That's moe. It's pointless, and we watch it anyway. Because we're bad.
But it's okay! Because there's a moe show that you can enjoy without feeling like you're slowly killing yourself by inhaling noxious cotton candy fumes! That's right! It's Yuru Camp!
Now, I'm not gonna lie to you: Yuru Camp isn't a work of genius or anything. It's a simple show about a group of girls who like camping. A lot. Like, damn, they really love camping. And their love of camping must be infectious, because I seriously considered going camping multiple times while watching. Then I stopped, because I've been camping and I know that it's less cute girls in ponchos and more tedium and mosquitoes.
Anywho, the real reason Yuru Camp is so great is twofold: focus, and subtlety. What I mean by focus is that the show is about camping, and it's actually about camping. The girls of Yuru Camp go camping basically every episode. No stupid sidelines with them hanging out in a club room for an entire episode eating cake, or going to the beach and jokingly fondling one-another so viewers can feel very uncomfortable about their choice of entertainment—NO. Yuru Camp is about camping, and by golly, camping is what's on the menu.
The subtlety of the show is where it really shines, though. Throughout the anime, slithering between the lines of the quirky humor, educational skits and RELAXED CAMPING ACTION there creeps an ever-present and compelling tension—a quiet battle of wills between the three girls who form the camping club—Chiaki, Aoi, and Nadeshiko—and Rin, who prefers to go camping by herself. It's never blown out of proportion, but first impressions make it clear that Rin is openly against the idea of having her relaxing solo-camping experience ruined by noisy companions. Throughout the show, however, with Nadeshiko serving as a bridge, Rin slowly becomes more open to the idea of hanging out with her new friends and even sharing her favorite pastime with them.
I realize that what I'm describing sounds completely unremarkable, but that's just it—the show doesn't treat this development as something mind-blowing; Yuru Camp succeeds because the realistically slow churn of this quiet tension, which eventually gives way to camaraderie, is like the relaxation of a taut muscle—natural, easy, and extremely satisfying. Watching Yuru Camp is comforting because that tiny hint of drama is just enough to make the characters feel real, while the whole experience remains unthreatening and chill as heck.
In the smelly, smoldering heap of throwaway shows that inhabit the gross, unwashed tent of the moe genre, Yuru Camp stands tall as a well-executed (and hygienic!) mold-breaker. And I think I just stressed myself out with that sentence, so excuse me while I calm down by re-watching Yuru Camp a third time.
