An adorably small Shima Rin gets off the train at a countryside station to meet her grandfather. No, this isn’t the latest installment of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, it’s actually a flashback sequence running through Rin’s mind as she goes on another of her solo camping trips. Back in 4th grade, her grandfather gave Rin her first experience of relaxing in the great outdoors. The rest, as they say, is history. The second half of the episode cuts to “Out Club” members Nadeshiko, Aki, and Aoi as they sit in their glorified broom closet club room and lament a situation that anyone in the working world can relate to: they used to have more time to go camping than they could ever use, but no money to do so, and now that they have part-time jobs, they have the money to afford better camping gear, but no time to use it. Opportunities to have camping trips on the scale of the one in Izu Prefecture that served as the final arc of Season 2 are rare. As a compromise, they decide to have a day camping trip in Ena’s yard (after she graciously offers it to them) while they wait for their schedules to line up again. The episode ends with Nadeshiko stopping to take a photo of cherry buds that signal the coming Spring, while Rin receives a text message in an after-credits scene from a certain fellow biker whom she hasn’t seen for a while…

It has been a two-year wait since the Laid-Back Camp movie and three years since Season 2. While that probably sounds like a laughably small gap between installments for Spice and Wolf fans, it’s more than long enough for me. Being a “cute girls doing cute things” show entering its third season, we’ve probably already reached the point where everyone in the anime fandom is already “in” or “out” on Laid-Back Camp, and so I’m going to assume I’m writing to an audience of existing fans of the show. The key question for returning Campers is how the series weathered the animation studio change, leaving C-Station, who were behind previous installments, for 8-Bit. There is a small but noticeable shift in the art style, and while it may take me a little time to get used to the slightly different character designs, it’s not a bad change. I won’t say it’s an improvement, but it’s not a downgrade either. It simply is. Other aspects of the show have held steady, such as the fun and relaxing soundtrack and excellent backgrounds. In short, Season 3 picks up where Season 2 left off and looks to take us on another round of relaxing camping trips!

Laid-Back Camp is streaming on Crunchyroll.