Keep The Fire Burning! Down, But Not Out! Rated 8

After Haru is left in utter shock after Rin had stated he’d never swim with him again, the Iwatobi swim team is worried for their ace. The Samezuka shark is, of course, elated, but the Iwatobi dolphin seems to be more confused than disappointed in himself after finding out that he, in fact, was upset because of his loss. Haru then questions why he swims, comparing himself to Rin who has a solid dream drilled into his head.

The team seems devastated after Haru had not come back from his shower after the race, and the first to crack is Rei, who then leads the other two swimmers to look for the ace. However, they find Rin instead, and Rei gets his first interaction with the fellow butterfly specialist. It’s an understatement to say that the neophyte swimmer’s first encounter with the Olympic aspirant was less than dandy, and he gets a faceful of Rin’s cocky and rude attitude right off the bat. However, Rei is the first to realize that Haru might have not been too bothered by the loss, but of completely something else. Rin lets out an outburst, but Mako tells him that the thing about swimming that’s more important than winning to Haru was something Rin himself taught the boy.

Rin doesn’t budge, though, and leaves the three. Mako then suggests that they leave Haru alone, and get ready for their events. However, when Mako changes into his swimming trunks, Nagi rushes to find Haru, and miraculously does, bringing the reluctant, soul-searching boy to the middle of Mako’s backstroke race. He notices the support his team (with special and major participation from Sasabe) gives Mako, and continues to watch him. However, Mako places second as well, leaving him unqualified for regionals. This continued on with Nagi’s breaststroke event, another one that Iwatobi failed to bag. Last was of Rei. As if Murphy’s Law befell him, Rei’s prescription goggles slid off his face, and he fell back far from the other butterfly swimmers. At least I know they’re being realistic; I mean, it would have been too crazy if they all won on first try.

Haru goes missing that night, however. I just realized how weird Haru’s house is, and how even weirder the occupant appears to be, as 1.) the house is broken into more times than the legal amount within the show, and 2.) Haru probably doesn’t care if you take his large television as long as you leave his tub alone. While looking for Haru, Rei finds the relay picture that the four elementary students of Iwatobi had, realizing how close Rin really was to the boys. Upon finding the house empty, Nagi calls Haru on his phone to inform them that Kou had secretly signed them up for the medley relay, but then they find Haru’s phone on a stand not far from where they sat.

No surprise here: Haru actually stayed within the contest facilities to take a night dip. Seriously, Haru is the only one who goes swimming in private property and not get sued for it. As he swims, Haru soul-searches, trying to find out why he wasn’t free from Rin after they had raced. I’ve began to speculate that Haru and Rin’s friendship might have been much closer than what it seemed back then. I guess, how can you not be close with a guy who hugs you like a past time?

Finally, Haru goes home, and appears mildly surprised upon seeing Mako in his house. Another thing, Mako was holding on to his phone. Thinking it was urgent, Haru listened to the message Nagi left, and he agrees to the medley relay, allowing Mako to make that happy puppy look once more.

The next day, the swim team enters the medley, and Nitori tells Rin about it, the shark actually running towards the pool in order to see the event himself. However, Rin appears quite reminiscent as he watches his former teammates swim, recalling Mako’s and Nagi’s strokes like the back of his hand, and feeling anger at Rei’s poor butterfly being unworthy of swimming with the team. Before Haru’s jump, he and Rin lock eyes, both shocked, and Haru thinks that he didn’t need to answer why he swims right away.

I think this was the perfect time for Haru to finally come to terms as to why he swims. Sure, he loves water, but why does he race? You don’t need to enter competitions just to show your love for water. Whatever Mako was going to say, damn Rin for cutting him off, because that was probably a vital point. This episode also is quite realistic, easy to believe and not at all frustrating. Being a newly formed club, nobody can really expect these boys to win against veteran teams, right? I was actually wondering how Mako believed Haru would win against someone who jogs day and night, doing sit-ups during his spare time?

Surprisingly, Rei’s character is shown more development than Nagi’s. You can see him worry for Haru, and a spark of curiosity that begs the same question we have to be asked: what turned Rin into a jerkwad if the four were REALLY good buddies back then? We also find out that Haru isn’t as stone-cold as he seems, easily swayed by a phone call gone wrong from Nagi. Despite his refusal to swim in a relay for the entire half of the show, Haru agrees to it in the end. Rin, however, appears to be at war with himself. He let off some words that he might have to take back sometime in this show, and now he appears to be wishing he were the one swimming with his childhood friends. Talk about cliche, right? I just find it so human of him to work so hard for something he feels he should achieve, wants to achieve, but then desire something far-fetched, but would surely make him happy.

This had been a good episode, but I’d have to give it an 8 since it feels as if it’s missing something.

Tori-kun, signing off! Bye dudes!

Dead Old Men, Dead Old Goldfish: Behind the Terrified Stare of a Green-Eyed Boy, Perfect 10

Despite my penchant to poke fun into the anime that I like, I won’t be doing that here. I just realized that this show may not get the whole story out as fluidly as it could with just around 13 episodes, but I have to commend it for the character development it manages to portray beautifully. Their title-making skills could use a little work though. So here it is, Free! episode 6: Shocking No Breathing!

The episode picks up where it left off: Rei drowning in a storm-angered ocean, and Mako desperately moving to save his poor tush. However, Mako freezes over as he witnesses Rei inching closer to death. I have no idea how it is possible to stay still and frozen in a madly waving body of water, but I guess fear does that to you, making you formless, and making the world timeless as well. Luckily for Rei and Mako, though, Nagi and Haru wake up and are able to save them.

The thing that bothered me most here was how the hell Nagi and Rei survive that wave. Based on Nagi’s face, that wave was no joke, and I can only guess how they dealt with that. Of course, we see Haru going to grab his now petrified best friend, who appears to have been nearer to drowning than Rei ever was. You got to be wondering, at this point, what’s going on in that olive-patched head of Mako’s.

So Haru isn’t exactly full rock. Anybody can see that he really was afraid of losing Mako, but then you have to wonder, is he contemplating on whether a mouth-to-mouth is necessary, or was he fretting over losing his first kiss to something so urgent as than. Yaoi fans, you can put the PC down and keep the suspense at bay: Mako ruins the kissing scene by coming back to life. But don’t worry, a scene about Mako wishing to be with Haru always follows right away, as if to compensate for the failed kiss. What I don’t understand is how Nagi and Rei were there, and had managed to retrieve the kick board too. Despite the real danger that happening posed onto them, the quartet happened to escape it totally unscathed.

What happens next is a bit cheesy. The four are able to find a haunted-looking rest house, and the cute one is disappointed to know that it wasn’t haunted at all. For something deserted and old-looking, it must have been manna from heaven to have found cans of mackerel and pineapple. Haru says they lucked out, but that’s just him. To pass the boredom, Nagi made a three-sided Rei die, and started playing games.

After their stories and confessions, Rei suddenly blurts out that he’s curious about how Mako acted so out of character while in the turbulent ocean. Haru didn’t want to have it discussed, but Mako, though appreciative, told his story anyway. It connects with the weird parade of white-clad men in episode 5, and we now know it’s a funeral. Apparently, in his youth, Mako had made friends with an old fisherman. This grandpa played with him when he visited the pier, and even got him goldfish when he had no more money to try get some for himself. However, Mako learns that this old fisherman, along with others, had drowned 3km from shore, which was a distance easily swam by them. What’s more, the goldfish the old fisherman gave him died despite of all Mako’s efforts to keep them alive.

What’s surprising was that Mako’s reaction to the tragedy was extremely real. Of course you’d be sad if someone you knew died, but think in a kid’s level: death probably isn’t something that a boy Mako’s age back then would have been able to comprehend. All he knew was that the ocean can kill him too, thus he was afraid. However, with his friends, Mako isn’t all that scared of the water anymore. When the rain had died down and the storm reached a calm, he realized that if he’s with his friends, everything can turn out okay.

So I realized that maybe the plot isn’t as important to this story as the character development, and that while there is a decent plot line, the episode constraint leaves us to just appreciating the characters’ humanity and quirks on how they address the situation. Selfish thoughts in life and death situations, naive train of ideas, the unfinished fight against childhood monsters, this episode had been all good at showing these aspects that are not foreign to us as we grow up. Because I’m practically in love with the idea of human flaw, I find this episode worth more than just one screen. I give it a straight 10.

Tori-kun and his feels, signing out!

THE DESERTED ISLAND SWIMMING TRAINING FROM HELL! AN EPISODE OF PURE COINCIDENCE, Stand-Still at 6

As if the plot couldn’t get anymore delayed, Free! episode 5 proves me wrong and brings the entire crew, EVEN Samezuka, to a deserted island. Welcome, to Trial in Open Water! So here, we start with Kou pressuring our quartet about the coming prefecturals, and she finds the old, seemingly brutal training regimen of the ancient Iwatobi swim club that died out some few decades back. Now I’m no competitive swimmer, but then I wondered how good you have to be to go island hopping with your bare body and not die. The best beach I’ve ever gone to was Boracay, and I wondered, after seeing the regimen, how good (or crazy, suicidal, maybe both) I need to be to swim from Boracay beach proper to Puka Island with nothing but a swimsuit on my back.

Overreacting aside, the Iwatobi swim team decides their lineup for prefecturals in this episode.

There may be some history here about why Mako specializes in backstroke. Also, doesn’t anybody else sense the power the word ‘can’ gives to a sentence?~

Due to the money constraints (again), Mako’s inner mother comes out and he brings out his amazing camping set, because his family happens to go camping every summer. For some weird reason, Sasabe’s grandpa happened to have left him a squid fishing boat, and these lucky buddies get a free ride back and forth to their so-called island camp. When they do, Rei gets real sea sick, and when he blows, he happens to see Samezuka training in a cool swimming facility that happened to have been in the so-called desert island. Kou happens to have nothing to do with it, and when Rin says he smells mackerel (meaning his Haru senses are tingling!), Seijuro announces that they happen to be having mackerel curry for lunch.

Some stuff that aren’t that plot-related, but are cute to watch~

The Iwatobi boys manage to finish half of the routine from hell before they decide that it was time to eat. So weird that Ama-chan-sensei only had one job, ONE JOB, which was to fix the food, and she forgets the seasoning. So Kou goes to borrow some from the lounge she and Ama-chan were staying at(that’s cheating the whole camp thing). For some reason, Kou bumps into Nitori, and of course, her brother, and she explains how everything so far was a coincidence. Pre-meditated coincidence, if you ask me~

Oddly enough, Rin and Haru have something more in common this episode. There seems to be an issue with Mako and the ocean, and it seems that only shark boy and dolphin kid know what it is.

I believe that Haru and Rin are more alike that we give them credit for. I’m just glad they didn’t make Haru’s hair blue, that would have been too much.

In the night, after deciding that Mako and Rei, and Haru and Nagi would be paired to sleep together, Rei sneaks out after sleepy time and swims with his kick board. The sky is beautiful, so there’s no better way than to ruin flopper’s night than bringing in a storm that brings the ocean to a wreck in two seconds. The rain wakes Mako up, and upon seeing Rei, he has this “Dang it, Rei, I’m so going to kill you if you don’t die first” look on his face, and there goes the very first real cliffhanger of this show.

That’s right, kids, don’t you go swimming at night, say the sky is beautiful, and get dragged around by the waves.

I sense that this leaves a lot of fans screaming out for Rei’s and Mako’s safety, but more importantly, wanting to know if this is a major life event in the story, or just a climactic plot bunny. So, before the cliffhanger hangs itself, this would stand at a 6, and I think I could rate higher or lower, depending on this episode’s overall significance to the plot. So hang on tight, and keep calm; it’s only episode 5, way too early for anybody in the main cast to die.

Adieu, Tori-kun, signing off!

UNDERWATER, UNDER PRESSURE! TIMEKEEPING, SPEEDOS, AND THOMAS EDISON, a 6.3 for Moi

Had enough? I haven’t~ Here’s Free! episode 4, Captive Butterfly (pfffft!!!)! Basically, this episode is all about how Rei pitifully tries to swim, then rationalizes whenever he couldn’t. Really, poor dude, reminds me of my sister who sinks like a rock. Diving, front crawl, breast stroke, and back stroke, the poor guy can’t seem to get it right. So one of the main problems here is that Rei can’t seem to keep afloat the moment he starts waving his arms and legs. He studies and studies, but in the end, decides to blame it on not having a proper coach. Enter ex-coach Sasabe. He says he’s busy though, and doesn’t even give the proposition a second glance. Just to be fair, here’s an intro for coach!

So they bait the coach by buying a box of pizza. Nagisa looks a bit disgusting and piggy eating all that at the same time, but Haru is just adorable. Goro Sasabe was the former coach of our four water boys back in elementary school. Everybody knows that the club soon disbanded, and the coach became a pizza deliveryman, not that he’s not happy about it. Sasabe has blonde hair with a star shaved on one side, and has two earrings pierced into his left ear. He appears to have reddish eyes as well, and a mismatched brown beard. Sasabe is voiced by Hiroshi Yanaka, who also did Sora from .hack//SIGN. On the other hand, Rin appears to be working himself like a dog in the pool. Here I’m really not sure if he’s doing front crawl or butterfly, but it seems that his underclassman, Nitori Aiichiro is thoroughly impressed. However, that poor boy seems to be unsatisfied with his own results, believing it was all talent, and Rin begs to differ. You see, shark boy knows that Haru is just oozing with talent, more than he believes he has, and continues to work up. Rin is totally fixated on beating Haru. So much so that even poor little Nitori gets dragged in his regimen. Aiichiro Nitori is a gray-haired, blue eyed boy with a distinctive mole under his right eye [I can identify myself with him because of that XD]. He’s not confident with his time and technique, but is very supportive towards his roommate and senpai Rin. Nitori’s voiced by Koki Miyata, who also did Kantarou Ichinomiya from Tactics. Back to Haru and the others, Rei seems to have believed that his inability to swim was because of his speedos. Sure, nobody really believes that, but the group actually goes swimsuit shopping, and it ended up as something like this: Three things I realized in this set: 1.) Rei, despite his obsession for beauty, has no sense of it; 2.) Mako has the buffest body in the entire Iwatobi swim club; and 3.) Haru is weird. After this, we all get to realize that even fangirls get tired of seeing fanservice. However, just like how weird coincidence works in these kinds of shows, Haru and Rin exit the changing room at the same time, both clad in swimwear with price tags on them. And as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, Rin asks Haru to step out with him and have a chat. Rin can’t move on if he can’t beat Haru in a fair fight; Haru… probably just wants to swim with ol’ Rinrin, just like the old times. After some sort of fangirl inducing encounter, Rin and Haru agree to meet each other at prefecturals, after Haru’s been able to build some muscle and practice. That way, if Rin whoops his butt, it would be a butt worth whooping. In the end, Rei doesn’t learn how to swim despite the new gear, Haru involving himself with him was even in vain. So the two mope with each other, staring at butterflies. And then it hits our megane flopper. THE BUTTERFLY! This part I can’t seem to know how it happened. I mean, I’ve tried the butterfly stroke, and it’s dang hard for someone like me who can only swim front crawl. So I think it’s totally unfair that when Rei tried the butterfly stroke once, ONCE, he gets it. He swims like a pro. It’s like he didn’t even need the other’s help since he didn’t learn any other type of stroke anyway, and there was absolutely no discovery for him. It was like, POOF! Butterfly, suckers. This episode pretty much seemed like a total 20-minute fanservice. I mean, it began with Rei’s ridiculously exhibitionist-esque stretching, plus the changing room scene! Then, Rei’s discovery of his talent in butterfly stroke swimming was totally cut out, and everybody just sees him there, swimming like a hustler. The plot wasn’t too think here either, what with just that point when Rin and Haru were have that “I can’t move on” thing. Plus, Ama-chan’s flip-over of Thomas Edison’s “1% inspiration, 99% perspiration” was totally a new thing for me. I never thought about how the 99% could have been so worthless without that tiny spark of inspiration~. So, for this, I’m just giving it a 6.3. Disappointed a bit, but not turning it down, not at all. Tori-kun, signing off! Catch ya later, fellas!

OF PRIDE AND BEAUTY: SPLASH FREE!!! THE UNEXPECTED FLOPPER! A 7.5 In My Book

So here I am once more to present another review, Free! episode 3, Theoretical Dolphin Kick! This episode showcases the fourth member of the Iwatobi Swim Team, Rei Ryugazaki! But before anything else, let’s do an intro about him and Miss Ama-chan.

Rei Ryugazaki was formerly a pole vaulter who has short blue hair, purple eyes and red-rimmed glasses. He totally appeared as the serious type, but then he turned out to be a comic relief with an obsession for beauty. He seems to be pretty smart too, albeit weird, since he calculates his jumps as if it were a math problem. Yup, the exact same ones that we don’t particularly like. Rei’s animal counterpart is surprisingly not a sea critter, but a beautiful butterfly! He is voiced by Daisuke Hirakawa, who also lent his voice to Makoto Ito of School Days, and pink-haired doctor Akari from Karneval.

Ama-chan-sensei, formally Miho Amakata, is Haru and Mako’s homeroom teacher, classic literature teacher, and adviser of Iwatobi swim club. She appears young, but believes she is old, thus seen protecting her skin with an umbrella every time she gets under the sun. She loves quoting famous people and passages at random times, and is rumored to have worked in swimwear design before she began teaching. Ama-chan is voiced by Satsuki Yukino, also known for her roles as feisty Whispered Kaname Chidori from Full Metal Panic!, and Kagome Higurashi from Inu Yasha.

Okay, so what happened this episode? Well, Kou pulled some strings to have Iwatobi swim club have a joint practice with Samezuka. Since brother dear doesn’t bother with her, cute girl Kou went straight to the big boss, Seijuro, who obviously has the hots for her, and thus the joint practice was a done deal. Of course Haru and the others are thrilled, but the need of a fourth swimmer felt bigger than ever.

Here, Nagi takes it upon himself to get Rei for the team. The boy even ran with him for goodness’ sake. Apparently, this boy can definitely run, and can definitely ran on about what sport makes him look good, or what sport makes him look pitiful.

Amazingly, Rei’s everyday running does pay off, as he does a decent-looking pole vault. And look at those guns. Yowza.

 

So Nagi finally tells the entire team why he thinks Rei’s their man: well, simply put, it’s because Rei’s name is as girly as theirs are. Kou affirms him, only because Rei has beautiful deltoids. Sly girl.

After growing curious of this ‘Haru-chan-san’ person, Rei is roped into the joint practice with Samezuka. He thinks he won’t have to swim, but Seijuro gets Nitori to fetch the poor guy a speedo, A FRICKIN’ SPEEDO, and puts Rei as the third swimmer. Got to admit, he did look good, but only until he hit the water.

And we find out that Rei, apparently, since this show is so full of surprises, CAN’T SWIM. After all that yadda yadda about swimming being ugly and about humans evolving from the use of water, there it is folks, Rei was actually covering up for the fact that he is no less than a flopper. Despite his embarrassment, though, Rei is able to bounce back after witnessing Haru’s beautiful crawl, and with the dream to swim just as beautifully, our dear flopper joins the swim team.

So reactions, reactions. Well, first of all, I did not expect this to be as funny as hell in the ending. It was like a really, really good punch line, something you don’t expect. Thumbs up for that, and for Rei’s speedos [laughter]. However, after watching it, it felt as if it were too short, or maybe it’s just because I was too busy laughing at Rei. Poor guy, I’m going to cut him some slack now.

Despite Rei’s flopper business, and Haru’s comical addiction to water, this episode didn’t do that much for me really. Since Rei wasn’t really part of the short novel, nor the animation short, I think they had to cut the action a bit to put him in. I don’t know really, that’s just what I feel. Nonetheless, I still think he’s a perfect addition to this team, what with Rin being pissy in the other. A 7.5 for this one, but still hopeful!

Well, Tori-kun, over and out, signing off with a flop!