Free! is about a group of boys who like to swim. When they were younger they all swam a relay competition together and won a trophy. They buried it in the ground to dig back up when they were all grown up. After the competition one of their friends moved away to Australia to go to a special swimming school. He has come back now and Haruka wants to compete against him.
Free! is from the wonderful people who brought you girls doing nothing and it is breaking new ground for them by being boys doing nothing. Now instead of cute girls hanging out and doing cute things we have hot boys doing competitive things. Really though the story is so overdone that I could pretty much predict every part. Haruka loses his rival from when he was young and loses his drive to compete. Most likely no one could ever beat him or even come close after Rin left. Hopefully things with become more interesting after this boring introduction, but considering the source I doubt it.
As usual for this studio everything looks good. They have the same type of look typical of Kyoto Animation shows. The biggest complaint I have about the art for this show is the way they draw the guys when they are topless. The waists on these guys are amazingly tiny. The guys look like anorexic girls.
The characters of Free! are all very different, so that there is a boy for everyone. There is the emo main character, the small shouta boy, the big easy going guy, the bad boy rival and eventually the smart glasses guy. Nothing more that anyone could ask for there like depth in the character, or having a reason behind the character types besides attracting women to the show.
The ending is baffling. Why would they have the ending show a desert in a show about swimming? Someone brilliant must have thought of that.
Status: I am watching a little more, so I can see the guy with the glasses that was promised. After that I am most likely going to drop this so fast.
Watch out for the giant, tiny kitty!
