#I love that his thing is he will never lose overall cause yeahhhh...

[storge]

If we fail… We won't fail. I'm here.

Story of Kunning Palace (2023) 1.35

[fromzerotoeuphoria]

me watching Free!

a journaling of my thoughts & reactions while watching the anime Free!

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(reposted from old blog, July 22, 2020)

7/14/20, 4:21 AM

Okayyyy. So, I saw this anime on a list of anime similar to Haikyuu!! and then I also started seeing people referencing it in different comments/posts online regarding Haikyuu!! and other sports anime. I kinda wanna check it out, of course not going into it really comparing it to Haikyuu!! I’ll try not to…I’d want to give it a fair shot. I may watch the first ep, may not. I’m really tired and I have to go out tomorrow and my eyes are killing me (plus I still need to catch up with Ahiru No Sora and Full Metal Alchemist and a whole lot of other anime).

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7/14/20, 11:32PM

So last night I ended up watching eps 1-3 and honestly, I’m enjoying the anime so far. I haven’t really connected with any of the characters yet, but overall I’m enjoying myself (I think because I’m too hung up on my Karasuno boys right now, ah well). Also, a plus: the main girl isn’t annoying, lol. I actually like her a lot, which isn’t common for me and anime girls. But Gou/Kou? isn’t a trope-filled anime girl, she’s not overly shy or timid  or clumsy or any of those annoying traits that are supposed to somehow be “endearing”. She’s a normal, relatable girl (and dang she’s gorgeous too!)

Also, I really like how the antagonist Rin was a super good friend to the main gang in the past: he was the upbeat, positive kid and a good sport who charmed everyone and pushed Haru to swim in a relay with him when they were kids. But his personality has taken a HUGE turn, and at first it rubbed me the wrong way because the 180 didn’t make sense. Then it was explained a little (some trouble when he moved to Australia?) and it actually is understandable:

Rin’s dream is to be an Olympic swimmer, and Haru is just naturally super gifted at swimming. When Rin came for a visit from his special swimming school in Australia during middle school, it killed him that despite all that time devoted to training, he still couldn’t beat Haru. And that caused the rift between the two friend and caused Haru to quit competitive swimming because he thought he hurt Rin—it also  caused a change in Rin’s attitude. I like this backstory, it makes the dynamic between the protagonist and antagonist much more interesting.

Anyways, I actually want to watch a few more eps now (even tho I’m exhausted) as a kind of “feel good” wind down. Idk if I’m gonna get into this anime as much as I did Haikyuu, and maybe not even as much as I am into ANS or Fire Force, but we’ll see. The other sports anime have a large cast which gives you many options and opportunities to fall in love with characters, but Free! only has like 4 guys on their swim team…and one of them is a lil annoying :P So, we’ll see, it may just be a “wind down” anime that i don’t get emotionally /mentally invested in but still enjoy. Or i could become totally bored with it, or i could fall head over heels for these characters like I did with Haikyuu. Probs not the latter, if there was that possibility I think there’d be a lot more people in love with this anime and these characters than what I’ve seen so far on the internet. But again, we’ll see.

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7/15/20 6:10AM

Umm okay YEAH WOW THAT LAST EPISODE WAS BEAUTIFUL OMG. Yeah I know, I know, I haven’t been journaling but I just decided to keep watching episode after episode and I got SO sucked into the relationship between Rin and Haru (as well as Rin and Mako/Nagisa) and UGH I LOVE THEIR BROMANCE and ELEMENTARY SCHOOL RIN IS LITERALLY BEST BOY.

Like honestly, the drama of the fractured friendship between Rin and the others—but especially Haru—was one of the main things that drove me to keep watching ep after ep until i finally was like, “Eh, might a well just watch ’til ep 12.” I was feeling all kinds of emotions lol, like being MAJORLY PISSED at Rei in ep 11 for butting into the guys’ history (but it’s ok he’s forgiven after letting Rin swim in his place in ep 12) to completely losing my mind when Haru and Rin reconciled. Anyways, yeahhhh soooooo I care about these boys now XD Not as much as I do Karasuno or anything like that, but I do feel things for Rin x Haru primarily, and then Makoto. I’m interested in seeing how the next season goes now that Rin is friends with the boys again. ~ EDIT 12:14PM – Okay earlier I was very exhausted (I literally binged-watched freakin NINE episodes, omg) and wasn’t as coherent as usual, so I didn’t really capture all my thoughts and feelings. I’m still rather tired, but I did want to say that I TOTALLY had a Rin-Haru-ship moment in the last episode: the entire time I’ve been absolutely adoring Rin’s friendship with the boys in elementary school; he was the shining star in their friendship. I wanted that again for the guys because elementary-school Rin was so wonderful, and he was a perfect foil to Haru’s personality. I absolutely loved how quiet, aloof Haru stubbornly tried to be disinterested in Rin but couldn’t stay away because Rin was so dynamic and charismatic (I mean, when Haru found out Rin ran home after swim practice, Haru determinedly started doing the same). Rin drove Haru, though Haru didn’t realize until after the relay race. And in return, years later in high school when the two raced at Rin’s new school that night, it was Haru who unknowingly made Rin rediscover his love for swimming after he had quit all those years ago (omg I really do love this anime TT_TT).

So throughout the episodes there’s all this underlying care that Rin shows for not only Haru but also Makoto as well, and vice versa. It was intriguing and magnetic and made me totally invested in seeing these guys reconcile. So when Rin faltered in the 100m race because he was so distracted by the emotional turmoil he felt about not racing with Haru and the others in the relay race, I was SO FOR IT because I wanted to see him distressed about the other guys—that showed that he really cared so deeply about them that it threw off his game. And when Rin not only made last place but was visibly heaving and couldn’t pull himself out of the water, I was even more like “AHHHKLAJDKJASLKLSAD!!!” and then when Haru was so overcome with concern and immediately shot out of his seat to go find Rin without a word I WAS LIVINGGGG OMG and then on top of that when he heard Rin say that he had quit swimming in the past and should’ve stayed quit and Haru stood there in shock  and having war flashbacks to his and Rin’s falling out in middle school and Haru basically collapsed against a wall in devastation of losing Rin yet again and possibly forever EVERYONE I WAS SOARING AND LIVING AND UGH IT WAS JUST SHKLSKFSKSSKDKJF THAT WAS EVERYTHING!!!!!

And then Haru finally explicitly says that all he wanted was to swim with Rin again and ugh I’m just WOW that episode was EVERYTHING, like literally that episode alone bumped this anime up so many levels for me and now my investment is so much more piqued than it was before (and I was binging this thing). I mean, they hinted at Haru wanting to just swim with Rin again in an earlier episode when Rin beat Haru at freestyle and said, “Now I’ll never have to swim with you again” and Haru was visibly shaken up at those words. He literally told Makoto that his freakin world went black when Rin said that like…AKDJFKHAJSKJD??!?!?!

UGH I love Haru and Rin’s relationship so much 😩. If adult Rin is anything like elementary-school Rin still…I may have found my bias ;) I haven’t seen nice adult Rin yet so we’ll see in Season 2.

Anyways, yeah. SIGH. WOW. Episode 12 took me by surprise with the switch-up and I was LIVINGGGG for it. WOW. I am SO HAPPY it happened and that the four of them are friends again. I honestly couldn’t have imagined a better ending ^_^