Yama no Susume's 3rd Season picks off right where the 2nd Season left off, with it being Winter for Aoi and the gang, any chance for them to try and climb becomes out of the question, thus Aoi and the gang continues to climb by climbing other mountains with their friends with some growing conflict between Aoi and Hinata along the way.
See in this season, Aoi and Hinata are separated the most, be it through schedule conflicts, misunderstandings as well as Aoi opening up and gaining new friends while Hinata gets more isolated due to her conflicting schedules with Aoi, now this is something of a focal point that comes into play but it gets dealt with and resolved rather well and both Aoi and Hinata reconcile, but the entire drama between Aoi and Hinata isn't spiteful in anyways more like misunderstandings and assumptions that lead to what it became, as both Aoi and Hinata are developing their relationship but apart and this tribulation grows their relationship even more.
Nevertheless, Yama no Susume's 3rd Season still looks at mountaineering in the typical Yama no Susume flavours of giving us tidbits about mountaineering and the such from equipment to finding new Japanese mountains to climb but really the "drama" concerning Aoi and Hinata helped with this season as both first and second season was essentially a slice of life comedy with mountain climbing, the 3rd Season brought something new to the table and dealt with it rather well.
Now since Aoi and Hinata are the focal point of this season, what about the rest of the cast?, well Kokona tags along with Aoi as she's probably the most freely open character this season and she probably has the most screentime outside of Aoi and Hinata. Honoka Kurosaki voiced by Nao Touyama also gets this, at first being a character introduced in the second season and befriends Aoi, she goes along with Aoi in several trips to mountains in the process. The only character within the main cast who got shafted in this season was Kaede Saitou voiced by Yoko Hikasa as Kaede has exams thus is trapped in an endless cycle of studying and little mountain climbing thus her lessen screentime though she appears with Hinata more often than not, which is shame as LA wanted to see more of Kaede. With this you can kinda see the entire "Aoi and Hinata separation" through the rest of the cast and the major conflict of the entire third season's buildup.
8Bit, once again helms the animation and really it's what you expect from them with gorgeous backgrounding with moe character designs, really LA doesn't need to go too deep into animation, if you've seen the past 2 seasons then this is a given. Praise easily going to the beautiful backgrounding...
Voice work, well the entire cast is back and with Honoka getting more screentime, means Nao Touyama gets more too, BUT LA won't get LA's bias come into play...MVP's goes to Yuka Iguchi as Aoi and Kana Asumi as Hinata, it's a no brainer here.
Yama no Susume's 3rd Season gives us something new in terms of character development from Aoi and HInata, Aoi as she becomes much more open through mountain climbing, Hinata as becomes more isolated and away from Aoi giving Hinata internal problems concerning their relationship and by all means, as a result they grows their relaitonship even more oddly enough.
Yama no Susume's 3rd Season is about mountain climbing, but this season shows that it's much more than that and as cheesy as LA will say it but this fits into Aoi and Hinata's relationship this season and Yama no Susume as a whole and that is of the tried and true "the power of friendship" and Yama no Susume's 3rd Season encapsulates it in variety of spectrum all under the hobby of mountain climbing.
This was the little anime short that could and it STILL good even after 3 seasons...
