Anime 18507 Free Reviews Filter Check 3

Let me start off by saying this anime was an abomination. A sadistic tease to any and all romantic anime connoisseurs. And the very reasons this anime made me so utterly livid, was for two simple facts:

Firstly, the aesthetic was simply phenomenal. The artists in charge were undoubtedly meticulously planning these sketches. A swimming anime where the main setting is water. The character's trapeziums flexed with elegant ease, droplets of water acquainting themselves with the crevices of their bodies. Their builds—particularly Makoto Tachibana's, were impeccable. Not overly sculpted, but the perfect amount of chisel. Haruka Nanase's slim, but not overly thin, supple body which danced ... with suave movements throughout the water. Nagisa's lolita appeal which contrasts with his subtle dominance and Rei's awkwardly charming butterfly-like essence. The appeal was perfect! Which served as its biggest downfall in my scoring due its staunch contrast with the lack of ANY remote plot besides the shallow childhood conflict over "free swimming".

Romantic anime is not simply having angelic characters with the bodies of Greek Gods. The only female suitor who had any chance of penetrating the tightly woven bond of these friends was Gou, but she understood better than anyone who the real romantic interests were...

EACH OTHER. Which leads me to my second biggest issue with the anime. Intentional or not, how could the creators produce these four flowery boys, and neglect to provide the audience with any relief?? No kiss, no bodily fluid exchange, nothing. The closest they came to intimacy was friendly shoulder touching, or the rare occasion of a hug.

Maybe romance was not the big focus, which I can respect. But the plot was so stupidly uneventful. It would be more fitting to categorize it as slice of life rather than sports, because the majority of each episode was monopolized by pointless banter. At this point all the audience can think is "F**** KISS HIM ALREADY!", which as you can imagine, is extremely frustrating.

I do not recommend this anime for anyone looking for resolve or substance. It was as pointless as a male prostitute with erectile dysfunction.

Here's a quick breakdown of my rating: Story = 4; Art = 7; Sound = 8; Character = 4; Enjoyment = 4.

There are so many things wrong with this anime but in this review I'll only touch on the most obvious criticisms:

1) The ridiculous amount of fan service in this anime is nauseating. I admit that the characters and their very hot bodies were initially a treat to the eyes, but even sweet things taste bitter if you overindulge. Seriously was it really necessary to give flashes of abs, deltoids, triceps, and the V line every 5-10 minutes? At this point the guys should've ... just gone full on naked and even then I bet the viewers wouldn't be the slightest bit shocked or impressed. The writers and the producers of Free! deserve a huge slap in the face. These high school boys are swimmers NOT strippers!!!

2) There is ZERO knowledge about the sport of competitive swimming in this anime. Lets get this straight, freestyle is a type of swimming stroke NOT a type of swimming style. In other words, a swimmer can incorporate certain techniques with strokes to achieve a type or "style" of swimming, but the strokes in themselves don't describe a swimming style. It really frustrated me that the writers didn't understand this basic concept. Like in episode 3 when Rey Ryugazaki confessed "I want that kind of freedom" and Haruka Nanase responded "It's not freedom. It's freestyle." I wanted to smack my head on the table until it bled of 'cuz of the sheer stupidity and cheesiness of that line. Also in every team relay one swimmer MUST swim freestyle so the fact that the MC, Nanase, refuses to swim in relays because he "only swims freestyle" MAKES NO FREAKIN' SENSE WHATSOEVER!!!

3) Now let's talk about content. Oh wait, what content? There was NO content worthy of discussion in this anime. It's a shame because speaking from prior experience competitive swimming is a brutal yet fascinating sport. There are so many intricacies involved in competitive swimming (like learning how to hold your breath for an extended period, mastering flip turns, cutting down time, toning your muscles, swimming long distance vs. short distance) that could've have been incorporated in this anime. If the writers focused on the actual sport of competitive swimming Free! could've been a great shonen anime, but for some reason the writers chose to focus on the aesthetics and lame high school drama. Yeah, the writers and producers really deserve a slap in the face for wasting the anime's potential.

So I'm no pro at anime, but Free! was the first anime I watched. My friend got me into it and I watched it and I thought it was okay. I liked to idea of a sports cartoon so that's how I've gotten an obsession with sports animes.

Free! is alright and I'd like to say why. (that rhymed)

I'm a straight female and I do appreciate the shirtlessness in this anime but there's more than that. There is a story and stuff, and though it's not the best, it's not too terrible.

Free! is a good time killer. ...

That's it.

There are lots of other good anime but even though this is a generic story plus fanservice, it's an okay sports anime.

The art is cool and stuff, but then again there's better. They make the water look really beautiful and you kinda understand why Haru is in love with it.

I like the sound effects and the ending music is meh.

The characters are very bland and boring... but hot.

People generally attracted to males will probs enjoy this, thus I rated it a 7.

And that's my amateur review of this shitake mushroom

Story: 1
Art: 10
Sound: 5
Character: 1
Enjoyment: 3
Overall: 4

Now, if you're trying to decide whether you should watch this show or not, I'll tell you something: "I only swim free".

That's the whole series.
...
To class this as a 'sports' or 'comedy' anime would be blasphemy. I can tell you now, there are probably FUNERALS that are funnier than this piece of shit anime. All they do is whine and bitch and then there's the running gag of Haru stripping his clothes off whenever someone mentions the word "pool". IT'S NOT FUNNY. It wasn't funny the first time, nor was it funny the 103th time. And if this show DOES manage to come up with a funny moment, they'll milk it to the point that it's no longer funny. The only funny moment I can think of is one scene where Haru's trying on swimming shorts that look identical and Nagisa's like "I don't see the difference". I remember having a genuine chuckle when I saw that scene. I'm going to stress one point though, THIS DOES NOT MAKE IT COMEDY. honestly, what even is this anime? It's just muscular guys taking off their shirts and bitching about things and-- sorry, excuse me. Time to say some positive things.

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Sorry, I've got nothing nice to say. (Well, there's the art which I gave a ten. It's a shitty series, but the art is 12/10. Kyoto Animation never disappoints.)
But, honestly. Free! is a series which gets overhyped by countless fujoshi and fangirls when it's really nothing that special. As far as I'm concerned, it's the only swimming anime out there, but it feels more like swimming's an 'accessory'. For sport anime fans out there, I'll use a comparison. Kuroko no Basket suffers from not enough character development outside of the court. Haikyuu is an all-rounder -- we get character development on AND off the court. And then, we have Free. You get convoluted attempts at developing the characters outside of the pool, and there IS some character development skills-wise. But, it's not quite enough to make me love the series. I kept watching, hoping that they'd expand on this foundation they'd built. I was incredibly intrigued by the opening, my breath was taken away by the art, but I was let down more and more as I went through the whole series. I've said this like twice already, but ALL THE CHARACTERS DO IS BITCH. This anime gets way too tied up with all these friendships and problems that aren't really problems (to give you an example, there's a whole arc dedicated to a character deciding to run away from home when his parents tell him that he's not allowed to swim anymore. Yup. He RUNS AWAY. Packs his bags and leaves, just because his parents wanted him to quit the swim club and improve his grades). This is meant to be a swimming anime, but we barely get to witness the magic of swimming. Not to mention, the actual swimming scenes... they're kind of boring? Don't get me wrong. The art is amazing. But, the actual swimming... I don't know. I was expecting more, I guess?

As for the sound, I have nothing to say about it. It wasn't memorable.

Okay, okay. On a serious note, this anime DOES do some things well. I said earlier on that there were some attempts at character development. There's a certain arc where two characters travel to a different country (keeping it vague so as not to give spoilers) and in this country, we actually get to see some character development. Those episodes weren't too bad, actually. I quite enjoyed those. (That's in Season 2.) Oh, yeah. They also have English-speaking characters in there, and much to my surprise, I didn't hear the 'engrish' I'm so accustomed to hearing in anime. The VAs they used for the characters were actually English speakers! (Or at least, they sounded like English speakers.) It's a little detail, but I liked that. Actually, now that I think of it, some of the rare moments I liked about this anime were all in Season 2. So, I guess all I can say is that this is a rare occurrence where the second season is actually BETTER than the first. This season was ass, but the second season redeems itself SLIGHTLY. And heavy emphasis on SLIGHTLY. Free! is not a masterpiece by any means. It's far from being a masterpiece. And while the characters are sweet, they're not what you'd call memorable. Too many people gas up this anime and call it the best thing ever, the "gayest show ever" (Honestly, I feel like I'm the only one who doesn't ship anyone on the show?? I just saw them all as really close friends. And no, I'm not a 'yaoi hater'. I have so many favourite pairings in anime like Haikyuu! and KnB, but for some reason, I just didn't really find any couples worth shipping in this show?? idk) and of course, there's the people who dub it as "fanservice".

Now, I don't think this show is fanservice. Granted, Kou has a very prominent muscle fetish, but I don't think this show can be classed as 'fanservice'. It's about swimming (or at least, it is when they're not bitching and whining) so of course they're going to take their shirts off to swim. If you're so prudish that you can't stand the idea of muscular men taking their shirts off to get in the pool, then it's not that you can't stand fanservice. You've got something wrong with you. I mean, in my experience, the muscles were kind of just... there? I didn't care about the muscles, lol.

To conclude, I'll make like Haru and tell you one thing:
"I only swim free (because I get no character development whatsoever and basically act as an emotionless bobblehead who serves to do nothing but make Rin an angsty little teen who spends years working towards trying to beat me only for me to not give two shits because, you guessed it, I ONLY SWIM FREE)".

Although I had some fun while watching the show, I think it wasn't for the good reasons.
There won't be any spoilers in my review. (Spoilers on a show about swimming ? Seriously ?)

The story is lame, I mean, you can't really expect any serious plot in this show, it could be possible with a show who does not focus mainly on swimming, but here it is so pushed this way that you won't see anything else that teenage boys who want to swim for 12 episodes.

Talking about this, it is impossible to stay serious watching this show and I really laughed a lot when it ... came to the boys swimming, over-exaggeration is everywhere and they seem so serious about everything they do that it become hilarious.

To conclude :
Story is lame.
Art and sound is really good.
It's fun to watch when you don't want to be thinking.
I can't give more than a 3 because it's too serious about what it's talking about.

I don’t know what you’d watch this show for. If you want to gawk at hot shirtless dudes, you can probably get a larger quantity of those elsewhere. If you genuinely want a story about homosexuality, you’re probably stuck with Yuri on Ice because this show isn’t going to give any of that. If you want gripping character drama or some kind of intense sports anime, there’s much better shows to watch.

Overall, this show is extremely boring to the point of aggravation. There’s nothing this show does that other products can’t and don’t do better. Aside from the animation, which has Kyoto Animation’s grubby little ... perfection hands all over it. Even then, there are kyoani shows that have better animation and aren’t boring.

Firstly, I have never trained any sport competitively, so I will not comment on how this is represented. I do, however, have experience with writing and watching, so here I see the real issue.

I wanted to like Free!, honestly. However, it is all over the place - too many personalities, too many characters and destinies. At some point, you have at least three teams of people of various ages who have the exact same stories and backgrounds. This is not only tiresome, but it is also boring and not working. I, personally, could not follow any plot or story, as new drama appeared behind ... every corner.

There were also these terribly-long unnecessary recaps where random people talk in great lengths what happened in the previous three episodes...and there is not much to discuss.

The ending was also laughable. Honestly, this is not a cliffhanger. It is just poor writing.

The reason I am giving this 4 stars is because of the lead character Haruka, whose story, should it have been properly told and developed, would have been quite captivating.

Unfortunately, the creators choose to flood the anime with various fangirl bates without giving them any time to build or show some substance.

Overall, not worth the time, unless you watch it while working, studying or doing something similar, which requires your attention.

One thing can be left to this work. The animations and the visual representation of swimming is breathtaking. Also the implementation of the actual topic around the sport.

However, these were his only strengths.

This title proved to be a Title that could not survive without the animations, so all the score goes to the the actual studio.
The actual storyline revolves around everyday life, the goals and huge adolescent character problems that could come from the next best Yaoi Manga.

And the worst thing about the anime is the characters and dialogues. I kept my mouth open after reading the conversations between the characters. They ... are as dull, witless and bad as they can be. The protagonist is by far the biggest problem. Aside from that, the anime has tons of fan service. In every scene where swimming is treated, you can see either questionable angles, close-ups of the butt and all the accessories.

You could definitely ignore it, if at least the characters were interesting or at least the dialogues were well written. I particularly noticed the episode 4 or 5 (with the storm). Such bad storytelling, I would have only found in a Bollywood film.


Genre:


Represented in the sense. However, 2 of the genres make life a little difficult for me. The humor is practically witless and would possibly make a 10 year old girl smile. There were only 2 jokes worth mentioning in the first season and both came from the character "Rei" -

Drama is the real joke in the work. It is only the adolescent relationship problems between Teenagers that are even quite questionable. According to the scheme "Don't turn a fly into an elephant"

Story:


There was no real plot. Only a very bad discussion of questionable puberty relationship problems. Bordered on massive exaggeration.

Animation / pictures:


Can not say anything about this, the animations are absolutely excellent. Backgrounds, colors, swimming, everything. The studio did an excellent job.

Characters:


The most difficult point ...

There were only 2 characters that still radiated sympathy and were at least relevant. Nagisa and Rei. Both were the only ones to have some humor and had the best dialogues from the anime.
The rest was empty, boring, and daunting. Especially "Haru" the protagonist. He was not only presented immensely hollow, but has no personality and does not even know what he wants to say. Everything that comes out of it cannot even be taken seriously. Get more and more the feeling that he should have been a comedy character and not the protagonist.

Finally, there are more seasons and more potential. Nothing was done here in season one.

Music:


The Osts in the anime were ... very questionable. You would fit a lot more into a mystery title.

Intro is very nice. Pleasant music and the presentation of the intro.

Outro is a fan service bomb, but can say the same for itself.


Conclusion


I have other hopes for the next seasons. This season didn’t even manage to swim above average for this awful implementation. Apart from swimming, I almost had to suffer as soon as the characters tried to have a conversation.

*BEWARE OF SPOILERS

Okay I'll keep it short. I gave it a 5 because of the astonishingly beautiful animation and colors. Otherwise I'd give it a 1. Also, let me remind you, just because it's about swimming, doesn't mean it's a typical SPORTS anime. There are a bunch extremely hot shirtless guys that I absolutely loved staring at, being a straight woman but that's it. The ending is horrible, I get that it was meant to be wholesome friendship thingy, but the glasses guy was memed real bad. It was a complete wtf moment for me considering he's the only one I liked a little as ... a character but all those weird speeches about being part of a supposed 'TEAM' to just completely clowning yourself by sacrificing your position to a weird butthurt egoistic (but hot) guy was pathetic. Also, the main character is bland as hell, the teeth one is obviously annoying. The other three are way better imo. For some reason, inspite of talking about teamwork and deciding to swim and work with each other as the new team, they remain obsessed with teeth guy, especially the MC. I'd say there was potential to turn glasses, shorty and teeth guy into interesting characters but can't do anything about that right? Well in the end they are all hot so watch it for your eyes, not for a rollercoaster of emotions.

It's really boring, anything that you think is going to happen is going to happen, the melodrama over swimming is farcical, the main character is the annoying type of autistic, the other characters are nothing burgers with the only one coming close to interesting is the guy with the glasses. The only thing this show has going for it over other sports anime is that it doesn't over explain the sport while it's happening, it's nice quick has some commentary then it's over very much appreciated. It also isn't offensively bad, it's just a bland gray slop of a show some moments more than others ... will hold your interest but nothing is going to have you on the edge of your seat. if you ant a story about rivalry and sportsmanship there are plethora of better options out there for you, if you want a diluted story with those themes that just have muscular teens...well there are still better options but this would fit that bill nicely