Free! - 4

This took me a long time to get around to, mainly because it doesn't feel like a whole lot happened this week out of the ordinary, so as a result there's not much to talk about with this episode. As expected, Rei does learn to swim, theres some goofy scenes, some manservice and some homosexual undertones. Really there was only one interesting thing that happened to further the plot.

Ah, a confrontation, and a proper one at that. The plot seems to be at least developing more quickly than most other KyoAni works, which I'm happy about. It also seems to be getting more and more predictable. As expected, the reason Rin's so upset is that he doesn't think he can beat Haruka while they're both in their best shape. I suppose it makes sense, really. You devote your entire life to swimming, you move away, you spends years training and... you can only barely beat someone who hasn't properly swum in years. Of course you would want to prove to yourself that you can beat them in their best shape.

Other than that, Rin learns to swim after a little one-on-one action with Haruka. Turns out he sinks like a rock unless hes swimming butterfly stroke. Kinda saw it coming the moment we were shown how he love sports for their beauty. Since it feels like cutting the review short if I end here, I guess I'll share my overall opinion of the show so far. It's okay. And I'm saying this ignoring the manservice. The plot so far has been fairly predictable, and all the characters have been just as predictable. But by no means does that make it bad. So far the pacing is still good, and the animation and music are spot on. The biggest problem people have with this tend to be the manservice, but when you think about it, the show doesn't have more fanservice than any other show, its just that the characters are guys instead. Anyway, have some more of Rin and Haruka.