Anime: Free!

Free! -- Manservice, anyone?

So, Free!. A 2013 summer/fall anime of 12 episodes, Free is the latest creation of Kyoto Animation, or KyoAni for short, an animation studio that is well-known in anime circles for animating Haruhi, Key/visual dating sims and other types of 'moe' anime. After making their legend spending 10 years on making half-lobotomised pet girls with grossly disproportionate bodies and paedophilia undertones touching male-oriented drama come to life on the screen, KyoAni decided in 2013 to try an experiment: To demonstrate the skills of their young talent in their latest branch, KyoAni created a demo animation of 5 minutes based on the novel series High Speed! by Kōji Ōji, a series about very unmistakeable boys that prance around in tight-fitting swimsuits. A lot of positive feedback from female anime fans ensued and KyoAni was persuaded by this to turn it into a full one courser series. Naturally, a cacophony of disapproval from KyoAni's traditional fanbase for this 'invasion' of their beloved moe by a bunch of *gasp!* girls and their demands for equal-rights objectification anime.

I only realised this when looking up the show after deciding to watch the first episode on a lark, and found this fact almost as amusing as the first episode itself. After all, with every season bringing new and not-at-all exciting new flavours of the old T&A classical male-oriented fanservice in harems and whatnot, a show that seemed to revel in providing female-oriented fanservice to its audience and produced by a studio notorious for sitting on the other side of the fence seemed, if nothing else, like poetic justice. I thus decided to watch the whole seasons in order to take second-hand glee in exposing myself in something that had caused such mass amounts of butthurt in Japan's already rather gender-distorted otaku culture. Well, having watched the whole season and laughed and jeered and mocked it repeatedly... In all honesty, I can say deciding to pick this show up is a decision I have not regretted.

Animation and Visuals 9/10 -- I can't believe I'm saying this, but this fanservice is almost tasteful.

Produced by a studio well-known for making generally high-quality animation and colour, as can be seen in several of their previous shows like CLANNAD, Kanon or Haruhi, it's no surprise Free! shows excellent graphics. The character designers have created a cast that are easy enough to distinguish, and the character details (by which I mean their glistening man-muscles and long sexy bodies) are excellent even as you snigger at the complete lack of nipples. Facial expressions may not be 100% ideal all the time but they're close to 90%, and a little bit of stereotypical appearances don't detract as long as the characters are distinct. The locales are surprisingly variable, with plenty of non-swimming locales that have loving amounts of detail poured into them, the animation is excellent and the water effects are top-notch.

Finally, of course, there is the fanservice. My lord, is there fanservice. Every episode is riddled with celebrations of the male form in the form of posing and loving focus on the muscles of the very, very pretty main cast. And you know what? I'm ok with that. You may find it slightly hypocritical that I consistently pick on female fanservice while giving this show a pass, but I would contend that Free! handles its fanservice aspects with a lot more style and grace. There is no such thing as jiggly breast physics or panty shots, and bum shots are... Omnipresent, really, but *tastefully* so. The camera also doesn't tend to linger or angle onto the sexual characteristics all of the time, instead favouring looking at their faces, and there are no 'ecchi' reactions from any of the cast or the story: The fanservice is incidental and woven into the ongoing narrative and little if any time is used on pointing out its own level of girl-aimed cheesecake. All in all, I'm pleased with what Free! does with its visuals, for a slice-of-life drama show that is.

Sound: 7/10 – FREEEEEEEEEDOM MACHIIIIINEEEEEEE!!! *Air guitar solo*

The voice work and background music of Free! are both good if not objectively excellent like you'll find in high-profile action-adventures like Cowboy Bebop or Fate/Zero: This is not a high-profile action show and for having music mainly just underlining day-to-day activities the background tunes are serviceable if not quite Azumanga Daioh standards. The voices are so stereotypical you can't help but laugh at it: Excellently picked to a man and pretty much tells you what you need to know about each character the moment they open their mouths. The pigeon-holing of the voice cast is, in fact, quite laughable, and I mean that in a positive way for once.

Backing this up are the absolutely hilarious opening and ending sequences. "Rage On" is a high-energy J-rock number that sounds like it was supposed to be pitched to a shonen series like Attack on Titan and somehow ended up being picked up by the pretty boy swim club anime: The dissonance is so powerful and the song so ridiculously overblown you can't help but laugh and/or semi-ironically headbang along with it. And yet, it pales in comparsion to the ending, "Splash Free", a dance-techno number accompanied by the most hilarious visuals I've ever seen in any anime ending ever. Both the songs are top-notch memorable and help underline just how serious this series takes itself, i.e. little if at all.

Story: 7/10 – The epic story of men, and swimming, and passion... And occasionally some humans with bumps on the front that aren't men, but nobody pays any attention to those.

Free! is, at its core, a sports-flavoured drama series about the lives of four young high-school boys, Haru, Nagisa, Makoto and Rin, who used to swim together, before age and interpersonal tragedies (SPOILERS: White people are to blame) tore them apart. At their current state, they have all abandoned their passion for dressing in speedos and posing sexily at the camera... Er... I mean, swimming, as Rin drifted away from the rest of the group and a chance encounter with him later reveals he's spent his absence polishing up his jerk credentials. Over the course of 12 episodes, Haru, Makoto and Nagisa deal with this by starting their own swimming club while Rin, deciding on swimming for a rival school for his own jerky reasons, mostly mopes around and acts like a jerk to his bottom. All the while, the story subjects them to twists, turns and drama of the sort you'd expect in the most corny of anime boy-love stories.

The story is not so much dripping as soaking in innuendo and parallels to love stories; not content with merely hinting at the illicit passions this show takes a flying leap into double-entendre-ville and fills virtually the entire story with yaoi subtext. The playfulness with which this show flirts with this subtext, and its gleeful employ of every trope, cliche and "seen-it-before" scenario in the book makes it almost impossible to hate. The pacing is good, the twists are predictable, the story logic is solid and the whole thing is hilarious to watch in a way probably intended by the writers. In other words, nothing unique and super-special, but amusingly non-unique and non-special.

Characters: 7/10 – Haru X Bathtub. That's my OTP and you're not touching it.

The character gallery of Free! is as cheesy as its story: If you have seen any female-targeted show before in your life, you'll know what to expect. "Cool-but-I-really-*do*-care" Haru, "friendly bear" Makoto, "bundle of joy" Nagisa, "bad boy" Rin, and "arrogant-but-adorable" Rei are straigth out of the playbook of archetypes parodied in Ouran High School Host Club some six years ago, and the show is only marginally more serious with said archetypes than Ouran is. Amongst the characters, Haru, Rin and Rei are more dynamic and exhibit something close to character growth, while Makoto and Nagisa are mostly static foils to the others.

As with the story, the characterisation follows the pattern of making practically every scene ooze with undertones of mild homoeroticism and their characters are set up in ways that practically encourage the art of "shipping" any possible candidates you care to mention together (as long as said pairings don't contain any icky girls), undoubtedly in an attempt to appeal to its core demographics. Like with the nature of the archetypes themselves, however, it's all played with a playful glint in the eye and adds to the (maybe not entirely) inadvertent hilarity of the show.

Value: 7/10 – While replacing the entire moe genre with this would undoubtedly become as tiresome in the other direction, this is still a breath of fresh air and a surprisingly well-made one at that.

As I already mentioned, the plot and characters of Free! are nothing short of walking cliches: The genre of "energetic youth beat the odds" is done half to death and the characters are laughably archetypical in spite of their attempts at "feel-good" development towards the inevitable goal of an orgy reconciliation with long-lost friends. Despite all this, however, Free! represents something not seen very often on the anime market, namely that of the borderline parody that can manage to get its point across with a little bit of subtlety.

Like Highschool of the Dead or Black Lagoon, Free! treats its subject matter as a big joke that it invites the viewer to partake in, but unlike Highschool of the Dead it is able to do so without pandering to the lowest common denominator and inject a little bit (though not terribly much all considered) of taste and low-keyness into it: Like Black Lagoon it knows when the mixing in of some 'serious' stuff produces a better contrast. The result may not be as energetic as in the other case, but it's in the same ballpark in a "you're laughing with it" sort of way.

That said, it does gain major brownie points from me for being an attempt at something new from KyoAni, and while I don't think any females were watching Kanon and Air for the purpose of laughing at the moe stereotypes while the boys were busy wanking at it taking it seriously, I can say the gender-inverted case is very much the case for Free!. Which is a plus on the 'accessibility' and 'demographics' scale.

Enjoyment: 8/10 – Parodic without getting too blatant or repetitive; dramatic without getting self-righteous and high-strung. A fine middle valley of playfulness and a pretty solid experience.

In case this hasn't been clear so far: I thought Free! was really funny, and also quite touching in places. In providing laughs, it even compares favourably to actual comedies on this theme like Ouran High School Host Club, moreso because it's too short to grow stale and depends more upon playing with expectations than recycling gags. Or maybe I'm just incredibly immature and find homosexual innuendo funnier for a longer period of time, what do I know.

Free! is probably the most engaging show I've seen these last seasons since JoJo's Bizarre Adventures, and fills a pretty similar niche in entertainment: Best watched with a smile on your soul and the realisation that this thing will be playfully taking the piss out of its own being at every turn and thus almost sparing you from having to take the effort (for all that though, it makes for prime 'friendly ribbing' type MST3K-fodder). It's so ridiculous it's hard to get mad at anything going on in it and the pace and energy means it seldom if ever gets boring. High marks well-deserved I say.

Total: 7.5 (rounded up to 8 )/10 – More style and grace than Michael Phelps and more balls than Lance Armstrong.

In all seriousness, with as much 'serious' as one can muster when talking about a show like this: Free! is pretty great. It's light-hearted fun that revels in its inherent cheesy drama and oodles of manservice, and has a solid (in a "so stereotypical it's funny" way) plot and character gallery and great production values to back it up. In all honesty this is probably my new favourite KyoAni show, and if you have a trace of a sense for self-irony (or just like looking at pretty boys), it comes highly recommended.