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)
While the team had a lot of problems on their first day, and believed they were only signed up for the events of that day, things have gone better with the races they’re facing on the second day that Gou signed them up for. She managed to surprise them with this and that certainly helped their morale after the downbeat attitudes after not finishing where they needed to the day before. Though they aren’t able to wipe away their losses on those matches, they’ve taken the feelings and intensity of those losses and have redirected the energy towards going in the right direction here. And seeing Haruka bring back a win in the prologue shows that they can succeed and win if they’re in the right frame of mind.
With the victory they do have, it’s enough to carry them to the regionals and there’s plenty of reason to celebrate, though it’s Rin that really can’t believe it happened after winning against Haruka the day before. The team gets a good reception when they get back to their normal school day, which is definitely welcome to see as they’re a new club in a school that has some history in this area and that making it to regionals is certainly worth noting and celebrating. It’s all good, simple stuff though we get a nice nod early on with one of Rin’s underclassman who can’t understand why Rin is not pleased by the results since he did win where it counted and he should be able to move on now from what he’s long been feeling when it comes to Haruka.
A lot of the episode is focused on the festival that’s going on in the area as the boys get out to it in their festival garb, which mirrors how girls shows do it pretty nicely. Naturally, Rin and his group are there as well and there are some circling events that brings them close together at times which is amusing. A lot of it is just the simple, lighthearted fun of watching these friends hang out together and have fun at a pretty and appealing festival while having the lingering issues that Rin has to the background, but still present. There’s a lot of nice material to this and it’s very pleasant to watch, but it also slides in a bit more heartfelt material towards the end as Makoto and Haruka talk about things and connect in a good way while the others listen in a little. It’s just a bit of decent reaffirming material that you expect and it shows the way that Haruka is growing in his own way as well to truly be a part of a team.
In Summary:
Free spends its time doing some basic character work but it’s the kind of thing that’s usually needed after an event so they can all decompress and process what they’ve been through. There’s a lot of pleasant fluff going on here and it’s very pretty to look at, but it really does focus on two main areas. The first is showing us how Haruka is processing what happened and his desire to do the team relay side of things while the second is how Rin reacts to what Haruka did on that second day and how he intends to change course. Being who Rin is, it’s not a surprise that he can’t move on and that he changes his plans in order to compete more against Haruka as that’s the one thing that will drive both of them for years to come, one way or another. Free has a good episode here overall as it hits all the right marks and does it with some real polish and pretty.
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.
This episode is such a teaser for me :-p
Weelp, looking forward to next episode, for sure!!! 😀