Recap: It is the final days before prefecturals and while the Iwatobi boys train like there is no tomorrow, Rin’s drive to win digs up some demons from his past.

For a while I actually thought Rin would turn out to be less of a jerk and more of a determined, melancholic teenager. Pride and ambition are usually what drives the antagonist, and it felt refreshing to see a character’s determination being celebrated for once. Kyoto Animation has been going well out of its way to add in at least one small scene with him in every episode up to now, and all of these scenes seemed to imply some nice hidden depths to his character. That is why it felt incredibly strange to see him swerve all the way back to asshattitude on the same level as your rival from Pokémon Red and Blue by the end of the episode, gloating over Haruka’s loss and twisting the knife even deeper by saying he’ll never swim with him again. Rin’s resentment towards Haruka and his motivations for wanting to beat him are realistic enough to escape the dreaded melodrama once again, but I do wonder what impact they will have on the show’s eventual overall message.

With Rin’s determination to pulverize Haruka, he seems to be heading straight for karmic retribution, but I hope the show will eventually conclude on a moral that is a bit more pragmatic than “Haruka is right and Rin is wrong”. With Rei’s introduction I already talked a bit about how the show seems to think the only correct way to do sports is by enjoying it on an almost romantic level and not caring about trying to get better at it. The idea that ambition is heinous and will always lead to moral decay is a trope that has plagued fiction for as long as it exists. Take the House of Slytherin in the Harry Potter books for instance. It is meant to represent the virtue ambition, but in reality this boils down to literally every single one of its members being a racist jerk who may or may not dabble in the dark arts. While it is definitely a noble cause to warn viewers of the dangers of hubris, a sports anime in which the main characters lack any kind of determination seems pretty pointless. With a truckload of angst about to be dumped onto Haruka because of his loss, Free! even seems to be hell-bent on contradicting itself in the long run. I thought you did not care about winning, Haruka?

I was wondering when she would snap.

Nevertheless, it is quite likely Rin is putting the one thing Haruka cares about at risk in order to make him be a bit more ambitious. Maybe he simply told Haruka they would never swim together again because he knew that would be the only motivation that could make him aim a bit higher. Rin sees more of his father in Haruka than he does in himself, and I think he is simply being a huge jerk to Haruka not necessarily because he aims to be the swimmer his dad never became, but because he wants to prevent Haruka from becoming the swimmer his dad ended up as. It shows that there is some consistency to be found in his angst, and like last episode, Free! successfully managed to blend these more dramatic elements with its trademark breeziness.

I hope next week will continue this trend, because as much as I am interested in what Haruka will decide after losing, I am just as interested in how the other swimbros do in their respective races. Nevertheless, my endless musings on the lack of nuance in Free!‘s messages have me a bit worried. Contrary to Kyoto Animation’s previous two efforts, Free! leaves me oddly invested in its more dramatic bits and eager to see where it will go next. It would be a pity for such a colourful show to end up so darn black and white.

“I never thought I’d grow up to be such a jerk.” Yeah, I have this dream all the time.

Random observations

• An inherent abhorrence of the entire concept of ambition seems to be oddly fitting for a Kyoto Animation show, doesn’t it?
• I like to think Miss Ama drags that umbrella around because she secretly still moonlights as a swimsuit model and wants to keep her skin pale as a result.
• Want to know what Free! has in common with the holocaust? Nothing whatsoever, but this moron seems to think otherwise.