frank Herbert for Denis Villeneuve or whoever else might pick the series up to work from. I’ve only read the first novel so far, but I’d like to check out more of the series, at least through the Frank-written books — I’ve heard people say his son’s continuation of the series is a lot more like standard pulp sci-fi, and if that’s true I’m not interested, though to be fair I haven’t read any of it and can’t judge for myself. I just like the space travel/drug trip combination together with the future Space Islam Herbert came up with. That weird mix of determination and fatalism in both the novel and the films you get from the Fremen feels authentic to me having grown up in the faith and partly in that culture, though mixed with all my American decadence and selfishness (only half-joking there.)
The other update is a VTuber one, since it’s become a tradition for me to put VTuber stuff at the ends of posts. If you missed Pomu Rainpuff like I have, and why wouldn’t you, there’s a newly returned streamer on YouTube with the same voice and style: a ghost maid named Mint, who retired just before Pomu debuted. You know the deal. It’s great to see her back and doing well, and I hope the best for her and her ex-colleagues who have also returned either at VShojo or as indies. I worked at a shit company once; I can relate to that too.
Finally, a personal note. My bills and rent are mounting and my salary isn’t so much, so I’m planning to do some freelancing on the side. Moonlighting is frowned upon for us, but since society doesn’t seem to give a damn whether I make ends meet, I say fuck the rules (within moral and ethical bounds, of course.) I’m not in big trouble or anything, but the situation is becoming difficult to keep up without a boost in my pay. Thankfully I have a couple of ideas I’ve been working on. That’s part of why my writing here has slowed down, but as always I will keep writing on this site if only to help maintain my sanity. I’ve been working through another audiobook, and the next post will probably be about that — another controversial one, though for very different reasons than the last. So until next time, whenever that is.
* As a serious aside, when I was looking for some information I came across the Yuru Camp subreddit and found a few people mentioning they weren’t a big fan of Toba and her treatment by the show, having lived with severe alcoholics themselves. Even as a former alcoholic, I never really took offense to these kinds of “funny drunk” characters, but then I also grew up watching sitcoms featuring drunks, so maybe I was conditioned to not take offense. I also didn’t grow up around alcoholics and mostly drank in solitude to hide my problem, so while it was extremely harmful, at least I wasn’t badly influencing the youth.
Anyway, I found Toba a lot easier to take than I did the K-On! teacher advisor Sawako in the first season with her occasional perving on her own students, not a joke I’ve ever found funny in that form with the partial exception of Kimura from Azumanga, maybe because of just how pathetic and reviled he is by every other character aside from his wife. But I know other people who never had a problem with Sawako even before she was toned down, so maybe it’s all just a matter of taste.
Everything is bad for you 