Anime: Free! (Nobunaga Shimazaki, Yonaga Tsubasa, Miyano Mamoru, Hirakawa Daisuke, Suzuki Tatsuhisa)

Come swim in this sweet, sweet pool…

Full of bishies!

Second season: Free! – Eternal Summer (2014)
Broadcast Date: July 2, 2014

I’ve yet to watch it. But general reviews have been BL-ly awesome :D

In the second season, there’s a new character, Yamazaki Sousuke 山崎宗介 (voiced by: Yoshimasa Hosoya from No.6) Rin’s childhood best friend. According to wiki info, he understands Rin very well. He has a strong personality and does not let anything irritate him. He takes a dry and harsh position on swimming toward himself and others around him. It’s like Makchan and Haru’s relationship :D <333 can’t wait to watch it.

Title: Free!
Broadcast Date: 3 July 2013
Official site: http://iwatobi-sc.com
Official Twitter: http://https//twitter.com/iwatobi_sc

Quick Summary (edited from wiki)

Free! starts with four boys, Haruka, Makoto, Nagisa and Rin. Before graduating from elementary school, they had participated in a swimming tournament and gained victory as a team. They parted ways then and years later, Nagisa reunites with second year students Haruka and Makoto when he enrolls into Iwatobi High School too.

Eager to swim together with his friends again, Nagisa suggests creating a swimming club and cleaning up the run-down outdoor pool in their school. In order to form a club of at least four members, Nagisa recruited another first-year student, Rei, to form the Iwatobi High School Swimming Club, believing strongly in the fact that all of them are bound by fate because each of them were given names that sound like girls! And the four boys work together in making the club a success.

Not long after, Rin, who was thought to be training in Australia, turns up and challenges Haruka to a race and wins. However, Rin’s victory over Haruka means nothing to him as he realizes that Haruka has stopped swimming competitively and is not in top shape. He claims that he cannot get over the fact until Haruka competes against him for real. The members of the revived Iwatobi Swim Club later enter a swimming competition against Rin…

Comments: Finally the kind of high quality animated eye-candy that every fangirl deserves :D

These boys have been fogging up my goggles (that’s Haruka who has a “water-fetish” lol~ and stalker-looking Makoto in the background lololol~) since the broadcast started in July 2013…

Is 5 a magic number? Here we have another set of 5 boys with different hair colour for differentiation + a megane chara added to the mandatory fan-service mix.

Fangirl moe points also include the “I-know-everything-about-you” childhood friends (osananajimi) setting of Makoto (droopy-eyed cuteness below) and Haruka.

The “I-can’t-move-on-without-overtaking-you” best rival relationship between Rin (facing us) and Haruka, etc.

And a deliberate and obviously BL-fan service scene, that probably had all the fujoshis at the edge of their seats. Don’t want to give too much away here tho… so no pics! XD

And since the boys hang around the pool or the sea (and the bath tub!!!) more than 70% of the time each episode, there’s ample screen time to (see the boys) get wet legitimately and ogle at all those glorious, glittering and naked, muscular upper torsos \(*o*)/ I can definitely identify with their female swim club manager, Gou when her eyes literally light up in happiness when she is with them at the pool surrounded by all those beautiful, athletic swimmer bodies lololol~

Eye-candy aside, this slice-of-life, school-life anime has just the right mix of plot, back stories (these little boys sure are CUTE when they’re kids!), characterisation, character development, humour and fan-service for both fangirls and BL fangirls alike. Really enjoyable to watch and recommended even for general anime viewers who appreciate a good sports anime without exaggerated anime sequences of power moves lol~ Don’t miss it!

Chibi burst-of-sunshine Nagisa and almost always dependable Makoto.

Cast:
Hirakawa Daisuke as Ryugazaki Rei
Miyano Mamoru as Matsuoka Rin
Shimazaki Nobunaga as Nanase Haruka
Suzuki Tatsuhisa as Tachibana Makoto
Yonaga Tsubasa as Hazuki Nagisa

Watanabe Akeno as Matsuoka Gou
Yukino Satsuki as Amakata Miho
Miyata Kouki as Nitori Aiichiro
Tsuda Kenjiro as Mikoshiba Seijuro
Yanaka Hiroshi as Sasabe Goro

Just a small sampling of the kind of illustrated goods we can expect from Free! And you don’t even need to make up an excuse to show lots of manly/kiddie flesh… pffttt…

Bathroom posters, clear folders, postcards, etc

Cushions, tapestries and what not…

And most probably a 1:1 scale apron in the future that is based on this scene lol~

Plus fan-service drama CDs such as Iwatobi High School Swimming Club Activity Log 1 岩鳶高校水泳部 活動日誌1 with short stories like :
1) とある日常の一コマ One-shot from a certain regular day of…
2) 水着開発 Swimsuit development
3) もし彼氏にするなら? ?岩鳶編? What if you’re my boyfriend?? Iwatobi chapter?
4) もし彼氏にするなら? ?鮫柄編? What if you’re my boyfriend?? Samezuka chapter?
5) 合宿 Training camp
6) 渚と遙の出逢いの思い出 Reminiscing the past when Nagisa and Haruka first met.
7) 鮫柄学園文化祭 ?伝統の冥土喫茶? Samezuka Academy Cultural Festival? Traditional Maid Cafe from Hell?