Since i’ve promised we would correct the lack of newer Yuru Camp/Laid Back Camp content on the site, here is the promised review of the anime third season.
I won’t be covering the mobile game, Yuru Camp Together/All For One, despite planning to do so, not this time, maybe next year, it’s such a clunky pile of gacha ass (not that kind of gacha ass) that i struggled to even bother with it, even putting aside its performance issues.
That will get a full review, eventually, because it’s awful, but for now i will review the last season of the Yuru Camp anime, after giving some first impressions some time ago.
Might as well, since Season 4 has been announced back in November 2024, 1 year ago, so it’s confirmed (with a picture drawn for the occasion by the author of the Yuru Camp manga, Afro) but we still don’t know anything else besides it will eventually exist.
… this is where i would say some updates on that dribbled down between me starting this review and the day of posting, but nope, still nothing about it besides “is in the works”.
And in a way i don’t have much to add besides from what i said in my first impressions post for Season 3, but i’ll reiterate if you didn’t happen to read that.
First off, i did really almost forgot this was gonna exist despite knowing it would, so it somehow snuck up on me, i guess because subsconsciously i was rejecting the idea of another studio besides C-Station handling Yuru Camp, even more since the movie was so good and i feel fans of the series couldn’t ask for a better anime adaptation of Afro’s manga.
And that’s honestly the correct way to look at it, to see where some of the lamentations by fans (which were gonna be inevitable due to changing animation studio) were coming.
Because in hindsight this is not the disaster some might have feared, nor is it some lukewarm imitation that people are deluding themselves into saying it’s great to avoid reality.
After all, taking over animation duties was Eight Bit, far from an unexperencied studio, as they already had a lot of shows under their belt, mostly isekais, but also Aquarion Evol, the Grisaia series, Infinite Stratos, and – more relevant in this case – all seasons of Encouragement Of Climb, another slice of life manga-to-anime adaptation about cute girls doing outdoors activities in the mountains, in this case climbing, more specifically alpinism/ mountain climbing (mountain climbing, Joel!).
Taking over director duties from Yoshiaki Kyōgoku is Shin Tosaka, whom previously directed some episodes of many anime series (from Busou Shinki to some Beyblade series), and more recently The Slime Diaries, the slice of life spin-off of That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime), so it’s a director with some experience in the genre.
I dunno why they didn’t just commission C-Station again, if the studio backed out due to an already busy schedule, or the production committee wanted the new season out faster than C-Station could/wanted to churn it out, so they hired another studio, though most likely it’s just the latter.
Regardless of why, there are notable differences from previous seasons.
The first and blatant change is the character design, which is a lot more “cutesy” than before, a hard thing to explain since the character designs were already super cute, i guess they weren’t aggressively cute to a certain market preference, so they cranked up the “moe” factor to be safe.
The new director said this change is to make this season more akin to the designs in the manga…. and it’s not wrong, i’ve actually red the manga, and yes, it’s a bit more akin to that, but aside from being different, they just feel simplified, even thought its more about details most people won’t even catch, like the curving of eyebrows on certain characters.
“Feel” is the word, as in they don’t look bad or unrecognizable, but the previous designs were simply better in my opinion, aside from being used to those over time, though the slightly different new ones are far from ugly, let’s make things clear.
The second big change, and one that might go unnoticed by regular viewers is composition, which IS important in a series that builds its appeal on the mountain locales, woods and lakeside vistas of the Yamanashi prefecture and his many little towns.
Again, it’s not bad or anything, not Twitter shitpost level stuff like online opinions were leading me to believe, that is simply not the case, it’s still good work and the locations are vibrant and charming, but it’s also undeniable that fans will inevitably feel the downgrade that did happen compared to the previous seasons, because C-Station just got everything right in balancing the specific needs of such an adaption, and here i’m not really pausing to take a look at some of the cinematography, as the enviroment feels less like a protagonist on par with the humans characters.
It’s not necessarily worse, just slightly different, as the direction pivots a lot more to gags and humour, and goes doe a slightly faster pace, which actually does make harder to immerse oneself in the various locales the series does want you to.
Though it’s not unfair to say that the animation feels like a slight downgrade, even after adapting to the new character design meant to be more akin to the manga, the background expecially are not amazing as before, sometimes even stuff that the previous series did is of a lower quality, like them using a real life photo for a store interior or something (sometimes even exteriors) is done in a cheaper way, like they took the photo and barely worked around it, as a cop-out to drawn a realistic animated still shot of some dam or something
Though these later istances are so sparse and only in the first episodes, so it does – thankfully – become a nitpick that doesn’t really impact the experience.
Not much to say about the animation itself, it’s quite good work, the new opening theme is very good, and the brisker pace is kinda nice.
On the positives, i do like that we get to see more of Nadeshiko’s friend, Aya, as she comes back and begins camping a bit on her own before trying a group excursion, and this isn’t bad, this IS Yuru Camp, the series composer and the various VAs are still the same, it’s just not as good as before so far, with some benign differences but also some notable tehnical downgrades.
This time aside from Aya being more prominent and Rin’s buddy for crossing shaky suspension bridges and gloating about it like feats of courage, there are more one-off characters like the two ladies Nadeshiko meets on the bus, we have the gals being even sillier, like Ogaki, Ena and the retelling an embellished version of their camping trip they had while Nadeshiko, Rin and Aya were at Ogata doing theirs, even going the meta narration route.
I love that episode 8 is straight up using the term “food porn”.
I was kinda disappointed the couple of new characters teased in the opening (whom i think appear late in the manga), the very young artist with a tablet and her friend, are not featured properly, they appear early but we don’t have them anything until the very end of the season, so it feels kind of a tease, but they are indeed cinnamon rolls, so to speak.
otherwise we see the gals talk and discuss and show about some new hobbies and fancies, which are also very comfy and chill, like Nadeshiko being into retro trains and cars, going for a cherry blossom photo frenzy when its season, the girls get a bit of solo space for them or “duo time”
it’s a lot of small things, as expected and how it should be.
Lenght-wise, it’s the usual 12 episodes plus three 5-8 minutes shorts in the style of the spin-off series, Room Camp, to close it off.
Overall, the third season of Yuru Camp/Laid Back Camp is quite good, despite the ill omens of the animation studio change that had fans worried, expecially since the new studio already had quite the experience on a very similar “cute girls doing cute things outdoors” series, and all the VAs are back.
It’s more Yuru Camp, which it’s always good and heals the soul, but the change of director (and studio, as already said) isn’t seamless, as the new art style is closer to the manga designs, but direction is more focused on gags and features a slightly briskier pace, though the composition is not as good as before, and due to the new direction, it doesn’t beg/want the viewer to lose itself into the mountain landscapes it offers as much as before.
Season 3 has the infortunate task of trying to live up as what resulted to be the perfect adaptation of the source material, as the original studio, C Station, either declined or was never offered to make this season as well (despite working on all previous Yuru Camp projects), but this isn’t the “abysmal downgrade” some fans feared, it’s quite good and slightly different, not necessarily for the worse.
So ultimately it’s no cause for skipping this season, just as long as you understand it’s just “very good” instead of amazing, and given we just saw Season 3 of One Punch Man lower its own standard further, i’ll say count your blessings.
(And don’t get angry at the animators, get angry at the worsening work conditions, bad management and absurd pile of content these modern streaming services expect from the “anime sweatshops”)
Wise Cafe (International) 