Liked Yuru Camp△ (Laid-Back Camp)? Watch Koisuru Asteroid (Asteroid in Love)!

• Episodes: 12
• Aired: January 2020 - March 2020

Major Similarities Between Yuru Camp△ (Laid-Back Camp) and Koisuru Asteroid (Asteroid in Love)

1. Fun Club Activities

Joining clubs is a learning experience and learning can be fun, especially when you’re passionate about the activities clubs have to offer. Rin enjoys camping as a hobby and prefers a more quiet and solo experience, but Rin slowly opens up to Nadeshiko and the rest of the Outdoor Activities Club because camping together with friends is a whole lot of fun. While Koisuru Asteroid doesn’t have that many locales to visit compared to the varied camping sites Yuru Camp offers, the trip to the real-life observatories and museums in Koisuru Asteroid are fun on their own, especially when the girls learn new things about the heavens above and the earth beneath them—Ao and Mira are still learning, but with these fun and educational experiences, they’ll be a step closer in discovering their own celestial body.

2. A Slow and Calming Experience

Nadeshiko’s endless energy aside, Yuru Camp is something of a slow and calming experience. The pacing is deliberately slow with tons of scenes where the characters stroll across the landscape and the characters get cozy in front of the campfire while admiring the scenery. You could say Yuru Camp is subtly advertising these campsites, and Yuru Camp is pretty good at it—each campsite is distinct and really makes you want to visit these places whenever you get the chance to travel to the Land of the Rising Sun. Koisuru Asteroid offers the same slow and calming experience, but the story is more character-focused with character growth—learning, graduating, looking for a career, strengthening friendship, and even developing love. Koisuru Asteroid has no plot to follow so the pace moves only when the character moves… if that makes any sense.

Liked Yuru Camp△ (Laid-Back Camp)? Watch Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu na! (Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!)!

• Episodes: 12
• Aired: January 2020 - March 2020

Major Similarities Between Yuru Camp△ (Laid-Back Camp) and Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu na! (Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!)

1. The Beautiful Scenery Is Also Part of the Story

Anime is known for its beautiful scenery—whatever the genre is, there will always be a moment when the camera just pans across scenery to heighten the atmosphere or give the audience a sense of scale of the world. In slice of life, the scenery is there to serve as an intermission between dialogue, establishing the location of the setting, setting up the mood, and it’s not often that the scenery is part of the story. Yuru Camp centers around camping outdoors in real-life locations, so the scenery is very important to the story. Slapping in a fictional location may work, but Yuru Camp intends to show the audience what camping in these real-life locations actually feels like.

Eizouken is entirely fictional, but using the scenery (Midori’s philosophy is “Anime is all about its scenery”) for the story is essentially the same. For example, Midori, Tsubame, and Sayaka were hired to create a mecha anime pilot episode as part of a promotion for a school club, and Midori uses the scenery she experiences around the school and town as the backdrop to make the anime a more immersive experience, especially for the students who will end up watching the anime. This is why Midori was meticulous over the tiny details like where the sun is positioned, and where the props are placed.

2. Everything Is a Learning Experience

Yuru Camp and Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu na! aren’t strictly educational anime, but the shows give you some helpful and insightful information to make the story and character motivations more believable. Yuru Camp teaches you the different kinds of tents, the tools needed for camping, the various things to prepare before heading out, and teaches you camping etiquettes like cleaning the campsite, properly putting out fires, etc. Eizouken is like an anime for aspiring artists and animators because it gives insights on how animation is made, like what equipment animators use, and the anime tells you what techniques animators use for expressive character movement, impactful explosions, and clever use of animation frames to save time.