A new day dawns for the boys of Iwatobi and Sumezeka High
Schools. Haru, Makoto and Rin are all
off to college, continuing their new life courses in their own way while Rei
and Nagisa try to bring new blood to the Iwatobi High School Swim Team. But the road to the world stage for Haru and
Rin just got a whole lot tougher. For
Haru, it’s dealing with the sudden return of a friend from Middle School and
the possibility that he might have caused him the greatest pain in his
life. For Rin, it’s learning the
existence of a new breed of swimmers whos skills dwarf both his and even
Haru’s. New players step onto the
starting blocks as the next heat of the next chapter of the lives of five young
men gets ready to begin.
Free is a series I never thought I would find myself
admiring so much. When I put it on my
First Impression Friday cue a few years back, I expected to joke about it a
lot…and ended up blowing through the first season in one weekend and giving it
a pretty glowing review (you can find it right here:
http://gundamanimeblog.blogspot.com/2016/03/free-complete-first-season.html). And then, lightning managed to strike twice
and even better than before when Season One was followed up with arguably one
of the best sequel seasons to any Anime ive ever seen: Free Eternal Summer
(reviews right here too if you want to read that as well:
http://gundamanimeblog.blogspot.com/2016/06/free-eternal-summer-complete-second.html). I never thought I would find reasons to love
the boys of Iwatobi and Sumezeka or get so invested in their eternal bonds of
brotherhood and friendship, mixed in with a pretty visual and auditory package
of awesome. So yeah, I was always ready
for more Free. And Season Three-Dive to
the Future gave us more…but did it give us too much more?
The biggest thing made apparent by the new Opening Sequence
is that the cast has suddenly ballooned from about 15 central characters to
close to (or more than 30). There’s our
core five characters: Haru, Rin, Mako, Nagisa and Rei; Momo and Ai and their
newest team at Sumezeka; Gou and the new members of Iwatobi; and a heaping
helping of new (sort of but we’ll get there) faces at Haru and Mako’s
respective colleges. The second I saw
this, I knew there were going to be some problems. I don’t mind splitting the core five up and
sending them to see new places. However,
this does mean that not everyone is going to be around every episode and if
they are it’s gonna feel forced a lot. I
feel like Rin, Nagisa, Rei and Sousuke get the harsher end of this
approach. While they do get their own
episodes to further their stories, I didn’t really feel invested in Nagisa and
Rei’s quest to keep the Iwatobi Swim Team going and I wanted to see more of
Rins interactions with other swimmers in Australia. The other thing that kind of irked me was
that some new characters brought in this season have been seen already in
the plethora of Free movies that have
come out in between Season Two and Season Three (it’s been what, three years
since Eternal Summer?). Personally I
haven’t had a chance to see High Speed! Free! Starting Days, Free! Timeless
Medley, and Free! Take Your Marks (not for lack of trying mind you). Still, I didn’t expect to feel so lost seeing
footage from those films spliced into the earliest episodes of Dive to the Future
and I kind of felt left out of a few plot developments as such. Factor in some scarily superior swimmers
introduced towards the end of the season, a couple of rival coaches with a
history and I feel Free reached too far, even if this didn’t intend to be a
stand alone season like the others (more on that later).
This season of Free was surprisingly the darkest so
far. There were numerous times where I
felt my stomach in knots by the end of an episode, more so than ever
before. Don’t get me wrong, Free is
still one of the best feel good Anime out there. But going for the general sequel rule of
darker tone and stakes was adhered here in a rare fashion. Most of this came from two particular
stories, one that dominated the season and another that will likely be followed
up later in Season 4. Even if we’re sort
of retreading ground with someone having beef with Haru cause of something in
his past (Haru’s becoming a real Kenshin Himura the Battosai isn’t he?), Ikuyas
story was still fun to watch. Ikuya is
Haru swimming every stroke to get better and its kind of rare to see anyone
swimming more than a single stroke, or even two. And the funny thing is, Ikuya wanted to see
his friends again. The main thing
keeping them apart: Ikuyas psycho bestie from America, Hiyori. Every interaction Hiyori had with Haru, Mako
and Asahi made me think continuously that Hiyori was going to push them into
traffic if they didn’t stop trying to reunite with Ikuya. It was definitely a menace that I had never
felt in any character from Free thus far.
One problem with this story arc though is that it takes up 3/4ths of the
season. Its only in the last three or so
episodes that we get introduced to swimmers whos abilities flat out dwarf Haru
and Rin…by like a super vast margin.
Albert Wahlander, whos swimming skill was built up like the legend of
Rambo all throughout the season by Rin and Haru’s new coaches, certainly lived
up to the hype…all the while he turned out to be a super nice guy. I wonder how far Haru and Rin will have to
push themselves to overcome this mountain of a swimmer in Season 4…cause it
sucks to say but theyre nowhere near ready to take him on yet.
Actually lets’ talk about Season 4. Yeah, Free: Dive to the Future ends on a
pretty big cliffhanger, kind of in the style of Rocky III where we don’t see
the outcome of a match (and learn about it much later). The season then posts text of a promise: See
You in 2020. I don’t know if that should
get me excited or upset me. On the one
hand, the 2020 release window pretty much garuntees that the 4th Season will
coincide with the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo (AKIRA WAS RIGHT!!!) On the other hand, waiting two years for more
Free after such a bookmarking epic event is going to make me antsy, maybe
others as well. That said, the
cliffhanger ending and the raised stakes that leave even Haru of all people
shaken to his core is a thrilling prospect.
If nothing else, Dive to the Future takes a lot of the drama that popped
up in Eternal Summer and amplifies it, testing the bonds and lessons developed
in the past to their limits…and it makes the heartfelt moments all the more
worth it, like one of the seasons key set pieces, Haru vs Ikuya…MEDLY!!!
While I do feel that Dive to the Future does have the
more glaring problems of any season yet, it’s still Free and if you loved the
first two seasons, there isn’t any reason you wouldn’t enjoy this one too. Everything that made the story work so far is
still here: the bromance between Haru and Rin, Rin and Sousuke; the animation
that has only gotten better with age; the kick ass synth soundtrack that plays
during every riveting race; the humor is still gut bustingly funny; and the
stories as a whole for every character feel genuine and unique in their own way
(theyre just way to damn many of them for one season). I often wondered how fans would feel about
splitting the season evenly between Haru and Mako in college and Rei and Nagisa
back at Iwatobi with Rin’s Australia adventures cutting in throughout
both. It might’ve cleaned things up
better but at the end of the day im just happy to have more Free in my
life. It might not have hit the stellar
highlights of another long awaited Anime sequel: Full Metal Panic: Invisible
Victory or those of its predecessor seasons.
However, new strides are made to challenge Haru, Rin, Mako, Nagisa and
Rei and there the promise of more to come (in 2020 or sooner, we’ll know at
some point next year im sure). Free is
still a series near and dear to my heart and even if the weight of the added epic
changes threatened to collapse on Season Three more than once, I will always
look forward to more awesome swimming week after week.
And wow, that end sequence with all the characters doing
a dance number on stage, that almost made the huge new additions to the roster
worth it. I could watch that end on loop
all day to get in a good mood.
8/10
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