Karen's Anime Blog

Arrgh, this show makes me so mad. Shizuku, the female lead, is one of the most annoying characters I’ve ever seen in anime. She books a spot at a campground with very little camping experience, doesn’t bring a tent, then crashes the male lead’s campsite. She then proceeds to act like everything the guy has is her property, and the fact that he just wants to be left alone is meaningless to her. He probably says some version of “I just want to be by myself” about twenty times in the show, and she just….keeps….talking. She even ropes him into helping her with a future camping trip, telling him he must help her or he’ll feel bad if she dies from her inexperience; that’s straight up emotional abuse.

There’s a way to do this premise right. I could understand if Shizuku booked the site, didn’t realize she needed to bring her own tent, and found a fellow camper and said “Hi I really screwed up, would it be at all possible for me to share your campsite just for the night?” And then our guy Gen could step up and volunteer to help her with future trips, just a few so she could learn the ropes. Having her browbeat him into it just hits weirdly.

There is one saving grace, and that is at least she doesn’t threaten to tell people he raped her– apparently, that’s what she did in the manga. At one point she does say “I’ll tell everyone you saw my panties,” which I assume is the anime’s milder adaptation of that line, but it’s her fault he saw her panties in the first place since she started undressing at his campsite. God, this woman….and to add insult to injury, she’s not nearly cute enough to pull any of this off.

Yeah, I went there.

Look, I love Laid-Back Camp, and I’m up for more camping anime in general. But I don’t want to watch poor Gen be forced to slowly warm up to Shizuku, and have the anime portray her quirks as charming, because she doesn’t deserve that. The sad thing is, I’ll probably give into the temptation to watch more of this just because it’s about camping and the scenery is pretty. But I’ll be annoyed the whole time. I guess that would count as hate watching? Wow, I don’t think I’ve done that since Valvrave!