English Dub Review: Laid-Back Camp “Mount Fuji and Curry Noodles”

Overview

Based on the Japanese manga series, written and illustrated by Afro (under the name “Yuru Camp” in Japan). The story follows a girl named Rin Shima who comes to a campsite in Motosuko, facing Mount Fuji, to spend the day camping. While setting up a campfire, Rin notices a peculiar pink-haired girl sleeping on a bench by the public restroom…

Our Take

In the tradition of anime subgenre’s where they’ll make a slice of life anime/manga franchise out of anything, whether it’d be sports, painting, How to make friends, or even owning a scooter, we now have one primarily focused on camping. So far as a character, Rin seems pretty tough if she can camp by herself. the newly introduced character she encounters named Nadeshiko both seems to have very nice chemistry together.

The backgrounds look stellar, and the character designs are cute and passable for a show like this, and the animation still kinda feels like it’s from another decade but that’s the curse of an entirely hand-drawn anime I guess. In combination with its excellent soundtrack and voice acting, I can already see this as a potential sleeper hit. Might be its charm in the long run.

Overall the first episode was quite relaxing and very pleasant on an atmospheric level. And as a bonus, it also feels like a Camping tutorial for beginners as the earnestness in the camping tips given by the narrator was quite knowledgeable in what it was going for. However I still need to get used to Nadeshiko as a character, especially after spending half of the episode with Rin alone and her pace, she is quite a contrast in terms of their dynamics, but at least it wasn’t boring.