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Yuru Camp: Girls in Tents Getting Cozy

So after a very long hiatus from anime blogging, I’m back in it! I’m actually just testing my blog to see if it still works, as I just modified it to be self-hosted via my NAS and Cloudflare tunnels. I’ll stop talking about that stuff because this is my anime blog, not my tech blog.

I started watching this Yuru Camp anime because it was the pandemic, and we needed something cozy to watch. I’ve never really gone camping before and the idea of it seems pretty rugged, but this show in particular makes it seem not so bad.

The premise is that a high school girl named Nadeshiko moves to a new town, and one of the first things she does is goes camping. Because I guess the area has lots of campgrounds or something. She meets Rin, who saves her from certain death from exposure. Later she finds out that Rin goes to the same school as her. Nadeshiko eventually joins the small camping club at her school, which Rin is strangely not a member of, even though she’s probably the most hardcore high school camper there is.

No boys, no problem!

The rest of the show is a series of slice of life episodes where Nadeshiko tries to get Rin to officially join her crew, the girls go camping, and they generally have a great time. Nothing bad ever happens to the girls, unless you consider falling asleep in the van and missing some sightseeing a tragedy. Rin plays the part of the cool kid who is too cool to join the camping club, and likes to go solo. There’s the alcoholic teacher and the super rich girl, and the energetic girl with glasses.

One funny thing that stood out to me about the show is that the girls all seem to have a really unhealthy obsession with camping. Like, obviously the show is about camping, but the girls seem to all have a very one track mind. If they’re not at school testing supplies for camping club, they are talking about camping or camping. I dunno if there’s like a term for “camping otaku” but these girls are it. They don’t seem to have any room in their lives for any other girl stuff like talking about boys (I think there were literally like 3 men in the whole series, mostly father/grandfathers) or other girl stuff (I’m not a girl so maybe girls actually only think about camping).

There’s a lot of eating and enjoying food involved in this show. Sponsored by “Big Ramen.”

There were also mini segments within the show explaining how to camp, like, “how to get twigs and pinecones to start a fire” type of stuff which I thought was interesting. The manga might be more of a handbook than the show, which is more about watching relaxing things happen.

The show was a good distraction from bad things happening in the world, kinda like an anime version of Animal Crossing. I guess the only bad thing about it is that there’s really no conflict, aside from maybe a road being closed so Rin has to go a different way, and can’t go to a hot springs because it’s closed for the season. But this is an Iyashikei anyway so what do you expect? It looks like there’s another season on the way, so I’ll have to check it out when it airs.

I’m also watching some other shows so maybe I’ll write up some reviews of them. If my blog works.