Review: camp camp S2E5 Jasper dies at the end

I’m back again from camp, my lovely campers! That’s not what I’m going to talk about today though. Today I will be reviewing episode 5 of season 2. Unfortunately I have to catch up with reviews again now. RIP me.

Story

Max, Nikki and Neil have injured space kid and David needs to drive them somewhere so they can remove him from the thing he’s stuck in.

On their way there, Nikki says something that triggers David to tell a story about something that happened during his childhood. He starts telling about the day he truly fell in love with camp campbell.

It all started at the order of the sparrow ceremony when David was a camper. The sparrow is given to Jasper, who appears to be the best camper at the camp. Before he earns the rank of best camper, he needs to aquire a branch of the sleepy pine tree without the help of any technology.

David has to go with Jasper and Cameron Campbell, because they want him to see the beauty of camping. Who would have guessed: David turns out to be just as much of a rebel as Max is now!

They go of into the woods and quickly get lost. Jasper spots the tree and falls into a ravine. Cameron and David think he’s dead, but when it turns out he’s not, they go search for him. However, they get lost again and David proposes to follow the river. They find Jaspers light-up shoe and Campbell wants to give up, but David wants to save Jasper and finds a track made by bears, who seemingly have taken Jasper.

They follow the track into the cave and find Jasper, but wake up the bears before they can escape. David remembers Jaspers light-up shoes and now they can see in the cave, after which Cameron murders the two bears.

They return to camp and David recieves a special badge for his heroism. However, Jasper doesn’t get a badge, since he used his light-up shoes during the hike. This adventure sparks David’s interest in the camp and causes Jasper to lose his.

Back in real time, David finaly stops talking and they’ve past their destination two hours ago and are out of gas.

Humor

This episode didn’t really have a lot of great humor so to speak. Though it was definitely entertaining to see David act like a little Max in ’00 or so. It’s nice to not have an extremely comedy oriented episode from time to time, so I didn’t mind the lack of jokes.

Some of the references and sayings were fun. The Star Wars reference by Jasper caught me of guard and was pretty hilarious. There were a few other subtle jokes that got me smiling, but the humor wasn’t this episode’s strongest point.

Animation

The animation was really strong in this episode. Not only did we get some new characters with very neat designs, such as the two camp counselors and little Davey, we also got a range of interesting and pretty backgrounds, such as the cave, the log over the stream and the sleepy peak tree.

Now, I do have to say that they cut some interesting animation corners with this episode, which must have been less expensive. For example: they used the bearcave again, which is where the platypus from season 1 lived. Instead of animating the entire bear scene they animated flashes and even though the getting lost scene is supposed to be a joke, it also helps with re-using backgrounds.

I will give them a pass for all of this, because the episode still looked pretty good with it’s animation and I doubt anyone but I and some other animation nerds have noticed it.

General opinion

This episode was pretty good. Not as good as it was hyped up to be, but very decent none the less. The title was a huge mislead of course as Jasper didn’t actually die. (Although some fantheories state otherwise.) He died inside. It was supposed to be a pun. It wasn’t a very funny pun, did Yang write this?

Anyway, I loved that we got to see some more characters. Darla has a pretty cool design and she reminds me of Gwen in a way. The references to future events were also really good, take the previously mentioned Star Wars for example, but also the explanation why there weren’t any bears in the cave with the mascot episode. Now we know it’s because Cameron killed them.

This means that camp camp does in fact care about its continuaty, but the continuaty doesn’t get very heavy, which assures anyone can jump into the series at any moment. At the same time, it’s more fun to watch them in order and to be a fan, since you’ll easier pick up on these interesting bits of camp camp lore.

I loved seeing little David acting like a rebel. I would love this to be foreshadowing for Max’s future, since he did accept the sparrow too. I thought his design was really cute as well as the fact that he wears his shirt the same way he still does now. I didn’t really like his voice, since it closely resembles Mickey Mouse’s voice, which could have been funny if they referenced it somewhere in the episode, but they didn’t unfortunately.

I did like the none-sensecal words and that the cursing was so tame, but everyone still was extremely shocked. (“Don’t you throw all those dangs around here!”) It got me wondering if this is how camp camp would have looked like on tv a decade or so back.

All in all, this wasn’t the greatest episode, but it certainly was enjoyable. It was fun to get some more backstory and to see some old faces return.

That’s all for now folks! I still need to review Quartermaster’s appreciation day, o boy… That’s going to be… slightly uncomfortable to review. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this review and have a nice day!