Laid-Back Camp is friggin’ back, meaning I can once more wax rhapsodic regarding the meditative, life-affirming qualities of the best slice of life anime. That basically covers this article, which digs into the ways Laid-Back Camp’s methodical approach to camping, as well as its general framing of the outside world, essentially works as a form of mindfulness training. Let’s get to it!
The Quiet Lessons of Laid-Back Camp
Hello all, and oh my god, I can barely believe it. I nearly choked up just writing “Winter 2021” for this article title, as I was faced with the enormity of realizing 2020 might one day be over. It’s not even that far off, now! After a year that has simultaneously felt momentary and endless (as Isaac Brock says, “the years go fast but the days go so slow”), it’s at last time to look forward to next year. And though 2021 isn’t exactly promising a reprieve in terms of our global pandemic or political disenfranchisement, it is offering a bunch of cartoons to at least distract us from the end of the world.
Per usual, I won’t be breaking all of the season’s coming attractions here – you can check out a full list over at anichart, along with synopses and trailers and whatnot. Instead, I’ll just be covering the shows that actually grabbed my attention, be it via a strong staff list, impressive trailer, or noteworthy source material. I think that about covers the preamble, so let’s get into it, and see what’s in store in the winter season!
For this week’s Why It Works, I discussed anime’s laudable focus on atmospheric storytelling, and its ability to convey emotional truths or the precise tension of a moment through careful scene-setting. This also serves as a general “becoming a more active media consumer” lesson, as I once more encourage people to connect with art in ways aside from the purely plot-focused. I’ve come to accept I probably won’t singlehandedly instigate a sea change in how fandom engages with art, but I think I’m okay with encouraging just a few people to think just a little differently about storytelling. Anyway, let’s get to it!
One Perfect Moment – Atmosphere as Drama in Anime
Hello folks, and welcome to the end of another dang year. 2018 has been a pretty terrifying and seemingly endless year out in the real world, as empires crumble and we draw ever closer to climate-prompted apocalypse. Fortunately, the world of anime seems largely unperturbed by our coming oblivion, and offered plenty of delights in all sorts of genres throughout this year. As a contributor to Anime News Network’s preview guide, I watched almost every single full-length premiere this year, and did my best to keep up with everything that seemed worth watching. Even then, a few shows managed to slip through the cracks – Bloom Into You will likely earn a spot on this list once I’ve caught up with it, and I still haven’t found the time to watch Hisone and Maso-tan, among other things. In spite of that, I watched a hell of a lot of anime this year, and am eager to share my favorites with you.
The anime this year was so good, in fact, that I actually have a few honorable mentions. First off, the third season of My Hero Academia was a generally excellent time, though it unfortunately peaked hard at the end of its first half. There’s also Megalo Box, which was a thrilling action spectacle that felt just a tad too archetypal for me to truly love. And finally, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure‘s fifth arc has been a wild and creative adventure so far, and would easily make this list in a year with fewer standouts. I’m also not including anime films, both because I feel they don’t really make for a meaningful direct comparison with shows, and also because nobody wants to read a list that’s just Liz and the Blue Bird repeated ten times. With that covered, let’s get to the reason we’re all here. It’s time to run down my top ten anime of 2018!
I’ve got another full show review up today, this time covering last season’s coziest of camping exposes. Laid-Back Camp was a great time, offering a unique blend of different styles of slice of life, and nailing its more atmospheric material basically every time. Not a perfect show, but a pretty perfect slice of comfort food all the same.
You can check out my review over at ANN.
It’s closing time, folks – open all the doors and let you out into the world. I’d be happy to just quote one hit wonders this week, but the season really is ending, so I suppose we should also survey some cartoons. Given I’ve already dropped everything that seemed to be juggling more narrative balls than it could handle (aka Franxx), I wasn’t surprised to see this week’s finales conclude their shows with general grace, with both Laid Back Camp and A Place Further than the Universe offering not necessarily their best episodes, but fine representations of their overall appeal. And among the continuing shows, After the Rain continues to hone in on a genuinely satisfying endpoint for Kondo and Akira, while March comes in like a lion… well, I mean, it’s March, it’s always gonna do its own thing. All these shows have been consistent enough that I have entirely run out of new things to say about them, so while I’m sad to see them go, I’m also looking forward to whatever fresh madness the spring will bring. Let’s send this season’s contenders off right, and run this week down!
It was time for a recommendation roundup this week on Crunchyroll, and this week we explored great cooking shows! The most fun part of this piece was just trying to find enough of those precise “oh my god this meal looks so good” low-angle reaction shots to fill the article, but fortunately I prevailed, because I am a professional. The people need to know the truth, and the truth is food is good.
So Good You Can Taste It: Anime That Make Eating Look Great
The anime kinda killed it this week, folks. Well, alright, at least one anime specifically killed it, and that anime constitutes a large enough percentage of my weekly quality variance that it alone killing it pretty much lifts the whole ship. To put a finer point on it, this week’s episode of A Place Further than the Universe was absolutely phenomenal, and given all three of my other airing shows tend to maintain roughly the same level of quality every week (barring a climax episode of March), Universe’s success makes for a Week in Review success. Both Universe and After the Rain accomplished the difficult tasks of convincing me they could actually conclude their stories at satisfying points this week – Universe through its graceful return to its initial themes, and After the Rain through its continued detailing of what a glimmer of hope might look like for either of its heroes. In spite of this being a relatively light season in terms of raw show numbers, After the Rain, Universe, and March all fall so squarely into precisely My Jam territory that I can’t really complain. Not one, not two, but THREE melancholy character dramas about quietly unhappy people trying to reach out to each other. My cup runneth over with gentle sadness, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Let’s run this week down!
Alright folks, it’s time once again for the Week in Review! With the season continuing to wind its way down, my own weekly pickings are looking even slimmer than usual. The big news this week is that I simply couldn’t muster any enthusiasm to watch Franxx, and so the butt handles have been dropped until their show gets better at handling its butts. Aside from that, the anime was pretty alright this week, which isn’t a surprise – I’ve honed my seasonal viewing down to just four shows, including a long-running sequel. If I can’t derive any pleasure from that short of a shortlist, I’m probably in real trouble. This has turned out to be a pretty standard off season all around, still housing a few random treasures, but mostly just laying out the carpet for next season’s copious sequels and adaptations and originals. That is, as ever, perfectly fine by me; regardless of what’s currently airing, I’m still buried in Princess Tutu and Chihayafuru and Simoun and plenty of other old gems. Every season is a great anime season if you’re not paralyzed by recency bias – but for now, let’s embrace that recency bias once more, and run down some random thoughts on the industry’s latest wares!
Today on Why It Works, I took some more time to explore all the stuff that makes Laid Back Camp so great. This time, my focus was on how Laid Back Camp accomplishes the rare task of celebrating introversion in a slice of life shell, a genre that naturally trends towards emphasizing time spent with friends as the natural goal of life altogether. Laid Back Camp is very good at not just respecting Rin’s preferences, but also capturing many of the things that make time spent alone so uniquely appealing. Thanks for that, Laid Back Camp!
Why It Works: Rin and Her Space
