Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill

Episode 12

I'm sorry, I know that Campfire Cooking in Another World is a chill slice-of-life sitcom that isn't even trying to be anything ambitious or especially creative, but I cannot help but laugh at the irony of the title of this week's season finale. “Adventures Are as Countless as Varieties of Food” is a nice sentiment, sure, but it is also an invitation for the show's audience to reflect on the fact that neither the adventures nor the recipes that Mukohda and Co. have been indulging in are particularly diverse. Like nearly every episode before it, this final episode relies on the series' familiar formula to such a degree that, if it weren't for the somewhat schmaltzy end-credits sequence, you'd barely even recognize that it was the finale to anything. The gang gets a bunch of money for killing a crapton of high-level monsters, again; Mukohda desecrates the monsters' flesh and drowns it in a dozen different bottled sauces from Magic Not-Amazon, again; and finally, Mukohda takes the time to indulge in one of the rarer pleasures afforded to the wandering adventurer, which in this last case means taking a bath and cleaning his giant dog. That's pretty much all there is to this episode.

Well, okay, we get one more appearance from the four Goddesses, who each fall for the old sitcom trap of trying to sneakily make demands of their boy-toy behind their rivals' backs. It's fine, I guess, though if I'm being honest, I feel like these four characters were the biggest example of wasted potential from the whole season. I'm not under any impression that getting more Goddess Shenanigans would suddenly bump Campfire Cooking up into the anime S-Tier or anything, but it would have been nice to have them do something more than show up once every couple of weeks for, like, two minutes so they can harass Mukohda about sending them free shit.

The food is still good, at least. I also won't pretend that the Special Wyvern Meat Gyudon is anything special for the show—our boy Mukohda is going to be dealing with some serious sodium and cholesterol problems if he keeps up this diet that consists of almost entirely of meat, empty carbs, sugary sauces, and MSG—but it's still tasty, dammit! Also, I'd be lying if I said I didn't get at least some amusement out of Mukohda giving big ol' Fel a scrub-down, even if it does only further stoke the flames of envious rage that burn within me for not being able to have a monstrous talking wolf buddy of my very own.

All in all, even though Campfire Cooking was never able to convince me that its premise warranted had maybe three or four episodes worth of potential that got needlessly stretched across a dozen weeks of television, the show managed to squeak by just long enough to make it to the end of the season without completely bottoming out. It's a perfectly serviceable isekai sitcom that has some cute characters and a handful of truly tasty recipes to showcase.

You know, given how bad some of the other series of its ilk turn out, I suppose we should just be happy that Mukohda never bought himself slaves or something stupid like that! Anyways, now that I'm all caught up on the anime, maybe I'll check out what the reception for the light novels is like. Maybe some of these previews for future volumes have some cool tidbits to tell me about what's in store for Mukohda an—

…well, son of a bitch.

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Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.