Review of Laid-Back Camp: The Movie

"The Yuru Camp Movie Review" or "How I Learned to Leave the High School Fantasy and Love Adulthood" A lot of these types of shows (whatever you want to call them, CGDCT, slice of life, comfycore) tend to focus exclusively on school life and romanticize it. And they usually end when the characters graduate, because I guess adulthood sucks and why would you make a show about it? Obviously, Yuru Camp is literally one of those shows. But the movie does something refreshing by timeskipping to when the characters are in their early 20's - and they all have jobs and apartments and other adult things thatthey have to deal with, which we get to see a decent amount of (they're not just something mentioned in passing that we never see). The film starts off with Rin's morning routine and commute and a bit of the characters' lives at their jobs which is quite nice.

The movie doesn't shy away from how rough adulthood can be - such as Rin getting her proposal in a meeting rejected for being too ambitious, Nadeshiko getting scolded by her boss at her retail job for suggesting customers to try the store next door (just to name non-spoiler occasions). But at the same time it shows how much being an adult opens life up and what you can achieve - owning your own car so that you and your dog can go on an adventure anywhere, or banding together to build a campsite in cooperation with the local council's tourism board - showing us that adulthood, can too, be comfy.

Sadly the rest of the film is not the greatest imo - it is 2 hours long and quite drawn out if I'm honest, with characters having long conversations that don't really add anything or just sitting around eating lunch. I think I'm in the minority here and for most people that's part of the comfy vibe - I would have preferred more substance.

But I really enjoyed seeing the world of work through a slice of life perspective and it was fun to see unusual things like the process of terraforming a natural location and building infrastructure - as usual, Yuru Camp is quite educational.

For me personally, this film has given me a renewed sense of optimism and acceptance around being in my 20's.