Written by Rei Caldombra 7/13/25 Video: https://youtu.be/aH_WMBrFTkw

Hello everyone, Rei Caldombra here for a full review of the Mono anime adaptation, aka Mono: Weekend Animation. There will be direct spoilers for Mono and some spoilers for Yuru Camp / Laid Back Camp.

Mono is a good show if you are just looking for a funny, relaxing experience that gives you a look into many places and activities. It succeeds at being a good Iyashikei / Healing and Cute Girls Do Cute Things show. But I feel it has a big issue with cohesion that brings it down from being as great as it could have been, particularly as a hobby focused series. I’ll talk about the show in general and the many positives first, then get into the meat of why I think this show is a step down compared to its predecessor.

After their schools Photography and Cinema clubs will have to shut down due to lack of members, the remaining members Amamiya, Shikishima, and Kiriyama (the 3 girls in the front of the thumbnail) combine into the CinePhoto club. Through their efforts to do activities in this new club, the girls end up meeting the manga artist Akiyama and motorcyclist Komada. Together these 5 go on adventures to have fun and make new memories throughout Japan.

The manga is written and illustrated by Afro, who also wrote Yuru Camp. You can tell Afro’s style based on the very thicc eyebrows. I am a big fan of the eyebrows, I think it’s both cute and a distinct marker without being too in your face. I love the tone and atmosphere of Afro’s work, his goofy antics mixed with down to earth appreciation for the activities of daily life mixes perfectly. I think it really shows the strength of the source material that 3 different studios can adapt Afro’s work and all of them keep the tone, atmosphere and style intact. I will be making comparisons to Yuru Camp throughout this as they are both very similar in content and vibes. They both want to provide you with a comfy, wholesome time with most of the content centering around traveling and outdoor activities. Mono shares a lot of its themes with Yuru Camp as well. Mono encourages you to follow your passions wholeheartedly and appreciate the beauty of the world around you. I believe my single favorite segment of the season is in episode 3 when they reach the top of a windy mountain after hitting up many scenic spots around the area. We get lots of great cinematography and beautiful visuals courtesy of the wind and scenery.

The truly special moment is when the Amamiya is so enthralled by the beauty she is witnessing that she asks to stay longer even though it’s about time for them to go. Instead of rushing to the next spot on their itinerary, she wanted to enjoy this wonderful moment in time until she was satisfied. That is the kind of peaceful, warm feeling that only iyashikei can do well in my opinion. Yuru Camp excelled at this and I was so glad to see that Mono could reach the same peaks as Yuru Camp. Mono feels very well balanced between embracing the beauty of the natural world while also showing how modern technology can help you appreciate and enjoy it. This too is just like Yuru camp and is excellent.

In general, the show looks super great. The moments where we get to see the perspective of the recording device can be especially neat to look at. And like with all shows that want you to think something is beautiful, it’s necessary to actually do that. Which the show absolutely does.

This show, like Yuru Camp, really makes you want to travel. It succeeds at promoting tourism, but it doesn’t have the feeling of an advertisement. I don’t feel like the characters go somewhere because someone paid for their spot to be portrayed as great. It feels like the characters are there because the creators thought that place is great and would be able to fit in the story. I like traveling in general, but must admit that my biggest passion for travel comes from liking Japan. This type of show is perfect for someone who wants to learn more about Japanese culture and spots to visit. What Mono does really well along with Yuru Camp is that it is very easy to track where the characters are. In my opinion Yuru Camp is the peak of what edutainment can be, feeling more like an encouraging guide than an advertisement. I wanted to see Mono do this well too, which I think it does. I highly recommend looking up the locations while watching this show. It’s really fun to follow along. You never know what you may learn and you may find an area you’d be interested in going to in the future. For example, in episode 5 the girls go to areas around the Yatsugatake Mountains. I realized upon looking it up online that I’ve seen those mountains. On my last trip to Japan I visited Nagano and actually got a great view of them.

This show is also very food focused, which it also does well. You get to see lots of interesting eats and food that looks incredibly delicious. Foodies will have a lot to consume here.

The characters are all very endearing and bright in personality as well. Afro has never failed at creating characters that bounce off their environment and each other very well. I love watching the characters get into goofy antics together spurred on by something they see or walk past. Like mimicking the silly faces of statues. The characters feel very natural in their silliness, another key strength of Afro’s work.

All of the main 5 characters are great. Akiyama was my favorite, you could easily see how she is a self-insert for Afro. The side characters are also pretty great, like the mangaka group Akiyama is a part of. It was nice to get more focus on adult characters than in Yuru Camp. I also love Taisho the cat, he works great as an animal mascot. He genuinely has a distinct personality and very funny recurring gags. I’ll be talking about a scene with him in a second.

Another favorite segment of mine that portrays the right balance of a unique activity melding with the overarching one as well as nailing the comedy is when they went skateboarding. It has one of the funniest jokes in the show that is the peak of the goofy, ridiculous comedy Afro goes for. The goofy tone of the series is done well enough that even though the show is generally very down to earth, a very over the top joke like this doesn’t feel out of place.

I never expected Initial D skateboarding cats in my cute slice of life show but I am all about it.

This scene gives us focus on a specific activity, in this case skateboarding, with it still being tangentially connected to the overarching activity of CinePhoto since they wanted to record it. We got to learn about skateboarding and how skateboarding POV recordings are done. This was perfect and is exactly what I think the show should have continued doing. But as the series progresses, I feel it loses its way.

Alright, it’s now time to get into the real meat of this review. As I go in depth on how I think this show has notable flaws in its execution, I want you to remember the positives I started with. I truly do think this is a good show that I thoroughly enjoyed. But I have a lot to say about how it could have been a greater show.

Mono is strongly held back by its lack of consistent focus around a singular activity that glues the wider varieties of activities together. While Yuru Camp bases its content almost entirely around camping as the main activity, Mono is much less focused on its main activity of cinematography + photos. The lack of cohesion is the main reason why I think this show falls a little flat in comparison to other shows in this genre and of course Yuru Camp. If I had to come up with a metaphor, Yuru Camp felt like it picked a class in a video game or TTRPG and optimized for it properly. While Mono tried to be more of a generalist and as a result had more inconsistent performance. Honestly, I had more trouble than usual writing the synopsis for this one because of how much harder it is to describe what exactly it’s about. With Yuru Camp, I can just say it’s about girls who go camping. Almost all the activities they do are done for the service of camping. DIY can be done for any purpose, but the tools the characters make by hand are always for camping. Cooking can be done inside or outside, but they always at the very least cooked outside, if not directly at a campsite.

The show starts very strong, with all the club members’, Akiyama’s and Komada’s activities being able to notably relate to doing something CinePhoto related.

Such as how Akiyama took inspiration for her manga from the club activities, and Komada does vlogs while she drives around on her motorcycle. But then we got segments where they just traveled or just ate food, giving little more than a quick selfie here and there. As it goes on, Akiyama’s desire for manga inspiration that is the plot starter for many episodes has less connection to photography. Sadly, there are multiple segments like this where they are not bad in a vacuum, but don’t accomplish much when put together in this story. One of the memorable spots they visited was a ninja trick mansion in episode 10, a building filled with puzzles, traps, and secret doors. It was a funny segment that portrayed it as a fun place to go, I legitimately want to try a spot like that. But this is not connected to CinePhoto opportunities in any way. They didn’t even give any thoughts about how what they saw could be used in recordings, like maybe mimicking the stilted rooms with camera angles. That ends up making this feel disconnected and without purpose. It was an enjoyable scene but feels lukewarm in the grand scheme. Another segment I enjoyed was the shaved ice tour they did, that’s another travel related thing that I liked learning about and would totally emulate. But again, it doesn’t result in anything interesting for the main premise. There is also the recurring focus the series puts on the occult, particularly ghosts. At first, this was used great, with a ghost being spotted because they did a recording. But later some of the occult related events are simply just random events they run into. These scenes are mostly funny but got a bit stale and less enjoyable when they didn’t connect back to anything. Basically, the show’s identity is less apparent due to the lack of cohesion. If a person is deeply interested in cinematography and photography as an activity and that is why they wanted to watch this show, I think Mono may actually not do enough for them. While with Yuru Camp I don’t see how a camping fan wouldn’t be satisfied with the show. This is really a shame, because the passion towards the activity is what makes hobby shows work. Here that dedication was lost because of how it sometimes fell to the background. I wouldn’t exactly call this a true “school club” show either. After the first few episodes we don’t see them at school very much. So if that is what you wanted from the broader premise, you may not be satisfied either. On the other end of this though, Mono could appeal more to the group of people who are very tired of High School. Which I do think is an understandable sentiment.

One more minor gripe I can make that also plays into the identity is that the cast of Yuru Camp shows up a little too much in my opinion. Fundamentally I do not have a problem with some cameos. It’s understandable to be a bit self-referential with the beloved Yuru Camp characters and help remind people that this is related to the very successful Yuru Camp. Afro clearly loves his characters, which I totally get because I love them too. But I think it would have been great if they stuck just to the background cameos or just the in-your-face cameos though.

The obvious cameos of Nadeshiko at the eating competition and Rin’s grandfather helping Komada with her bike were my favorites actually. But with all of them together it felt a bit distracting, which also fits with the gripes over its lack of focus on the hobbies. The frequency I think was just a bit too much. Reminding people of another series can be a double-edged sword, as making me think of Yuru Camp also makes me think even more easily of why I like Yuru Camp better.

Obvious cameo used in a gag (along with Shenron lol), this looks like it would be a gag from Yuru Camp itself.

The lack of focus and consistency also hurts this show narratively. The last episode finally brings the show back to its roots in the CinePhoto club, which was sorely needed. The 3 club girls decide that they are going to record a movie, with hilarious and genuinely surprising shenanigans ensuing. We get to meet the phantom member, who is another good goofy addition. I don’t mind that she had so little screentime since we already have 5 characters being focused on constantly. I think this was one of the better segments of the season, finally getting an extended look at them doing cinematography again. At the end of the episode, Makinohara shows back up, the upperclassman of Amamiya and Kiriyama who graduated from the Photography club in the first episode.

This feels like a natural and fitting event for the end of the season. But the emotions of their long-awaited reunion don’t really land. This would’ve been much stronger if it hadn’t felt so absent. I would not be surprised if a decent number of viewers forgot about her considering she was barely even mentioned in episodes 2 through 11 as far as I can remember. It is still a nice moment that succeeds on the surface level, but it doesn’t have much impact since this didn’t feel built up to. I am not expecting a series like this to get deep into emotional issues, but I feel like what they meant to express with their relationship is that Amamiya fixated on Makinohara so much that her personal growth and identity was getting stunted. I think this could have been compelling but was not actually executed on. Their relationship would have felt more important and this ending more impactful if it was emphasized more over the course of the season. One of the threads I really like from Yuru Camp is Rin’s slow acceptance of group camping.

What made that work is that we saw Rin grow to enjoy the influence of the main camping group slowly over the course of the season. Rin agreeing to join a big group camping trip was very satisfying because it felt well built up to. Sadly, Makinohara and Amamiya’s reunion did not feel like that. The substance just wasn’t there.

I am just talking about the anime here, to be clear. I am not sure if the lack of cohesion is a result of pacing and/or what they chose to adapt vs skip in the manga, or if this is an issue in the manga as well. To be clear, I understand that having a variety of activities can give the series more mass appeal. And it’s not like there’s no cohesion at all. The manga drawing, video and photo taking can also be condensed under recording memories. But it still misses out on the stronger connections that can make the world so much more engrossing. That’s one thing you can say about Yuru Camp, you truly get pulled in to these characters who feel like they live and breathe camping. Yuru Camp and many other hobby shows make it clear that someone does not need to be passionate towards the activity in focus to enjoy it. I often stress this when I talk about CGDCT and other hobby shows. I have enjoyed many of the cute girls band shows despite the fact that I do not really care for or relate to playing instruments. This show is still very enjoyable, don’t get me wrong. But it just doesn’t hit quite as well as others.

In conclusion, I think Mono is a good show that had the potential to be a consistently great show. If CGDCT, edutainment, traveling, comedy and good vibes are something you want, you can find it here. But I cannot ignore the messy portrayal of its activities that hold it back from being as compelling of an experience as I know it could have been. With Yuru Camp, I never really grew bored of the camping activities. But by the end of Mono I think I was losing interest. I still recommend it to you if this kind of show is your thing. I am a massive fan of these shows and can enjoy them even if they’re flawed. But if you haven’t seen Yuru Camp I would recommend that over this. And if you want a hobby show that goes deep into its primary hobby, there are other shows that will give you more depth. I like this show and enjoyed the majority of it. But after it started so strong I can’t help but be disappointed that it lost its way in the middle. I have no regrets watching it, but I don’t think I will check out the manga like I did for Yuru Camp. Sorry if I made too many comparisons to Yuru Camp or gassed it up too much, but I do hold it in very high regard. You can check out my writeup about Yuru Camp if you want to see my in-depth thoughts on it.

I want to end on reminding y’all that you can genuinely support and appreciate something but also be critical of it. It feels like a lot of people’s opinions nowadays are very extreme one way or the other. Love or hate, 100% or 0%, and that all criticism seeks to tear something down. That’s not the case. Let’s stay nuanced and critical in how we approach things. Thanks for reading!

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