Adult Animation: Camp Camp

I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of Camp Camp—compared to RWBY and Red vs Blue (if you’ve even heard of those two) it’s the less well-known of Rooster Teeth’s production, a now defunct indie production studio. If you have, maybe you saw it on YouTube at some point where it got most of its press (don’t look it up, it’s not there anymore)

The premise of the show is best described as a conman’s summer camp. A thousand years ago, in an attempt to make as much money as possible, Cameron Campbell set up a con where he could maximize profits and turn a regular summer camp into an everything camp. What ends up happening is a bunch of kids whose parents signed them up for entirely different camps (Science Camp, Magic Camp, Behavioral Correction Camp, etc.) all get jammed into a rinky dink summer camp where the only objective out of the day is to get to the end of the summer.

We follow Max, this cynical and jaded kid whose entire thing is making every day at camp as entertaining or as miserable as possible, along with his cheerful camp counselor David who’s never met a day he didn’t love.

A not bad premise for a series and it was critically acclaimed. Especially when it started picking up traction—Fourth season wrapped up with a longer episode lineup than any season before and a finale open for a fifth season. Then dead air. The next  season they were talking about doesn’t air and the company declared a period of “mass hiatus” for a number of its shows. Somewhere in there twenty million dollars is lost and the show is “TBA” for four years. If you were watching the show at the time, you wouldn’t be unrealistic to think the entire thing was canceled and call it good while it lasted.

Behind the scenes, Rooster Teeth would face a lot of controversy, budgeting difficulties, and layoffs. You wouldn’t know that if you were only there for one show but like ehhh semantics. But what’s really weird is despite all this, there WAS news.

Somewhere 2023, Rooster Teeth has its 20th year anniversary and four years after the series went dead, they premiere the closest thing to an actual official finale Camp Camp has had which they leave open-ended and THEN announce a fifth season a few days after.

Fifth season doesn’t air until March and I’ll be honest pessimistically, I’m like “alright yeah fifth season’s not coming.” five days after the first episode of the new season airs—the entire studio announces its shutting down. two days before I wrote this blog the series aired its last episode. the last episode wasn’t grandiose or a big send off and there was no major announcement except for a little card at the end of the last episode thanking you for watching the show.

and that’s the trashiest thing I’ve ever seen happen to an animated show!