Yuru Camp Ep 5 – Oh Good, they Made it to the Camp Ground (Winter Games 2018)

• Genre : Slice of Life
• Studio: C-Station

Something slightly odd is happening. A conspiracy mayhaps… On the one hand, we have Grancrest which by all accounts is proforma and completely stereotypical and, yet we have had a just horrible track record in predicting it. On the other hand we have Yuru Camp which is so still and uneventful that it almost defies prediction and somehow it has managed to incorporate our craziest theories. Methinks there’s more than meets the eye HERE. When they find my body, don’t believe the suicide note!

 

Last week was not one of my favorite episodes. The format was split up into parallel road trips showing the outdoors club and Rin independently making there way to camp grounds. This week: the thrilling conclusion!

I continue to maintain the Yuru Camp’s seeming insistence to adopt a more traditional Slice of Life format is going in the wrong direction. The characters aren’t interesting or well developed enough to sustain that type of narrative and the reliance of cute over comedic is too hit or miss to not add some other element for your brain to chew on. Sadly, this episode stayed mostly in line with the previous one except for a few quite satisfying moments at the very end. These few scenes were not enough to satiate me but did give a promise of substance for things to come. Guys, there’s a LOT of food in this show, like seriously, more than camping. Do NOT watch it on an empty stomach…

Episode 5 starts with a pretty standard hot springs scene for the club girls. I’m not particularly against these, let’s face it I watched enough anime to get pretty darn desensitized to it, but when characters are presented as innocent and sweet and these scenes are thrown in with zero plot or comedic payoff, I always feel a little creeped out by them. Like I’m watching little girls bathing in secret for no other reason, rather than seeing a story unfold that happened to have a bathing scene.

The remaining screen time was dedicated to Rin on her bike (with some horrible animation that was particularly jarring considering the generally good production values of this show. It took me out of the moment completely!), the club girls walking, everyone cooking and taking pictures of their food again. At this point, this should also be a drinking cue. I should pay attention to see if anyone eats before taking a picture of it. I have a friend who’s a restaurant critic and she does this every time we go out together. I tease her about it.

The complaints I had last week largely apply to this week as well, adding in that this is really the wrong series for random fanservice. Yes, there is worse out there…

On the positive side the last few scenes in which pinky texts with Rin in the middle of the night and the two exchange beautiful nighttime scenery pictures from their respective campsite vistas was really rather touching. It harkened back to the very best this show offers, a tranquil almost poetic reminder to take the time and enjoy the beauty that surrounds us. A slow and calming ode to simple pleasures.

I mentioned in my first paragraph that as uneventful as Yuru Camp is, it has lived up to our craziest fantasies. Let me clarify that a bit. Before episode 2, TPAB told us (fierce Winter Games participants) that he dreamt a coffin would appear in the series. He laughed it off as preposterous, wondering what he had eaten to get such insane dreams until we saw glasses club girl (no I have not yet learned any of their names – I firmly believe it is not the point of this show) found herself wrapped in insolating material and stuffed in a cardboard box which was extremely reminiscent of a coffin. We all bemoaned the fact that he hadn’t included it as one of his predictions.

Whelp, last week I was telling these same fine folks that I was completely at a loss for predictions for this show and I was just thinking of saying they get abducted by aliens – or all of it was a virtual reality/matrix type dream…. And then this happens… To the producers clearly trolling our blogs and conversations – we await our checks.

I’m a little wary of giving away any more brilliant ideas but here we go:

Predictions:

Plot: Nabisco will go to Rin for camping advice

Character: We will find out someone’s fear

I also suspect we have a leaker in our midst. Go check out AstralGemini, Leap and TPAB, and DM me who you think it is. We got to take care of this!