The year is drawing to a close and so, as a special treat, the Outdoor Exploration Club has decided to go Christmas camping! They’ve found the perfect place, are planning the perfect meals, and even have a new club supervisor to make the club more legitimate. Now all that remains is to convince their non-club friends Rin and Saitou to join them for their laid-back Christmas Eve.
For folks keeping track at home, volume 4 ends right where the first season of the anime ended so, as was the case with volumes one and two, there’s not a ton of material that will be new to an anime viewer in these two volumes. There are some side gags that didn’t get worked into the story, including a number at the end of volume four (my favorite was when the Outdoor Exploration Club tries to create their own mobile camper to take on the road with them, which works out about as well as their cardboard sleeping bag did), but by and large the anime was a very faithful adaptation of Afro’s manga.
I do think I prefer the anime in some respects such as visually. I felt like the anime adaptation’s bright colors were more appealing than the manga’s sometimes-cramped panels (Afro really needs to learn to loosen up and just draw big panels so they can really show off their pen and ink skills), but that is truly a preference more than a critique of the artwork.
I am really excited that more people will see some of these newer gags when the second season, series of shorts, and movie come out. While I obviously want as many people to keep reading the manga after its anime adaptation has concluded, I know that in reality that only a percentage of viewers will make the hop over to print, even if they know that they’re missing out! That’s something I think about every time there is a new volume of Monthly Girl’s Nozaki-Kun another fun comedy where there is a ton of unadapted material in the manga that anime-only viewers are missing out on! So, having confirmation of a continuation of Laid-Back Camp feels like a great win for a manga-reader like me, then everyone then gets a chance to experience more of the goofy fun the cast gets into!
Laid-Back Camp hasn’t changed much from the first two volumes so previous devotees will find lots to love and anyone who found the previous volumes unenjoyable for any reason are unlikely to find their opinions changed in these latest installments. And for this type a story, a truly relaxed slice of life tale, I think that’s alright. I’m not even worried that this appears to be Afro’s longest work to date. So far Laid-Back Camp’s style of storytelling has worked for it and I don’t see any reason to change it yet!