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I have finally finished all of Free! Here's a long post of me rambling about it.
free! is a really simple series, it doesnt do anything complex. it is fundamentally about friendship and the way the relationships you form in life affect who you are as a person. free! mostly carries itself by having a lot of characters with fairly complex emotions and equally interesting dynamics with each other. i think the reason people watch free! is because they want to see the characters and their dynamics explored. all free! really needs to do is to write compelling friendships and give us good characters, which i think its fairly successful at. even the characters that aren't super fleshed out are generally fun to watch.
as a whole, free! can get repetitive. swimming is like, a bonding ritual, so thats often how people resolve their issues. all three seasons have a character that is Going Through it and eventually they Swim to bond with the person causing them that emotional toll. and its cute, but it does get boring.
additionally, haru may be the main character but he isnt super interesting. he is mostly the character through which other people find themselves and is largely interesting because of the relationships he forms
to get more specific:
s1: good. its melodramatic, but there is some cute character bonding and i do think rin's emotional issues are interesting. he is mainly dealing with the stress of failing to his own expectations, which causes him to push out people. i think its probably the most forgettable one?
s2: SO GOOD... i fully believe its the best season. sousuke goes through the most character growth, but unlike rin and ikuya his emotional struggles aren't really about haru. sousuke is mostly struggling with what being injured means for him as a swimmer and trying to navigate the complexities of his relationship with rin. sousuke has never quite understood intimacy the way rin does, so i think this season is mostly about him learning to open up to people, not just rin but also the new friends in his life. on top of that, haru actually?? develops?? and it was pretty relatable!! both his relationships with rin and makoto get really good scenes. we also!!! get introduced to momo!! and he is without my doubt in my top 5, his relationship with nitori is so cute. makoto also grows outside of haru, this season truly has it all. i adore it.
starting days: i actually rlly like it. i think its so cute and all the new characters play off of each other really well. i like haru and makoto struggling with their friendship, asahi dealing with his anxiety and ikuya struggling with his codependency and fear of replacement. and then kisumi is just there flriting with everyone, he is such a funny guy. i love this movie, honestly.
s3: its not bad, but its definitely the weakest one. too many new characters and most of them are just not very interesting. i also feel like the show does not know what to do with nagisa, rei and gou. which is a shame because i can def think of a few things they could have done. that being said, i think we still got some really good character exploration. natsuya's struggles with commitment, ikuya's fear of abandoment and hiyori's codependece are all intertwined and fun to think about. speaking of, hiyori is such a controversial character but i looove him, he is so mentally unwell and i think its very interesting to dig into those issues. if anything, i think my main issue is just that he becomes nice too fast... like, "swimming as a bonding experience" works as a solution for rin, sousuke and ikuya because they are all characters who mainly struggle with opening up to people. meanwhile, hiyori's problems are that he can't let go of ikuya!! it was just too complex of an issue to be solved like this. there are a lot of rlly good scenes this season tho... natsuya's interactions with rin, natsuya's race with ikuya, the scene at the playground, all the scenes with kisumi... worth the watch for sure, even if it was a bit disjointed.
final stroke pt 1: VERY FUN. i really appreciated getting as much relationship development from as many different dynamics as we did. kaede was very fun and i was so intrigued by the toxic yaoi he had going on with hiyori. haru's emotional struggles are sooo interesting! big fan of him struggling with the concept of not being the best at swimming anymore and lashing out as a result. we got a lot of stuff that i wasnt expecting??? the hiyori, sousuke, makoto interactions were fun, there was a rlly cute makorin scene which was so refreshing because their dynamic is always revolving around haru but for once they were just being sweet to each other with no haru involved?? WE HAD SOUSUKE BEING NICE TO HARU??? RIN AND IKUYA??? it was so fun... i also rlly appreciated that it actually focused on the characters that are fun to watch! i think they finally understood who ppl actually care about. i think it did everything it needed to do.
final stroke pt 2: honestly, i thought it was really boring? i feel like haru's emotional issues arent really dealt with, we dont get anything more with kaede and hiyori, rin's conflict with haru is solved too easily. rin and ikuya are also well fleshed out in the first movie, but we dont rlly see anything about their struggles anymore :/ there were still some good scenes, i liked kaede being reluctantly nice to haru and the final race was very cute. but it takes too long for anything to happen so idk i was underwhelmed. i wanted more out of it.
free! is a really simple series, it doesnt do anything complex. it is fundamentally about friendship and the way the relationships you form in life affect who you are as a person. free! mostly carries itself by having a lot of characters with fairly complex emotions and equally interesting dynamics with each other. i think the reason people watch free! is because they want to see the characters and their dynamics explored. all free! really needs to do is to write compelling friendships and give us good characters, which i think its fairly successful at. even the characters that aren't super fleshed out are generally fun to watch.
as a whole, free! can get repetitive. swimming is like, a bonding ritual, so thats often how people resolve their issues. all three seasons have a character that is Going Through it and eventually they Swim to bond with the person causing them that emotional toll. and its cute, but it does get boring.
additionally, haru may be the main character but he isnt super interesting. he is mostly the character through which other people find themselves and is largely interesting because of the relationships he forms
to get more specific:
s1: good. its melodramatic, but there is some cute character bonding and i do think rin's emotional issues are interesting. he is mainly dealing with the stress of failing to his own expectations, which causes him to push out people. i think its probably the most forgettable one?
s2: SO GOOD... i fully believe its the best season. sousuke goes through the most character growth, but unlike rin and ikuya his emotional struggles aren't really about haru. sousuke is mostly struggling with what being injured means for him as a swimmer and trying to navigate the complexities of his relationship with rin. sousuke has never quite understood intimacy the way rin does, so i think this season is mostly about him learning to open up to people, not just rin but also the new friends in his life. on top of that, haru actually?? develops?? and it was pretty relatable!! both his relationships with rin and makoto get really good scenes. we also!!! get introduced to momo!! and he is without my doubt in my top 5, his relationship with nitori is so cute. makoto also grows outside of haru, this season truly has it all. i adore it.
starting days: i actually rlly like it. i think its so cute and all the new characters play off of each other really well. i like haru and makoto struggling with their friendship, asahi dealing with his anxiety and ikuya struggling with his codependency and fear of replacement. and then kisumi is just there flriting with everyone, he is such a funny guy. i love this movie, honestly.
s3: its not bad, but its definitely the weakest one. too many new characters and most of them are just not very interesting. i also feel like the show does not know what to do with nagisa, rei and gou. which is a shame because i can def think of a few things they could have done. that being said, i think we still got some really good character exploration. natsuya's struggles with commitment, ikuya's fear of abandoment and hiyori's codependece are all intertwined and fun to think about. speaking of, hiyori is such a controversial character but i looove him, he is so mentally unwell and i think its very interesting to dig into those issues. if anything, i think my main issue is just that he becomes nice too fast... like, "swimming as a bonding experience" works as a solution for rin, sousuke and ikuya because they are all characters who mainly struggle with opening up to people. meanwhile, hiyori's problems are that he can't let go of ikuya!! it was just too complex of an issue to be solved like this. there are a lot of rlly good scenes this season tho... natsuya's interactions with rin, natsuya's race with ikuya, the scene at the playground, all the scenes with kisumi... worth the watch for sure, even if it was a bit disjointed.
final stroke pt 1: VERY FUN. i really appreciated getting as much relationship development from as many different dynamics as we did. kaede was very fun and i was so intrigued by the toxic yaoi he had going on with hiyori. haru's emotional struggles are sooo interesting! big fan of him struggling with the concept of not being the best at swimming anymore and lashing out as a result. we got a lot of stuff that i wasnt expecting??? the hiyori, sousuke, makoto interactions were fun, there was a rlly cute makorin scene which was so refreshing because their dynamic is always revolving around haru but for once they were just being sweet to each other with no haru involved?? WE HAD SOUSUKE BEING NICE TO HARU??? RIN AND IKUYA??? it was so fun... i also rlly appreciated that it actually focused on the characters that are fun to watch! i think they finally understood who ppl actually care about. i think it did everything it needed to do.
final stroke pt 2: honestly, i thought it was really boring? i feel like haru's emotional issues arent really dealt with, we dont get anything more with kaede and hiyori, rin's conflict with haru is solved too easily. rin and ikuya are also well fleshed out in the first movie, but we dont rlly see anything about their struggles anymore :/ there were still some good scenes, i liked kaede being reluctantly nice to haru and the final race was very cute. but it takes too long for anything to happen so idk i was underwhelmed. i wanted more out of it.
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Date: 2024-04-13 03:13 pm (UTC)From:no subject
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