YMMV / Free!

• Adorkable: It's honestly easier to find someone who doesn't fit in this trope.
  • Makoto, Nagisa, Nitori, and Asahi are this at all times.
  • The trailers made Rei look like a sort of reserved megane archetype. Not so. While he's often book smart and serious, he still does ridiculous things as if they were normal. This includes trying on silly patterned swimsuits with gusto, going on hilariously passionate rants about only performing beautiful sports, belly-flopping into a pool, occasionally pole vaulting like this◊, calling Rin "Rin-chan-san" ^note since Nagisa calls him "Rin-chan", and pretending to be a detective and making sound effects while spying on Rin. He perhaps outclasses everyone else in this aspect.
  • Strict captain tendencies aside, Seijuurou is actually a friendly, dorky guy, especially around Gou. The same can be said for his siblings Momotarou and Isuzu, the former of whom was an instant favorite before he even made an appearance in the anime.
  • Haruka's vaguely-defined disorder within the first two seasons made him come across as much more socially awkward compared to his teammates, from how exaggerated his love for mackerel can get to his extreme obsession with water, reaching a high point when he almost strips down to his swim trunks in public just to be in the water of a store's fish tank.
  • Ikuya in Starting Days, where he starts of without any friends at and is seen as "that weird kid" who gets caught staring at everyone and while attempting to mimic Haruka, presumably to get his brother's attention. Not to mention how easily flustered he becomes. This seems to have faded by the time of Dive to the Future.
  • Even Rin, the once Cheerful Child turned edgy rival, has his moments, such as genuinely thinking that Sousuke would like the ridiculous shirt of a koala riding a rocket ship that he bought for him, or how awkward he becomes when he thinks his younger sister, Gou is dating Momotarou.
• Accidental Innuendo: Rin makes a lot of these.
  • Much fun was had with "I'll show you a sight you've never seen before!".
  • Rin's hilariously suggestive face as he tells Rei that he better be ready to get bitten straddles the line between a taunt and a flirty comment.
    • Taken up to eleven with this gem from Take Your Marks:
    Rin: ...or I'll tear you apart from behind!
  • "You prefer the bottom too, don't you?" Accidental on Rin's part? Probably. Accidental on the writers' part? Unlikely.
  • Rei is probably supposed to be training or swimming in the bridge of Coming Soooon!!, but without visuals it sounds like... something else.
• Archive Panic: Watching all three movies (High Speed! Free! Starting Days, Free! Timeless Medley, and Free! Take Your Marks) is a prerequisite before watching the third season, Dive to the Future, as all movies set up plot points crucial to Dive to the Future. For people outside of Japan, this could be a lot of homework, especially since Funimation didn't license them until Dive to the Future was announced.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • In season 1, Rin is either a damaged person who needs a big hug, or a selfish monster who should never be allowed near a pool. Rin became less controversial in Eternal Summer when he Took a Level in Kindness, but another split formed with the announcement that he would be voiced by Vic Mignogna in the English dub.
  • To a lesser degree, Nitori; while he has quite a few fans (and is even listed under Ensemble Dark Horse on this page), a decent section of the fandom finds him annoying. Later appearances also gave him a wider appeal, showing his growth as a swimmer and his entertaining interactions with Momotaro and Nagisa.
  • Sousuke runs into this problem as well in regards to his interactions with Haruka. Is he overly protective as a result of a misunderstanding, or a bully who thinks he knows what's best for Rin better than Rin does?
  • By Dive to the Future, Ikuya and his companion Hiyori have taken the designated BBC spot in the fandom. Either they like Ikuya from his previous characterization in Free Starting Days carrying over but find Hiyori a pot stirrer when he constantly calls the main characters inferior copies of Ikuya, or they find Ikuya, even in Starting Days an inferior combination of both Haruka and Season 1 Rin who didn't need to be added at all.
    • Hate for Hiyori died down a bit when his reason for being obsessed with Ikuya was revealed: he once saved Ikuya from drowning and wants to stay close to him to protect him.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: What story? This is the show where hot guys swim a lot and show off their half-naked bodies! As the anime seems to have been deliberately intended as a female-directed equivalent to the all-prevalent moe fanservice anime, this was probably expected, and the producers and advertisers have certainly made the most of it.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Shortly after the beginning of Starting Days, the four main characters are all shown what they do and how they feel at home. For some reason, Asahi's scene has him putting styling wax on his hair smoothing and neatening his hair only for his sister Akane to laugh at him. Why he put it on in the first place is never explained and it's never brought back up again.
• Broken Base:
  • In regards to the Season 1 ending. A lot of people see Rei's decision to give up his spot on the relay for Rin as an incredibly kind gesture and the perfect ending for his Character Development, since it's a sign of how much he has grown and how by putting the teams' needs over his own, he's given them a much bigger chance to win the Nationals. Others see it as completely derailing his Character Development, because this ending would be unfair after all the hard work he did, and it makes him seem like a permanent outsider.
  • The second season in general has caused a lot of divided opinions. There's a fairly equal split between those who consider Eternal Summer to be either badly written or simply dull compared to the first season and those who consider its differences to be an improvement from the first.
  • The season finale again, with some fans dissatisfied with Rin's role and influence on Haruka being downplayed as compared to season 1's ending, with Rin separating from his True Companions to go to Australia again, and with Haruka and Makoto attending schools in Tokyo, making their fight seem like needless melodrama. Others are upset that Sousuke is the only character who didn't seem to get a happy ending.
  • The dub either has fans up in arms, rolling on the floor in laughter, or somewhat pleased. The butchered pronunciation and the case of Samezuka Academy, which suffers from AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle, and turns into Sa-MAY-zooka have been especially noted, as well as the dub's overuse of "dude" and "man". On the other hand, many fans are very satisfied with some of their casting that includes J. Michael Tatum, Johnny Yong Bosch, Greg Ayres, Todd Haberkorn, and Vic Mignogna, and fans highlight Funimation competency when it comes to the voice directing and casting of an anime series with a Cast Full of Pretty Boys (although it should be noted that the script writing is still very polarizing).
  • The existence of Dive to the Future in general: some feel that Eternal Summer and/or Take Your Marks ended the series on a satisfying note and the third season is an overly crowded and unnecessary cash-grab. Others are excited about seeing the boys move on to college and live as adults.
• Cargo Ship: Haruka X Water, Makoto X Shovel, Makoto X Water Bottle, Rin X Goggles, Nagisa X Hoodie, etc, etc.
  • HarukaXWater can be argued as canon after episode six, which has Haruka recount an encounter with a waterfall when dared to tell a story about his love life.
    • The Eternal Summer OVA has a scene that makes an even stronger case for it.
  • Rin x Sandwich, based on a scene in the third episode of Dive to the Future where Rin eats a ham-and-egg sandwich and sucks the dripping off his thumb◊, spawned an ironic fanfiction the night after the episode aired.
• Continuity Lock-Out: The series' third season, Dive to the Future, requires you to have seen High Speed! Free! Starting Days, Free! Timeless Medley, and Free! Take Your Marks. The show does try to explain bigger plot references through Flash Backs, but it's not enough to genuinely grasp the emotional weight of some of the scenes, such as Asahi reuniting with Haru, Makoto, and Rei; Ryuji being PKH Azuma; and Rin meeting Natsuya after being warned about Ikuya.
• Die for Our Ship: Thankfully defied in terms of straight pairings; when two female characters (Gou and Amakata) entered the fray, the fandom sought hard to defy this trope and was determined on waiting before actually attacking them. Sadly, there have been some anti-straight pairing feelings even BEFORE the two girls appeared. But in a lighter note, fandom immediately started shooting it down. So it pops up every now and then, but unlike other fandoms where Yaoi-loving fangirls are pretty much expected to hate on every female character in sight, most fans of Free! tend to like the female characters and call other fans out on their immature behaviour.
  • Regarding Gou, it helps a lot that there's implications in the show that Seijuurou, a minor character who is the captain of Rin's swimming team, has a crush on her, and since he isn't generally paired with anyone else, even hardcore yaoi shippers tend to like Seijuurou/Gou, if only as a side pairing. And since Ama-chan is the boys' teacher, hardly anyone ships her with them anyway. And in the second season, Seijuuro's younger brother Momotarou has also developed a crush on Gou, so...
    • Gou was also occasionally shipped with her below-mentioned friend, the very minor character Chigusa Hanamura, until Isuzu Mikoshiba entered the picture and had actual onscreen Les Yay with her.
  • Most fans did their best to avoid this, but the ship war between Makoto/Haru shippers and Rin/Haru shippers began to heat up as the first season progressed. Even more so after episode 7, when Rin defeats Haruka in a Freestyle race and proclaims that he will never swim with Haruka again (plus some major Unsportsmanlike Gloating), which has the Makoto/Haruka shippers out for Rin's blood.
    • The ship wars certainly do exist, but there is MakoRin shipping, and other fans Take a Third Option and ship all three together.
  • Some particularly insecure yaoi fangirls have targeted, of all people, Gou's friend Chigusa Hanamura. Her sin? Makoto once told her she looked cute. The rest of the fans have reacted... strongly.
  • Sousuke has received surprisingly minimal vitriol (for shipping reasons, anyway). His Ho Yay interactions with Rin are the only ones with any prominence in the show, and it's easy for RinHaru shippers to stick Sousuke firmly in the "best friend" role (the same role they assign to Makoto). MakoHaru shippers tend to be fairly tolerant of Sousuke, because either they hate Rin and Sousuke is completely irrelevant to their ships, or they don't mind SouRin because it's not RinHaru.
  • By season 3, Ikuya has stepped into the fray, with some fans wishing he'd just drown already due to his relationship with Haru being the main plot of DF. It doesn't help that Haru is described as being "like [Ikuya's] first love" in interviews, and that Hiyori constantly antagonizes Haru and crew for trying to reach out to him. Keep in mind that he never got this kind of vitriol when he was shown in Starting Days, where he mostly had screen time with his brother Natsuya.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Gou has gained quite the fanbase, probably due to her being catapulted into the Audience Surrogate role for the consistently squeeing fangirls and boys and being a good friend in general.
  • Rei as well. He had a surprisingly large fanbase, despite not appearing in the anime for some time. His introduction episode outing him as an Adorkable Tsundere and part-time Butt-Monkey behind the Stoic Spectacles, as well as his going to bat for the rest of the Iwatobi team when confronting Rin in Iwatobi Swim Club only made him even more popular. And, well...the speedo probably helped.
  • More-or-less Secondary Character (and captain of the Samezuka swim team) Mikoshiba Seijuuro also grew more popular with each episode, for being a Hunky bro of a captain and his puppyish crush on Gou.
  • Aichirou Nitori has gained a following as well.
  • Nothing trumps Uozumi and Minami—if the names don't ring a bell, they're Samezuka's Those Two Guys in Eternal Summer. You'd be forgiven for not even knowing that they had names, but Tumblr fell in love with them instantly.
  • Kisumi, who only briefly showed up in season 2, became incredibly popular enough to appear in the prequel movie, Starting Days and become a major character in season 3. It doesn't help that his name sounds like "kiss me" (cue fan art).
  • Asahi became a fan-favorite, being both the series' closest example of a Stock Shōnen Hero as well as a major source of comic relief. His status as one of the four main characters of the Starting Days movie helped him eventually become integrated into the main cast in Dive to the Future.
  • Ayumu instantly became the most popular of the Iwatobabies simply by being adorable.
  • Isuzu Mikoshiba was very well-received for being an actual female swimmer in a cast with so few of them, not to mention a Gamer Chick who manages to have chemistry with Gou in her short screen time.
  • Albert Wahlander, while only appearing in the last 4 episodes of season three and the sound drama, quickly became memorable for being The Ace but very friendly and smiley, but most importantly, he shares Haru's love for mackerel. (Some even joked that he gets along with Haru so well because he's basically a blond and purple-eyed version of Makoto.)
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Fans of Free and fans of K-On!^note or just about any moe/slice of life anime with lots of cute girls doing cute things, but especially K-On! tend to hate each other's guts. Basically, both sides claim that their favored show is the best thing since sliced bread and the other is shallow pandering and/or personifies everything that is currently wrong with the anime industry. Bonus points if neither side realize that both shows are actually pretty much the exact same thing, except genderswapped.
  • And the Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL fandom, over a misunderstanding where Free! took one of their ship names.
  • One arose with Yuri!!! on Ice when it aired, due to both series being unexpected hits involving sports and having a lot of Ho Yay. If one series is brought up when discussing the other, expect there to be arguments over which show did what better.
• Fandom-Specific Plot:
  • Unrequited love is an incredibly popular prompt in the fanfics regardless of the pairings, although to be fair, this is one of the most popular fanfic prompts in all fandoms, not just Free!!.
  • Thanks to the Future Fish ending, AU fanfics tend to have the boys in the jobs portrayed in that ending. Before that, Transplanted Character Fics set in the "Arabian Nights" Days AU of "Splash Free" were popular.
  • For Haru/Mako doujinshi (and just Haru/Mako, not Mako/Haru), there are a lot of doujins that have Makoto have sex with someone else or faceless mobs while thinking of Haruka, due to unrequited love or other reasons.
• Fanfic Fuel: The ED of Eternal Summer, which shows the cast in different careers, has given rise to multiple alternate universe fanfics - some of them including various pairings the author enjoys.
• Fan Nickname: A number were given to the main cast by the growing fanbase a while before the anime was announced and character personalities established, including:
  • "Tsun" for Haruka, though he turned out to be genuinely more of a Kuudere.
  • "Senpai" or "Sweetie-pie" for Makoto, emphasizing his caring nature.
  • "Shota" for Nagisa, who has the typical (Male) Token Mini-Moe physical aesthetic, if not as exaggerated as some; he's more or less a Cloudcuckoolander, though.
  • "Pimp" ^ExplanationAppeared to be waving to the fans, presumably girls, in the original commercial, and thus identified as a ladies' man. or "Cameron"^Explanation Stands for came-here-for-the-girls-turned-gay for Rin.
  • "Megane" or "Glasses" for Rei when he was first revealed and most were still more comfortable using the nicknames because the anime still had not aired.
  • "Far Left-kun" or "Far Left-kun 2.0" for Seijuurou due to his resemblance to Rei's prototype design.
    • The nickname has also migrated over to Momotarou.
  • The series itself is nicknamed "Swimbros!" or "Gay Swimming Anime."
    • Hilariously enough, if you simply put "free" into Google images, you get pictures of a red button with the word "free" written on it, but if you put in "gay swimming anime" pictures from the show come up, along with the anime Tsuritama.
    • Tsuritama is sometimes referred to as 'The Gay Fishing Anime', so this makes sense.
  • "Anime Macklemore" for Goro, due to their similar look.
  • "Minishiba" for Momotarou, due to being Seijuuro's younger brother
  • "Eternal Suffering" for the second season (especially after Episode 9), due to the series undergoing Cerebus Syndrome.
  • "The Iwatobabies" for the new Iwatobi first-years in Dive to the Future.
• Fanon: After seeing this screenshot◊ in Eternal Summer episode 13 many fans think that it shows the Iwatobi gang's parents. The couple in the upper left are Nagisa's parents, the couple in the bottom right are Rei's parents and the couple talking to Makoto's parents are Haruka's parents.
• Franchise Original Sin: The most contentious points of the latter two seasons, that of forgotten promises with childhood friends that came back into the protagonists' lives, was done in the first season too— with Rin, who kind of kicked the trend off. Although in that season, fans were more accepting of it because the show portrayed how unhealthy Rin's obsession with his original goal was, and he got a healthy calling out on it by quite a few people. The third season on the other hand was much less well-received, as: it's not necessary to force Ikuya into an angst role, Hiyori is quite disliked for blaming everything on Haru, and the fans had already had enough of this plot type with Rin and Sousuke. Thankfully, the last four episodes managed to help gaining back the fans' interest.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Attack on Titan, curiously enough. Probably has to do with the fact that both are the most anticipated/hyped/controversial show of their respective seasons. See also Memetic Mutation below.
  • Free! fans also seems to be in good terms with Haikyuu!! fans, as it's not uncommon for Free! fans to be fans of Haikyuu (and vice versa). It's also worth noting that both Free! and Haikyuu help contribute to the revived interest of sports anime in North America. ^note Since sports anime historically sold poorly in North America
  • With Yuri!!! on Ice as well, despite the Fandom Rivalry above.
  • Considering that most of the main English cast as well as Rin and Momotarou's Japanese voice actors all play a role in Ouran High School Host Club, and the fact that both series feature a group of attractive male characters, it was only inevitable that fans of both series would get along with each other.
  • Despite the Fandom Rivalry, some fans of K-On!, do get along with fans of the other series, due to Free! essentially being a Gender swapped Darker and Edgier version of K-On! with swimming.
• Genius Bonus: The "See You Next Water Time" card at the end of Season 1 episode 11, showing Rin in front of the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Sydney Opera House, could easily be construed as just a visual short hand for Australia, bordering on Eiffel Tower Effect. However, it is the actual view from the North Sydney Olympic Pool.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Makoto is well-liked by the English-speaking fandom as a whole, but seems especially popular on /a/.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Rei's hilariously overdramatic "death" in the OVA became this when just a few months later, Daisuke Hirakawa played another popular supporting Smart Guy who lays a trap of strings gets killed by a blond, but for real this time. The gush of water from his body even makes it look like the shot went right through him like The World's fist.
  • Hey, remember those drowning anime jokes from earlier? They became real in Episode 5.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One fanfic written after the end of Season 1 correctly predicted a red-headed energetic newcomer to the Free! cast who was a relative to one of the canon characters. Even the character's motif animal, the sea otter, was predicted! ^{Fun Fact}At least, initially. His motif animal has since changed to a sea horse after Momotaro's reveal. Other than that, the only difference between Momotaro and the fic's character is that the relative there was the beta for Rei, Kaede, repurposed as Haru's cousin.
  • Rei Ryugazaki is a tall, muscular, bespectacled, bluish-haired guy, who is voiced by J. Michael Tatum in the dub, similar to Tenya Iida and the resemblance got even more striking when the Class 1-A students went for some resistance training at UA High's swimming pool and Iida put on his swimming costume.
• Ho Yay: Now, with a page of its own! Caution! Entries have unmarked spoilers.
• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming: Rin/Haru is also known as "Sharkbait".
• Incest Yay Shipping: Before Dive to the Future, the majority of Japanese fans shipped Ikuya with Natsuya due to the former's attachment to the latter. Due to the ship's longevity, it is still the most popular shipping option with Ikuya.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Rin in the first seaason. He acts like a massive prick towards both his old and current teammates, and is rather aloof towards his little sister, but his obsession with beating Haru, his grief over his father's death, and his moments that prove he's more a Jerk with a Heart of Gold make him quite sympathetic.
  • Sousuke as well, especially once it's revealed that he has a shoulder injury.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Can be argued for most of the main characters. Kisumi is now under this category too since he made his first appearance in the anime in episode 8 of the second season.
• LGBT Fanbase: While the series is mainly aimed at a female audience, it's attracted plenty of gay male fans as well, likely due to the Cast Full of Pretty Boys being more muscular than in most anime. Makoto and Sousuke are particularly well liked, with Makoto coming in second in a poll for "The Most Wanted Anime Boyfriend" as voted by gay men.
• Memetic Mutation: Now with a page of its own!
• Moe:
  • Gou is quite adorable, especially when she gets excited.
  • Makoto and Nagisa also certainly qualify, as well as Rin's first roommate, Nitori Aiichirou.
  • All of the kids when they were younger.
  • The third season brings us Romio Hayahune and Ayumu Kunikida, the latter who instantly became an Ensemble Dark Horse.
• Narm:
  • The opening to the third season is over-the-top with its angsty imagery and heavy metal music, complete with Haru going completely Super Saiyan in one scene.
  • Mikhail and Ryuji are revealed out of absolutely nowhere to somehow be Nitori's uncle and Shizuru's relative respectively. Contrived Coincidence doesn't even begin to describe it.
  • Albert Wahlånder seems to have been voiced by a text-to-speech program, his voice acting is so bland. Not at all suitable for the world champion of college swimming.
• Narm Charm: This show takes swimming waayy to seriously, but that's kind of the point and the fans love it.
  • The Eternal Summer OVA is made of this, treating a squirt gun fight like The Hunger Games. And it is glorious.
• Never Live It Down: From the way it's talked about on the Internet, you could be forgiven for assuming the show is nothing but a plotless collection of scenes where guys take their shirts off.
• One-Scene Wonder: Despite appearing in less than 10 seconds and only in the first episode, Captain Haruka is surprisingly popular with Japanese fans (perhaps due to just how OOC he is compared to the usual Haruka.) There are at least a dozen doujinshis about him.
• Periphery Demographic:
  • Despite being an obviously female-oriented series, it has nonetheless its share of straight male fans. As said above, they tend to be drawn to the humor aspects.
  • And there's a large number of animation enthusiasts who watch it just how beautifully animated the water is.
  • There's also the LGBT Fanbase, as the numerous good-looking, muscular male characters have attracted plenty of gay and bisexual men.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Though Sousuke is still somewhat of a Base-Breaking Character, The Reveal at the end of Episode 8 followed by his scenes in Episode 9 and Episode 10 caused a lot of fans who previously disliked Sousuke to change their minds and brought out a lot of sympathy for him.
  • Toono Hiyori is... not very popular, to put it lightly, due to his rather unlikeable behavior in the first 5 episodes by being a massive Jerkass to Haru and the others. While The Reveal of his Dark and Troubled Past has helped in gaining him some sympathy, he was still a major Base-Breaking Character, as a lot of fans feel that his past doesn't justify the way he behaved before, not to mention that he never apologizes to Haru. However, in the Road to the World movie, the scene where when Kinjou is bullying him and mocking the others’ swimming, prompting him to angrily say that Kinjou will never be able to beat Haru’s swimming has truly made him a lot more likable in the fans’ eyes.
• Seasonal Rot: General consensus is that Dive to the Future is inferior to the previous seasons, even among its defenders. The overly crowded cast with too much focus on controversial new characters is usually cited as the main reason.
• Sequel Displacement: There aren't a lot of people who actually knew that Free! was based off the High☆Speed! (2013) series, rather than the other way around. It doesn't help that that series' second novel was adapted as a Free! prequel movie.
• Ship Mates: Gou/Seijuuro is not only a cute pairing, but it takes Gou away from the slashable team guys without going the Die for Our Ship ways.
  • You can also see some Gou/Chigusa shipping around.
  • Makoto/Haruka fans who don't hate Rin tend to pair him with Nitori or Sousuke.
  • And Rei/Nagisa goes well with everything.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: The Free fic with the most kudos in Archive of Our Own is Sousuke/Makoto, and there are currently more Soumako fanfic than there are of Sourin. The pairing is also quite popular with gay male fans, likely because out of all the characters they're the ones who best qualify as Hunks. Before ES 14, Sousuke and Makoto had only ever interacted in High Speed 2, where Makoto was speaking for Haru. They finally interact in season 3, having a phone conversation. Road to the World adds a scene where they actually talk face-to-face. The Final Stroke has the two finally having a proper conversation in Tokyo and Sousuke training under Nao and Makoto's supervision and the two start growing closer.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat:
  • Tensions between Rin/Haruka and Makoto/Haruka shippers had been brewing through Episodes 1-5, but after Episode 6 it seems the sparks of animosity have ignited between the two groups. It got worse in season 2.
  • New^ishhe's a returning character from High Speed! character Sousuke inspired this in record time. He's got a childhood connection to Rin, meaning RinHaru shippers feel threatened by the potential existence of new ship SouRin. Some even pre-emptively accused MakoHaru shippers of Pairing the Spares so Rin won't be a threat to MakoHaru. Bear in mind that at the point in time these feelings erupted, this character had only been introduced in the promotional material for season 2. He didn't even have a canon color scheme yet.
  • Of course, this works both ways. Since Sousuke had only appeared in promotional material, they really had no way of knowing what he would be like in-story. Even so, people (mainly MakoHaru shippers) were eager to pair him off with Rin. The day Sousuke was announced (within the hour, in fact), quite a few MakoHaru fans on Twitter declared that Sousuke would destroy RinHaru and preemptively declared RinHaru as sunk.
• Sophomore Slump: Inverted. The second season is generally considered the best entry in the franchise.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Come from the Depth, which plays when Albert Wåhlander first swims appears to use the exact same synth as the title theme of Stranger Things.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Free!'s original director, Hiroko Utsumi, left Kyoto Animation after Eternal Summer to work on Banana Fish, and she is succeeded by Eisaku Kawanami, who went onto direct Starting Days, Timeless Medley, Take Your Marks, and Dive to the Future. As Kawanami is a male director who doesn't have as much experience compared to Utsumi, his direction is criticized in the way he handled humor and fan service.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A lot of fans lament the fact that Dive to the Future took the Haru/Ikuya issue way too long, so much that it took 8 episodes out of the entire 12 and wasn't even very well-received as mentioned in Franchise Original Sin above, and the more interesting subplot with Albert and Kinjou was only briefly elaborated on in the very last episodes.
  • After the intense build-up and reveal of Sousuke's Career-Ending Injury in Eternal Summer, he is Demoted to Extra in Dive to the Future, with his surgery being completed off-screen with no follow-up.
• Values Dissonance:
  • A good part of the discussions over the end chalk up to the very Japanese mindset that goes by the "team above everything" mentality. For the Japanese, Rei's decision to let Rin have his spot for the relay was the most selfless and kind action he could ever pull, making him the hero of the day and possibly even more of a team member than before; for the Westerners, it's completely unfair as it's seen to stunt Rei's reason to even be there and it totally derails his character and motivation.
  • That said, the Season 1 finale had a huge whiplash in the Japanese fandom as well, and there were just as many Japanese fans as Western fans who were disappointed and thought that it was incredibly unfair toward Rei. Many of them were upset that we never saw any of the other characters appreciating Rei's sacrifice (not even a "thanks") and that this made Rei seem like he was ultimately just an outsider in the Rin drama. There are lots of "fix-it" fanart on Pixiv and similar image hosting websites set during season 1 of the other characters apologizing to Rei, and lots of fanfic where he angsts about how, after everything, the team still chose Rin over him.
  • Eternal Summer has a bit of an Author's Saving Throw for this when Rei goes to Rin for training where Rin admits to Rei that he feels like he owes him for his Heroic Sacrifice and later tells Sousuke that while they are from different teams, Rei is still his friend.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Ayumu initially caused this when a magazine revealed the new Iwatobi first years in Dive to the Future. She has short hair, a young appearance, and her voice actress is no stranger to Cross-Dressing Voices, not to mention that names rarely indicate gender in this series.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: All over the original PV, especially the gorgeous water animation and highly attractive male anatomy.
  • The animation quality for Dive to the Future is a huge improvement over the already detailed and colorful Eternal Summer.