You are welcome to look at the talkback but please consider that this article is over 2 years old before posting.
Last reply was 2 years, 10 days ago.
Last reply was 2 years, 10 days ago.
Forum - View topicREVIEW: Free! The Final Stroke 2nd Part
|
Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 606 |
|
|||
|
This is the way that Free ends
Not with a bang but with nobody giving a crap anymore |
||||
|
||||
MagicPolly
 Posts: 1588 |
|
|||
Couldn't have said it better myself. I haven't bothered to watch Road to the World despite it being available for months because almost everything post Eternal Summer has been utterly disappointing (the one exception imo was the High Speed movie). Free was best when it was a slice of life with sports on the side, never as a sports drama. That's what made Dive to the Future so bad to me, it focused on drama almost wholely and split up the Iwatobi team so that all the great SoL interactions we loved were now gone. The review for this and the first Final Stroke movie make it seem that while slightly better than DttF, it still suffers from too much sports drama. I'll probably watch the three new movies all at once when they become available to stream, but my expectations are rock bottom for this franchise at this point. It's so sad that it's been milked dry. |
||||
|
||||
|
zztop
Posts: 646 |
|
|||
Iirc the story direction definitely changed after Utsumi Hiroko left Kyoani and Free was taken over by its in-house director. Closest thing now to the earlier Free! vibe is with SK8 the Infinity, which she directed. |
||||
|
||||
|
Kirki
Posts: 296 |
|
|||
Can it even be called that? Like, where was the drama? The most I remember from DttF was people walking around and exchanging pleasantries. "Hi. How are you?" "I'm good, how are you?" "See you later guys!" I swear more than half of it is that. Five year olds think of better plotlines when they're playing with their dolls. Free ended in Eternal Summer as far as I'm concerned. |
||||
|
||||
|
MagicPolly
Posts: 1588 |
|
|||
Most of the drama I can remember now (3+ years later, jeez) was stuff with Hiyori getting mad at Haru for ruining Ikuya in middle school. Aka, the exact same plot that Eternal Summer had with Sousuke. That all got resolved by episode 6 and I barely remember anything past that aside from them introducing like 3 foreign swimmers in the last couple of episodes to be antagonists for the Final Stroke movies. Characters not named Haru absolutely got reduced to walking around and exchanging pleasantries though |
||||
|
||||
|
all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 606 |
|
|||
I do think this undersells the importance of the sport for the first two seasons. After all, Haru's rivalry with Rin and his complicated relationship with competitive swimming were incredibly important to the first season, and who can forget the club sobbing and holding each other when they came in third at the end of the second season? Swimming has always been a major source of drama and pathos in Free. It's hard to pinpoint just what made Free so special, but I think part of it is balance. Utsumi has a distinctive directorial style, willing to be silly and over-the-top but also never dismissive of her characters' emotions or the importance of what they're going through. Everything is heightened but it's all grounded in something authentic. Everything after Eternal Summer is heightened, but it lacks her playfulness or authenticity. Characters spout platitudes and have a weird obsession with middle school nostalgia the little mermaid that feels completely unnatural for a bunch of college kids. Makoto spends a significant chunk of the series going through a crisis about his relationship with swimming now that he's no longer on a team, but that hardly gets an episode devoted to it. Also, without Utsumi's love of upper bodies, those boys spend way too much time fully clothed. It's just not fun anymore. I still love those first two seasons but continuing the series after Utsumi left was a mistake. Also, the poster looks like Ikuya is climaxing. |
||||
|
||||
Miuna
 Posts: 24 |
|
|||
|
Saying this as a huge fan of the series:
I’ve been disappointed by this franchise since Dive to the Future. There was definitely a “loss of direction” after Eternal Summer and High Speed!. Free! and Free! ES had a great balancing act that, while not perfect, did allow for story progression and fairly solid character building. One of the biggest draws of the series is the characters and having a smaller cast helped to develop each of those characters. Dive to the Future had far too bloated a cast and that issue continued into the Final Stroke movies. Furthermore, Haru’s character was not fleshed out well in DF forward. Aspects of his growth//development from the end of Eternal Summer were somewhat reset come DF and core aspects of his character were changed (I only swim Free for example). In my opinion, the first two seasons reflected Utsumi Hiroko’s distinct style. High Speed! felt more like a Sound! Euphonium-esque/Hyouka drama piece where the “angst” doesn’t overshadow the story (kudos to director Takemoto). Dive to the Future onward have been…frankly depressing. Too much angst, petty drama, and immature storytelling (which is funny given that the characters are now in college). I don’t think there’s a Kyoani work that it is comparable to; personally I felt it was a failed rehash of season 1 combined with generic sports anime. The bloated cast also probably has helped on the merchandising front (like how idol animes add multiple new characters every season). The sports piece of this is another issue. The high school swimming aspects did pack that emotional punch, even if you knew nothing about the sport. In large part, this was due to the characters who took part in said swimming. The competitions/races in DF on were packed together, rushed, I didn’t know who was swimming (or care by that point), or the swimming made no sense. One of the key things in sports anime regardless of the sport is the audience needs to have a connection to the characters. Once you start losing that connection, then there goes the interest and I think that’s in large part what happened with this franchise. |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group