Time marches on and now that Christmas is past, it’s almost time for New Years! The Outdoor Exploration Club and all of their associated friends have some plans and hopefully things will go off without a hitch. Or at least, mostly without a hitch!
Life continues on in the Laid-Back Camp universe and these girls are hooked on camping so of course they’re planning more trips so soon after their last one. I must confess that I’m still a little baffled about the weather in this part of Japan. It’s clearly mild enough that the girls generally aren’t overly concerned about camping in January but, based on a few comments made in these two volumes, I think volume 1 was set around September and the setting looked quite chilly for September! Perhaps Afro just really likes drawing the girls in cold weather fashion. I try to not let these details bother me too much but it really is confusing me a bit.
Speaking of the weather, it causes two of the group’s most serious challenges to date; in the first case Rin has decided to go solo camping over New Years. While she has a lovely time, sudden bad weather keeps her from getting home and she has to quickly rework her plans for an additional couple days of camping. Everything turns out fine, this is Laid-Back Camp after all, but things don’t go quite as well when the trio of Chiaki, Aoi, and Ena go for a camping trip on a picturesque lakeside. They forgot to account for how the increased elevation would change the weather (and I suspect windchill coming off the lake as well) when planning; as someone who spent several years living in Cleveland and then going to college in the Appalachians I did have a dismissive moment when the girls exclaim that the weather has already gotten down to 28 F (-2 C) at 4:30 (which I consider to be “cold but still completely livable”). But to be fair, the one time I did “winter camping” in the Girl Scouts we were in a cabin since we weren’t dumb enough to camp outside in a Cleveland winter. Like with Rin, everything turns out fine in the end however and honestly this slip-up in their planning makes them feel more like real high schoolers than mini-adults.
Not everything goes badly for the girls however! Several of them make different trips to see the first sunrise of the new year (which alright, still has a few hiccups since we are talking about these girls who can obviously be a bit scatterbrained), Nadeshiko is able to save up to buy her first real piece of camping equipment, a nice gas lamp, and even find a permanent part-time job to help her support this expensive hobby. The “after-school” extra comics at the end of each volume (and the ones printed on the inside covers) continue to be extra hilarious and surreal, and some of them I recognized from the recent Heya Camp adaptation but some of them were new to me! The actual stories of these two volumes are also completely new: the first season of the anime adaptation covered through volume four and, since season two isn’t set to premier until next winter, fans of the Outdoor Exploration Club should pick up these volumes to fill the yuru-shaped hole in their hearts.