English Dub Review: Laid-Back Camp “Christmas Camp!; Mount Fuji and the Laid-Back Camp Girls”

Overview

“Christmas Camp”

Rin and the OutClub arrive early for their Christmas camping trip. They have ice cream, play with Saitou’s chihuahua, and decorate their teacher, who is already drunk…


“Mount Fuji and the Laid-Back Camp Girls”

Rin gets back from buying extra supplies, and the gang hangs out for a while longer before going to bed. They’ll be watching the sun rise over Mount Fuji the next morning…


Our Take

For the first segment, it looks like the girls finally went on their trip together, all of them. camp out with Mount Fuji in the background. There’s even a cute tiny dog that joined them along with some frisbee throwing. That looked like a lot of fun and a pleasant experience for everyone there. For the most part, it felt like a cooking and eating episode.

As for the other, I’ll admit that the opening scene caught me off guard and gave me a good laugh, but most of the season finale was made up of camping gags and fun character interactions. Also, the Rin and Nadeshiko tent scene was great, and the morning breakfast scene was easily another wholesome highlight worth sharing. At its core, this was mostly Rin’s story as she learns to find joy in making friends and learning to be around other people, and also to give a chance to new experiences she might not be so comfortable with, which are extremely valuable and positive lessons to share in our current climate of division and mistrust that seem to perpetuate in our current era.

Overall, while it only took 11 episodes, the cast is finally together. Every part of it worked to build up the laid-back atmosphere it was going for. The characters were simplistic but the show doesn’t lean on them, it relies only on being “in the moment”. My only complaint was the late addition of the drunk camping teacher chaperoning them which I felt served no purpose. She didn’t fit into the show’s vibe at all. At the very least, this show really knew how to tackle the idea of camping and turn it into an anime. With the existence of an anime movie and “season 2” that was recently released in Japan, it remains to be seen if we’ll see a Dub for those in the future, but we can only hope…