Laid Back Camp has, consistently, been a chill (you might even say “Laid Back”) anime series about informing the viewer about going camping, while also providing some chill vibes to accompany it, and it has generally succeeded. Season 2 stepped some things up by having some arcs include potential complications you can run into while camping – and the film covered some of the wrinkles you can run into if you decide to make a campground. Season 3 continues with the chill vibes, while also getting into “What might you have to deal with when traveling to your campground?”
Season 3 expands the cast a little – Nadeshko’s childhood friend Ayano Toki joins the cast for a whole story arc as she and Rin go on a camping tour – travelling across several bridges – Rin on her Moped, and Ayano on her motorcycle. This gets into some of the issues that you can run into with this kind of travel – getting tired out by riding for a long time, along with dealing with adverse road conditions – some of which are almost but not-quite at the level of the “Hell Road” from LoadingReadyRun’s Road Quest series.
I was a little surprised by this last bit – considering that most of the campgrounds are actual locations, and they’re travelling through actual parts of the country (not to mention travelling across actual bridges), I would have thought that depicting how poorly the roads are maintained in some rural areas would have been something that could have gotten the show in hot water. To be clear – I’m glad they did it – this is definitely a situation where it helps to prepare viewers for something they need to look out for. However, I could have seen some shows, considering the power that the first two seasons had in terms of promoting camping, and actual campgrounds, considering accurately depicting the poor conditions of some of those roads to be (if you’ll pardon the pun) a bridge too far.
Otherwise, we get some pretty basic stuff – probably the other big character development this season is Chiaki trying to give solo camping a try. She feels like a much better example of what an experienced camper but an inexperienced solo camper might run into (like getting spooked at sounds in the night in an empty campground).
In all, while the isn’t necessarily a good jumping on point, it’s a rock solid continuation of the series – keeping with the existing vibes and continuing with the engaging story.
Laid Back Camp Season 3 is available for streaming on Crunchyroll.
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