What They Say:
Nanase Haruka loved to be in the water – loved swimming. In elementary school, Nanase Haruka, Tachibana Makoto, Matsuoka Rin, and Hazuki Nagisa attended the same swimming class together. Time passed, and as Haruka was living an uneventful high school life, he suddenly encountered Rin again. Rin challenged Haruka to a race and showed him how much stronger he had become. Soon enough, Makoto and Nagisa also rejoined the group, and along with a new classmate, Reigazaki Rei, they established the Iwatobi High School Swimming Club.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Free! managed to bring in some nice little touches with the previous episode as it went through the whole club startup aspect, particularly when it comes to Gou. As the obligatory female student of the moment, there’s a lot of ways her character can go bad, but they’ve handled her well in this, especially when she discovered some of the lies her brother has been telling about what he’s been doing at the other school. She’s managed to stand her own ground and have her idolization moments when it comes to the young men here in their tight swimsuits, but she’s also avoided being a caricature with how she does handle it all. And with the way so many shows go for that easy shortcut, it’s a pretty welcome change of pace.
Gou’s doing the manager job pretty well and is setting things up for the club to go in the right direction, but they also have the problem of not really having any sort of club budget, which makes sense since it’s a new club with no accomplishments. For Haruka, he’s pretty intent on making things happen so he can swim all the time, and that means building out the club more than it is now, since there are minimum memberships and all. That turns the focus on Rei, who has already joined a track team and is intent on sticking with that instead of touching the swim team in the slightest. For his part, Nagisa does his best to continually go after him and to try and get the others to see the wisdom of his choice. There’s definitely some pressure there, especially with the way their advisor figures into things.
There’s a lot of fun as we see the gang work through this and the push to get Rei into it, but it also goes for some silly fun, especially when he ends up at the pool and is quickly and forcibly changed into a swimsuit even though he said he wasn’t going to participate. But as we get so many people there, and some intriguing observers as well, it all builds up well. The way they push and prod at Rei is great and comical since it hits all the right notes with how they manipulate him and how he’s able to be manipulated before just getting right into it. Though we don’t get a lot about Rei when you really get down to it, it does play out well to show us who he is and that he can drream and have great desires to achieve something new and intense, which is displayed beautifully in the final act here.
In Summary:
The third episode of the series continues the usual club building exercises that we see in many other series, but there is most assuredly a different feel about it, though one that does touch regularly with how most Kyoto Animation shows go. Things are not really forced here, there’s a great flow to how it plays out and all the characters get their time to be involved, though nobody really truly dominates outside of Rei. And often that’s just because he’s the one being sought as the quick fix to get into the club so they can move forward and really participate. It may play by the numbers here, but the numbers are well done and very slickly produced with some great looking animation and fun moments that gives it a full sense of life.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
