Camping 101
Starring: cute girls!

We’ve had cute girls sailing to Antarctica, (Further than the Universe) cute girls in the apocalypse (Girls’ Last Tour), cute girls singing, dancing, and playing instruments (anime like K-On!, Love-Live! And Hibike! Euphonium), and just cute girls doing nothing whatsoever (Lucky star and Yuyushiki). Now we have cute girls going camping.

It literally does what it says on the packet. It’s a very relaxed slice-of-life anime about camping, including all the aspects you would expect to see in a camping anime. It goes into great detail about the campsites they visit, the equipment they use (everything from how they buy it to how they set it up), the food they make (which by the way, looks amazing and will make you hungry if you watch it before eating), and the way they bond through camping together. I learnt enough about camping from this one anime that, assuming I ever wanted to go, I would know exactly how to prepare and what to do.

And it’s nice to watch. It’s very slow paced, each episode generally consists of planning and executing a different camping trip. The art and animation are fantastic; the scenery in particular is drawn absolutely beautifully. All the right colours and tones are used to convey the autumn-like feeling perfectly. The sound also fits the mood of the anime to a T.

There are five main characters, although the story mainly focusses on two of them. Rin is the silent one who enjoys the peace and quiet of camping alone. She doesn’t tend to socialise much, and this is what makes her friendship with the outgoing and talkative Nadeshiko endearing to watch. You get to know Rin through her actions – the way her face lights up when she sips a hot cocoa, the way she stares at a gorgeous view like she’s trying to devour it, the way she cares about her friends despite sometimes acting like they’re a nuisance to her. She’s very relatable as a character, and that’s part of why I liked the anime so much.

Nadeshiko, as mentioned before, is the talkative one. She’s also the clumsy, energetic and downright adorable one. She’s the type of girl who injects life into the anime, and helps speed up the pace when it becomes too snail-like. Her becoming friends with Rin is essentially the premise of the anime – they meet by chance on a camping site, and, in the way of anime, find out they go to the same school together. She and Rin are a lot like chalk and cheese; apart from their love of camping they couldn’t be more different. However their friendship blossoms nonetheless, and by the end of the anime they’ve formed a solid relationship.

The other main characters are relatively enjoyable to watch, although they aren’t as developed as Rin and Nadeshiko. Aki and Aoi are girls in the same camping club as Nadeshiko, and Ena is a friend of Rin’s who’s persuaded to come along for the ride. Apart from camping, the anime mainly shows them in school, going shopping, working and just hanging out together. Nothing exciting or even particularly interesting, but their interactions are mildly humorous, very light-hearted, and always cute. The series shows how they each react to the camping aspect, and what each of them actually enjoys about camping. For some it’s the peace, for some it’s the food, and for some it’s the companionship. Regardless, after watching this I felt I would probably enjoy camping too for one reason or the other.

Now, although I said this anime was nice to watch, I wouldn’t call it entertaining. It’s more like you feel contented with the world after watching it. I had to be in a certain frame of mind to see it – when I was in the mood for something fast-paced and thrilling, I watched another anime.

So, if you’re looking for something tranquil, something cute and relaxing, this is a good choice. If you’re not, then I’d give this one a miss until you are. XD