Free!: Eternal Summer Episode 1 Discussion

YumeHunter said:

Then why the fuck are you even watching this? This is the SECOND season. You sound like you haven't even watched the first season in the first place.

YumeHunter said:

Then why the fuck are you even watching this? This is the SECOND season. You sound like you haven't even watched the first season in the first place.

galimx said:
And yeah, you can look criticaly at animes, not just watch them for enjoyment...

muramusaw8 said:


I haven't watched ep 1 of eternal summer yet, but anyways...

The characters seem to have enough unique traits to me, at least for a sports anime.

Let's be honest here: the popularity of free heavily depended, depends, and will depend on the fanservice of the series.

The plot and characterization isn't the best, but you know what? It's an enjoyable series to watch nonetheless, even for straight males.

You have a very valid point about how the boys of Iwatobi act a little more like schoolgirls. However, isn't that merely your perspective?
Take this with a grain of salt, but I once read that the Japanese value a best friend even higher than a romantic partner.
Well, even if that is not true, it is certain that different cultures have different norms for behavior, although this is anime; embellishments are rampant.
Furthermore, it's not like females in anime always act or characterized as expected.

Overly dramatic and emotional? This is KyoAni. if it isn't an iyashikei series, then there will be drama. Actually, this could probably, loosely, apply to any studio/publisher/whatever.

Ah, well, in the end I more or less agree with you: the Free! series is ultimately a divisive anime~!

On a side note, I can't help but laugh on how one particular anime (something apparently obvious) seems to always worm its way into any anime discussion, no matter the genre or topic.

I hope Eternal Summer will be amusing - I plan to watch it later today~

Suzie said:
KyoAni are the Gods of fan service. In the best possible way. I actually had to pause it once or twice to regain my calm. I'm serious xD
The part where Haru is slowly unzipping his pants!?
The part where they wildly take off their shirts on scene!?
And when the ending starts and Rin is in cop cosplay!?
Can't get enough!!

kunagisa said:
this anime is good just for its fan service

i laughed my way through. so much muscle. too much

galimx said:


Well people sure do, going all around and yelling this is ANIME OF THE YEAR, lol.
I didn't say it wasn't fun, but the fact is that this is shallow entertainment. And yeah, you can look criticaly at animes, not just watch them for enjoyment...

Kitty_Calando said:
Why can't somebody just look at an anime, and rate it based on enjoyment? What's so wrong with that?

RedReaper said:
Went back and read through all the posts here.
Apparently this season is going to have a lot of Nagisa backstory.
Hopefully that means we'll get a prison break flashback at last from big papa-NG.
At this point I practically consider 50% off as canon.

T3hSource said:
Too much you say?

As a gal who likes her action, why haven't you seen JoJo yet? The MANLY MEN there really do make these boys look like girls who just play with each other like they are cute little girls.

This isn't a hate post or an attack on the show, just my answer to the manservice.

RedReaper said:
Went back and read through all the posts here.
Apparently this season is going to have a lot of Nagisa backstory.
Hopefully that means we'll get a prison break flashback at last from big papa-NG.
At this point I practically consider 50% off as canon.

galimx said:
Fujoshi pandering anime. No thanks :). And dont get me wrong, it's not because there are only guys in this anime. It's the same as otaku pandering shows with tits and panties, but this time it targets the female audience.

I rather watch a good story, with good writing and direction, and complex and deep characters, not this shit.

T3hSource said:
Why should everybody rate an anime based off solely a positive feeling?
It's wrong because that's not rating, that's answering did you like it or not: yes or no. Rating DOES mean analyzing and criticizing something, you put it through whatever standards for storytelling, characters, sound and animation. You evaluate it and put that evaluation in the form of an arbitrary number which is supposed to represent how you would describe this work. It's simply a number in order to make the rankings easier and have a simple number show the public's general reception.

If you're simply basing off enjoyment, you have no standard. Was it enjoyable? Yes.
And if not? I dropped and/or deleted it off my list, end of story.

Just from this ep.:
Animation 1/1 - damn good
Music and Sound 1/2 - can't really tell if the music's there, blends well, nice OP, seiyuu cast doing a fantastic job considering the roles.
Story 1/3 - cute boys doing cute swimming, kinda like sport, KyoAni comedy and slice of life, essentially plotless, everything's centered around the characters, at least the swimming aspect makes for a more dynamic pace
Characters 2/4 - moe boys, they look, sound and act like it too, OK, but there's nothing much to them. Light drama, supposed rivalries, but if they were MEN, they'd be itching to punch each other.

so 1+1+1+2=5 Average <- Which is what I would use to describe this show without factoring in enjoyment.

Kitty_Calando said:
And yet you did factor enjoyment into your review. In fact, you factored enjoyment into every part of your review.

I have a few questions to ask after reading your review: What if I didn't like the swimming sections? What if I hated the OP? Why is Animation only out of 1 in your review while the other sections are out of 2, 3, and 4? What if I wanted to rate story out of 4 and characters out of 3? Finally, are you saying that everybody who doesn't factor enjoyment into their review should reach this same conclusion?

What you are forgetting is that enjoyment, although considered a "feeling", can be an emotional response to numerous factors. It is a much broader category than you make it out to be, and it encompasses every category that you just stated. Also, you make it seem as if enjoyment is merely black and white, you either like it or you don't, and that there is no grey area whatsoever. Of course if you put it in such a way it will make it sound like you have no standard if you merely rate a show based on "enjoyment". But there are varying degrees of enjoyment, and that is because no two people enjoy things the same. It is not that we have no standards, it is that we have different values, and without needing to go into details all of these values are automatically summed up into the simple category of "enjoyment".

The public's general reception is to be found by averaging the ratings of the general public, not by looking at the rating of one sole individual who analytically went through everything and claims to be unbiased. Likewise, it doesn't mean that anyone who rated the show less or more than this average is wrong, it simply means that they are individuals who know what "good" is for themselves. There may be a million people who hate something, but there will always be that one person who absolutely loves it and vice versa. To sum it up, the only person who is able to correctly answer whether a show is "good" or "enjoyable" is the individual who asked the question in the first place and no analytic response is required to determine that.

Theodoricos said:
Also this, as far as I'm aware, is My Anime List, isn't that so? Everybody should have the freedom to rate the way they want to rate. Indeed, many post the criteria that they review their watched anime by on their profile page.

If you do get a certain amount of enjoyment out of an anime, then it must also be doing SOMETHING right. So I doubt anybody is voting "purely" on enjoyment, because that enjoyment has to come from somewhere.

Theodoricos said:
This is exactly what I was trying to say, actually. Nicely put. Sorry for not clarifying earlier, but I was criticizing T3hSource's opinion that enjoyment shouldn't be factored in when you give the final grade of a given anime. Yes, MAL has a rating system, but this isn't a professional review site, so everybody should choose how exactly they want to vote for the anime they've seen.

Here's the thing. In my opinion, if you DO care for the characters of this show, even if you believe that it isn't because they're special, then they're still at least good enough and deserving of a higher grade for one reason or another. So yes - exactly - you should not ignore your opinion and lower the score simply because feelings may come into the equation. You'd be succumbing to other people's opinions instead, which you might see as "objectivity". If you do care about the characters, then that's a valid point in the show's favor that you shouldn't ignore. Even if it's in a large part thanks to personal preference that you do, the show still has to meet you at least halfway in the way it presents or characterizes its cast. If you give it more thought, then something will surely come up that you can give as an answer as to why that is so.

For me? The friendship between Haru, Makoto, Nagisa, Rei and Rin is likeable because it feels natural. There's something that the show does right that manages to make me invested in their characters and any conflicts that may arise that I want to see resolved. It's a combination of well-placed flashbacks of their past, to continuous display of their chemistry together and the fact that they genuinely care about each other. Rei's introduction in the anime helped a great deal with that, I think - because it contrasted his interactions with the other four, and him, as a newcomer, somewhat played the role of a surrogate for the viewer in understanding the depth of the others' already established friendship, and learning more about it. That's a good way to do that instead of simply unloading an infodump at the beginning of the first few episodes, which Free! never did. It progressively showed more sides of the guys' past and what had happened between Haruka and Rin.

Either way, I'm going off on a tangent myself, but point is even if the characters of Free! aren't necessarily special, I believe that is a reason why they've resonated with other fans of the anime. Fanservice and animation can certainly help, but they fall flat without proper substance to accompany them.

But if you look at it from a different perspective, does that not also mean that one's enjoyment should reflect just what it is that the show is doing correctly?

baskervillain said:

That's basically what I was about to say, haha. It's probably because he's not saying "senpaiii" in every other sentence. It seemed like his existence revolved around Rin, and that didn't leave much room for Nitori to have a distinct personality of his own. Hopefully he stays this way for the remainder of the season.