The last week of the Winter Games is here. This week, the points are tallied and the shows wave us good bye. Let’s read on.

After twelve long weeks, the Winter Games is now over!!!!! The points have been tallied and here are the final scores. Killing everyone with a massive lead none of us caught up to, Irina stood the champion of it all! *clap clap clap*

AG nabbed second place while Leap landed on third. I made a massive last dash this week, but it proved futile. The guy with 400 anime reviews, who also created this gawd damn collab, placed last. I suck! We all agreed for a closing ceremony post, so more thoughts about the collab will be posted there. For now…

I’m definitely going to keep this meme. Also, I’ll miss Nadeshiko, my wuv!

Yuru Camp’s last episode didn’t feel like a good bye. I think we’ll get another season, but don’t trust my predictions. After all, I suck! The show didn’t seem to say good bye though, but more like a hopeful optimistic “see you later”, which I really like. Again though, nothing exciting really happened in the last episode. We did get a wonderful mislead when the show opened with a time skip featuring gown up versions of the camping rangers. It was a bait-and-switch though, and I think it was just a clever way to feature everything in the OP sequence. That’s actually a wonderful tidbit about the anime. Every random thing in the OP appeared in the actual show. From the mustache to the alien, this anime certainly had fun.

After that, the story continues with the girl preparing to go to sleep. We get one more bathing scene and some more cute moments before we part ways with the show. But again, nothing felt like a good bye. Things kept moving forward, with the girls working their part time jobs and the club preparing for the coming New Year. The only big thing to end the episode is Nadeshiko’s promised breakfast that was very hurriedly presented. I guess it was because the director wanted to give us something before we part ways too. When the sun came up, it had call backs to the nature scenes in the first few episodes.

I particularly love the sunrise scene, because it starts with the field being awakened by the sunlight. The sun then touches the characters with the view of their shadow, and it ends with a proper reaction from the group. I love it, because that’s the same shot that welcomed me into the series.

Anyways, the anime actually ends with Nadeshiko going on a solo camping and she meets Rin on the camping ground. Again, it’s a call back to the first episode when they randomly met each other on a camping ground too. And yet Pine Cone-chan never returned. This world is unfair! As I am close to ending my episode review of Yuru Camp, I realize I won’t be able to see Nadeshiko on a weekly basis anymore. I never knew I could get attach to a character like this. When you marathon something, some characters do stick to you but it persists more when you make it part of your routine to see them. I mean, I love Watamote’s main character and Kon from “And yet the Town Moves”, but Nadeshiko just grew on me. I’ll now dedicate a portion of this episode review to my little wuv!

I love the closing scene of the anime. The lamp reappears, because Nadeshiko finally bought it, and she adapts Rin’s exercise routine when setting up camp. It was awesome. It also feels right to end the show with its opening image, as it brings the entire experience full circle.

Bye bye, Yuru Camp!!!!

Oh gawd, the ride is over!!!! It’s done!!!! Gawd almight, I can rest!!! Not gonna lie though, I will miss hating on this anime. It’s become a weekly thing for me to cringe and laugh at this show, and the idea that it’s over makes me a bit sad. Episodic viewing certainly has its ups and downs, but it’s mostly upsides for me. Even for a show this gawd awful, I will say the pain was worth it. It’s like watching a child unknowing touch a boiling kettle. Yeah, you’ll feel pain, but the stuff you’ll learn afterwards is important moving forward in your young life. I totally do that, by the way. If a child climbs a chair and smacks face first on the floor, then that’s a learning experience no teacher can teach him. This anime is my boiling kettle or my newly found distrust with chairs. I’d say it’d been a fun experience overall. The show did convince me to put “visit Puroland” on my bucketlist, because the place looks awesome. I’d want to at least hug a Hello Kitty mascot, whisper in its ear: “no amount of karma will be enough for the sin of Sanrio Danshi” or maybe “wubba lubba dub dub”. Depending on how stupid I feel at the moment. Yeah.

The final episode opened with the Sanrio Rangers hashing things out in front of Puroland. The entire scene looks weird. Imagine working a late shift and you see a bunch of boys cry dramatics in front of the park. I’d go “ugh, it’s one of those days, huh?” because I’m sure a lot of break ups happen in front of Puroland. The group did make up though, but not before they yelled at each other. They gave a very cringy “choose me” line to Kouta, which just looks awkward. I know it’s supposed to be a big moment for the group, but it just looks absolutely gay to me. There’s nothing wrong with that though, because this is the final episode. I can rest after this.

The conflict concerning the uke is also resolved. His dad randomly appeared at the rooftop where he is, and uke said he won’t be going to London. The rest of the family then transported there as well, and they also decided not to go. I’m sure the father planned this for a long time, but nope, uke gets his way. By simply saying it, the entire family now accepts it as fact. They will not go to London and leave his father there alone racked with the feeling of homesickness. I’d go on a bigger rant about how stupid this entire thing is, but yknow what, it’s the last episode. Go wrap up whatever loose end needs wrapping. I don’t care anymore.

The big moment is next, and the play is really cringy. Reading the subs just felt wrong, and I can feel my skin crawl up at how cringy the entire thing is. It’s a good kind of cringe though, because the show is a “so bad it’s good” kind of show. The characters announcing their names and rank just did it for me. Yeah, that is all the bad parts of the anime culminating into one big pile of cringe. I do love the actual ending though, where Kouta’s character is not killed off and the supporting characters participated in the final scene of the anime. I laughed with the crowd as well, because it still looked stupid, but I’m glad the anime actually got one final moment right.

Actually, seeing Yuu’s sister at school made me realize that this anime’s detriment is the sausage party it had. If the show is a mix of boys and girls liking Sanrio, then I think we could’ve gotten more out of it. Like, girls naturally like Sanrio mascots so they’d be shock about the boys liking it. The boys would convince the girls of their love for Sanrio though, and we could’ve had a more endearing story of how Sanrio is a product that has lasted since the 70s because of how it touches the hearts of people, genders be damned. Then we establish some romance, do fan service both ways, and have a plot point about the group of Sanrio lovers establishing a club. The student council will oppose it, we get some heartfelt speeches about how the characters love Sanrio, we get the student body to respond to their love, the club is established, sprinkle some flashbacks of how boys and girls both love Sanrio, maybe have Miss Monochrome cameo in one episode, have the actual voice actors of the original Sanrio anime to cameo from time to time, and just make the entire thing more palatable. You don’t even have to give a better quality animation, because a story can fix that. By the time you reach the second half, you can do the play, build more romance, and just go from there. Gawd almight, it’s not hard to write anime, damn it.

But, the ride is over. It’s done. I’m done. Thank you. F*ck you. Bye

Plot Related: A closing ceremony post will be published next week by all bloggers

Character Related: WE ARE DOING THIS AGAIN!!!!! IF ANYONE WANTS TO JOIN, THEN JUST TELL US. IF YOU’RE DOING EPISODIC POSTS THEN I GUARANTEE YOU A BLOCK EPISODIC WATCH IS A LOT MORE FUN. JOIN US.

Check out the champ’s last post HERE, HERE and HERE

AstralGemini’s post HERE

And Leap’s post HERE

My collab with Keiko is still going with the final episode airing next week. Check out the latest discussion HERE