Kyoto Animation quickly made its way into my heart with stellar animation and a tenacity that most other animation companies seem to lack. However, that same tenacity is a double-edged sword. They have produced works that are greatly loved by many and then there are those which are not loved for their various reasons. With Free, Kyoto Animation managed to cut themselves with this double-edged sword while still providing their amazing animation. Their tenacity allowed them to create controversial fanservice aimed at the female audience, which I believe deserves a standing ovation, though many would say otherwise.
Before I get started I would like to say that I am not here to cry about what Kyoto Animation has done, I support what they have produced here. Free is not the death of anime. Free is not a god awful series. Free is not the spawn of Satan. Just as Free is not the best anime out there. It has faults like every other series out there. If you thought Free was any of those I mentioned, then I suspect you did not watch past episode one and failed to see the greater point of the entire series. Yes, there is a point you can take away from Free. If you claim there is not, then read what I have to say here.
This is an in-depth look at Free which has spoilers, be warned.
What is Free?
Produced during the summer anime season of 2013, it had little competition besides Attack on Titan, which took the anime industry by storm. The first look at Free was a short thirty second Kyoto Animation called Suiei-hen. In that short thirty second clip, we see Kyoto once again at work with amazing animation and colors that pop off of your screen. It gives a quick look at the characters that would later take up names. It was only a precursor of what we could expect in Free.
Then July came around and the first episode of Free aired, followed by many complaints of fanservice from the male audience. Through out the entirety of its airing and yet, several months after it finished, we still hear too much about this death blow to anime. I want to come back to this point later.
It follows Haruka Nanase, a swimmer with a genuine love for water, and the rest of the swimming team. Haruka’s closest friend and the kindest man on camera is Makoto Tachibana, who surprising has a fear of the ocean. Nagisa Hazuki is the youngest of their original swimming team and also brought on the newest member, Rei Ryuugazaki. Rei, who has quite a bit of the serious surrounding him, was a replacement and not a replacement for Rin Matsuoka. Rin was a very close friend to Haruka in their childhood, but hastily left when something went down between the two of them.
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| Rei Ryuugazaki, Nagisa Hazuki, Haruka Nanase, Makoto Tachibana, & Rin Matsuoka(Left to Right) |
We start off as Nagisa has finally become old enough to join high school with Haruka and Makoto. Nagisa serves as the driving factor of starting up the swimming club at their school. Which only comes to fruition because Haruka cannot swim in the ocean all year and the stunning revelation of Rin’s return. They stumble upon him when they visit their old swimming club, which was due for demolition. They are surprised to see that Rin is nothing like what he use to be. He is mean and is enamored with Haruka, caring little for Makoto and Nagisa.
Immediately they challenge each other to a race, but unfortunately it is not until another night they can hold that race at the swimming school Rin is attending, upon request by Rin’s sister Gou, who serves as the club’s manager. To Rin’s disappointment, he beats Haruka without an issue. What has him angry is that Haruka was not at his best, that he was only doing it to be submerged in water.
As Makoto is speaking with their former coach, Gorou, he discovers that he transformed Rin was because of a race Rin and Haruka had one summer when he returned from Australia. Haruka beat Rin than and that is what created this rift between them. Rin saw that all of his hard work could never compare to Haruka’s natural talent, causing Rin to leave again as pushing Haruka to give up on competitive swimming, only ever swimming freestyle. Rin’s reason for attending a swimming school in Australia is that he wishes to complete his father’s goal in life, to become an Olympic swimmer.
In order to become an official club, they need another member. Nagisa sets his eye on Rei and keeps bantering him until he finally accepts to join, only after witnessing the beauty of Haruka’s swimming style. Rei is an oddball, he is obsessed with calculations and the beauty of a fluent movement in pole vaulting. He joins the club not even knowing how to swim, so a good portion of time is spent getting him up to speed as well as changing his character. I felt a great deal of hostility between Rei and Haruka at first. Haruka saw the error in Rei’s way and it was a while until he reluctantly gave some pointers to Rei on how to be free. After all, Rei really just wants to swim with the rest of the team.
His desire to swim with the team is one of the later moments that held much power in his character. He is one of the best developed characters because his role is the odd man out. He saw himself as a replacement for Rin and that was only reinforced when his club talked about Rin all the time. It was not until Rei confronted Rin and asked him a few questions that he was able to sort through everything and finally acknowledge himself as a member of the team. It is at that same moment of confrontation we see Rin has a jealousy of Rei, that he is allowed to swim with his team when he is clearly lacking the necessary skill. Once again showing that Rin’s attitude is still about winning and not about being with your friends.
Taking a step back in time, Makoto has planned a swimming camp for the club which consists of swimming from island to island. He manages to pull together enough funding that they can go, but Haruka expresses a concern for Makoto. At a young age Makoto was friends with a local fisher, one day that fisher died at sea during a storm, the same storm that claimed the life of Rin’s father. From then on Makoto has a fear of the ocean and the ocean is nothing to be afraid of.
One night Rei slipped out of his tent to practice at night, so that he would not hold the team back. A storm came rolling in fast and Rei was in danger, which Makoto attempted to save him, but also go pulled in. Haruka and Nagisa then save the both of them and stay at an abandoned building on one of the islands until morning, when they swim back. It was also during that night we see Rin’s slow acceptance into the club.
This all builds up to the point they enter a swimming competition and only progress to the next level in the relay race, failing in their individual competitions. In that relay, Rin witnesses what he has missed out on years and that throws him off, making him lose his race. Rin then storms out of the building in what was the greatest heart wrenching episode of this series.
Rin claims that he is going to quit swimming, which Haruka hears and reminds him of the very same thing he went through years ago. This spurs what would be the greatest amount of emotion I have ever seen on Haruka’s face, the man is apathetic expect when it comes to this moment. Haruka and the rest of the swimming team search for Rin after they came to the conclusion that all Rin wanted was to swim with them again, like old times.
The climax of the series is when Haruka faces Rin in the street where he had earlier scribbled a very important message on the ground. Rin, clearly upset, tells Haruka to laugh at him and the failure that he is. Haruka attempts reasoning and says that it is really his team he wants to swim for. Rin then gets physical, grabbing Haruka by the collar, and the two fight it out for a quick moment. It is then, once they have fallen to the ground, that Rin sees the message Haruka had scribbled on the ground. “For the Team,” the phrase that Rin had inscribed at their childhood swimming club.
Rin now breaks down into tears and admits that all he wanted to do was to swim with his team. Rei then gives up his position in the relay, allowing Rin to fill it in and swim with his team. Such action is illegal and got their team disqualified, but they all accepted it without regret.
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| Even a man as jacked as Rin can cry, you heartless monster. |
The final scenes of the show involve Haruka asking Rin if he intends on following his father’s dream. He says with clear confidence that he is following his own dreams.
It is a great story that actually affected me more than I thought. The climax about brought me to tears, not an easy accomplishment. It was this story of broken friendship, competition, and holding onto the past. Rin, because he still clung to the memory of his father, desperately tried to be the best he could be. That meant being better than Haruka who had more talent than he had seen in any other swimmer. Rin, as a child, was not the obsessive man he was later on. He was carefree and wanted to have a good time. As time went on when his father’s death occurred, that is what began this adventure to being the best. It pushed him to do things he was conflicted about. He wanted to make his father proud, while still swimming with his friends. Rin is a great character, I daresay the best in the series.
Rin works with Haruka very well, just as Makoto works well with Haruka. I have grown tired of the apathetic, cold, and stoic stereotypes that are common. While this character types does serve a good purpose, the show of emotion. When Haruka shows concern for Makoto during his endeavor with the ocean, we see more through his voice that he is caring. When confronting Rin and his conflicts, he has visual looks of surprise. Those moments of surprise really show the gravity of the events to Haruka, which is the purpose of creating these jaded characters. The are stunned after some traumatic event, like shoving Rin away, and only a event of equal drama could spur that same emotion. Haruka is that character. Though he doesn’t show it, he does care for his friends.
Makoto was one of my favorite characters in the beginning, but he fell into a formula I got bored with. He is a nice guy and Kyoto capitalized on that fact. His signature feature is smiling, closing his eyes, and tilting his head slightly to the side. It is a sincere and kind gesture, representing who he is. But they used it too much, I got tired of seeing it. I wanted something more from Makoto and I just did not get it. His interaction with his siblings is endearing, shows that all around he is a nice guy as well as the guy that lets himself get trampled on by people who abuse that kindness. I know, been there done that, I can relate personally to the type of character Makoto is. However, I might of liked Makoto getting angry and showing us he has a setting other than kind. We see more of his other emotions when on the island hopping trip, but it was yet a small amount of the potential he had. In the end, he was still one of my favorite characters of the series, falling right behind Rin.
Rei, while highly developed, I really did not like. I felt sorry for him in the end. His fight was one of acceptance and value. Was he just a replacement or was he just a standin? This is important in many sport situations because there are times position are joining to have to be filled and those people filling them are not going to live up to expectations. His character, as expected, was relatable to a nerd with a love for numbers and algorithms. A habit that was broken to become free.
Nagisa, I would say, is the least developed character there is of the main ones. While his peppy attitude is a breath of fresh air, he lacked something to go for besides starting the swim team and getting Rin back. His emotions were not much besides that. He was very much one dimensional and needed something, just something. I could have missed something with his character, but nothing else stands out about him to me.
There was this extended metaphor that the series used which I believed was unnecessary, but I saw the point they were trying to make. Haruka was compared to a Mackerel and Rin was compared to a shark. This explains why Rin has sharp teeth as well as Haruka's hunger for fish. Each of the other characters has a reference to a sea creature, but it is of little importance to the overall series.
If we look at the ending and opening, they are weird at first. But we see the ending is another representation of the series overall points, swimming with your friends. It does so by placing them in a desert and then having Haruka meet up with everybody else in a desert oasis. It also includes some odd dancing scenes which was just Kyoto Animation doing what Kyoto Animation does.
This show, at many levels, is about becoming free from guilt, self-imposed limitations, and the past. Rei built limitations for himself which he needed to break. Haruka had guilt about shoving Rin away. Makoto and Rin both stranded themselves in the past. Makoto holding a fear for the ocean and Rin living the dream of his deceased father. This is what you can take away from Free. The ability to let go of something and to acknowledge the truth. To not let competition tear you and your friends apart. Upon this close analysis of Free, many will see that is a lot more than just fanservice for the women.
Missing the Point
If you watched Free, you likely missed these points I mentioned. That is because you were too busy watching the eye candy on screen. Many males criticized Kyoto Animation for making fanservice for the women, but I think it is nice a company is daring enough to do this. It shows somebody is willing to step out of the comfort zone, even in an industry that is constantly bordering the line of bankruptcy. It was a nice breath of fresh air.
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| Apparently women can't have fanservice, sorry gals. |
This also destroyed the point of the series. This fanservice was blown so out of proportion by the community that it was missed. Kyoto Animation missed its point by doing what it did best, fantastic animation. But the blame is not on them, it is the community. Why are we blowing this out of proportion? The amount of fanservice for the guys deserves ten times the ridicule Free has received. This is not the coming of the Anti-Christ, its just another show. So as long as fanservice normally continues within anime, I see no point in complaining about what Kyoto has done.
Now I want to talk about the character interactions that could be said was tailored for the female audience. I am not going to criticize the somewhat homosexual interactions the characters had. I have spoken with swimmers and I have witnessed a lot of what athletes in general do. I am not a basement dweller, I have some first hand accounts of how things go down here in America. One of my friends, a swimmer and just as jacked as Haruka was, has repeatedly mentioned other swimmers doing naked jumping jacks. Let that sink in. Here is an instance of something you could consider homosexual in nature, certainly not as far as Free went. But it is not a homosexual action, the viewer is sexualizing these occurrences. In a gym class people will take showers together, does not mean they are doing homosexual things. So I fail to see why everybody is getting so angry about this, it happens in real life and much less censored as Free kept it.
In Retrospect
In the end, Free was an anime with very many good points and fanservice that did exactly as it was suppose to do. Nothing more and nothing less, let the fanfiction writers take it from here. I would suggest Free to anybody who wants a story and pays a close eye to it. It was hard for me to finish this, I had to force my hand, but I enjoyed it. There are definitely anime out there better worth your time, but it is only twelve episodes and not a great loss for the experience you gain.
