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Catching Up With Free!

Can we stop pedalling this idea that Free! became a TV anime because of the short PV that came out a few months earlier? First of all it's impossible to make an anime that quickly and second of all, I don't think yelling loud enough is enough to get a studio to make you an anime. It was both an animation showcase and the first PV for Free!, not some beginning of a kick-starter.

The very existence of Free! - Iwatobi Swim Club is a testament to the power of anime fandom. It started life as a 30-second TV advertisement intended to advertise Kyoto Animation and sub-studio Animation DO. The commercial, consisting of four muscular young men cavorting around a pool in jackets and skintight swimsuits captured the imaginations of female fans all over the world… along with a whole lot of complaining from certain segments of Kyoto Animation's fanbase, but the positive reaction was overwhelming. The characters, who had previously been pretty faces with no personality or story behind them, received elaborate backstories, relationships, and story arcs at the hands of women fans. Crunchyroll even created a petition to get it converted into a full series.

It worked, and the full anime project was announced a year later. While some people believe the TV spot was a calculated marketing move to build hype for a series they were planning on making anyway, it still never would have happened without an enthusiastic and vocal fan reaction.

"To start, I was asked if I wanted to make High Speed!, one of the Encouragement award winners in the second Kyoto Animation Award, into an anime by the producers."

Storyline:

(Beginning)

In elementary school, Haruka, Makoto, Tadashi(*1), and their friend from a year below, Nagisa, all go to the same swimming club.
Besides swimming, they all have girlish names.
After being eliminated in the medley relay at the end of 6th year, they each go their own ways.

(Development)

Dreaming of swimming at the Olympics, Tadashi enrolls at a foreign elite swimming school.
As Haruka and Makoto go to a different district for middle school, they don’t meet Nagisa.
Since there was no real swimming club for them to join after middle school, Haruka and Makoto entered into ordinary school lives.

(Twists)

Tadashi returns from overseas, but he’s not the same Tadashi as before.
One night he meets Haruka and Makoto at a pool and overwhelms them with his ability.
Haruka and Makoto won’t let it end there. They begin to take swimming seriously again.
Nagisa enters their high school as they become second years. All the members (except Yui) are back together again.
With Nagisa’s friend, Kaede, the four begin to practice together.

Haruka has an accident in a river due to overtraining. Upon seeing his accident, Makoto has a flashback to a traumatic event during elementary school and becomes scared of the water.
Nagisa hits a wall in his training. Kaede wavers joining the track and field club, who invites him.
Starting with Nagisa overcoming his hall, everyone gets through their issues and appear at the summer tournament.

(Conclusion)

Despite it being a close race, Haruka’s team narrowly loses to Tadashi’s team and are eliminated in the second round. Everyone is satisfied with their efforts.
Haruka and Tadashi acknowledge each other’s skills. They prepare themselves with new effort for the next tournament in their third year. Their second summer as high schools end like this.

(Epilogue)

Tadashi transfers to Haruka’s school. He joins the swimming club and they become 5-strong. In order to achieve the dreams they couldn’t achieve when they were elementary schoolers, they jump into the pool again today.

*1: Tadashi was Rin’s name at the beginning.

*2: This was the basis of the character who became Rei. At that time, he was called “Kaede”.

Free!’s beginning
In 2011, the original draft for the TV series Free! and Free! -Eternal Summer-, High Speed!, was awarded one of the “2nd Kyoto Animation Award Honorable Mention” prizes for its manuscript. At first, it met the conditions to be animated, but there were countless discussions about whether any animation planning could truly come to fruition given the characteristic atmosphere and expressions of the manuscript, the main characters’ ages, and foremost, the water motif. Also, from a producer’s point of view, it would take time to find the assumed target audience, medium form, and publicity form based on the characteristics of that manuscript.
At that moment, the woman with a passion for male characters and who had grown to excel at depicting subtleties, Hiroko Utsumi (director and genga staff member at Animation Do), presented a plan. By luck of encountering someone who swam in their high school days, the planning began to take a concrete form bit by bit.

Early Days of High Speed!
While the submitted manuscript for High Speed! was in consultation for being brushed up for publication by the KA Esuma Bunko, the animation planning team was formed. Centered around Hiroko Utsumi and scenario writer Masahiro Yokotani, the staff members would meet monthly to discuss how plans were being implemented.
The utmost worry of the planning meetings was the age of the main characters. If the anime were to have elementary school male characters as protagonists in a late night TV broadcast slot, it was thought that the target audience would be immensely small and it would be difficult to gain widespread reception for the show.
It was there that the High Speed! media mix plan was developed. High Speed! would be published as a novel from the KA Esuma Bunko while the animation would depict a story where the characters based on the novel would have advanced to high school. The project began to move on two sides to lively disseminate the appeal of the work using the novel, which held the profound nucleus, and the TV animation, which was able to widely disperse the universe to more people.
And then it was May 2012. As a way to see how “male high school swimmers” would be received, the temporary designs drawn by Hiroko Utsumi were published onto Animation Do’s corporate site unannounced. It was from the response that was received for these illustrations that the animation planning for High Speed! was formally decided to advance.

Free! prototype

Various methods were needed to portray and produce the first production centered around male high schoolers produced by Kyoto Animation and Animation Do. One part of that was the “Kyoto Animation Business CM -Swimming Ver-” commercial which publicly engraved itself as “A New Challenge.” Following the broadcast of the prototype footage produced by Free!’s main staff, there was a greater than expected response with many, many, requests for it to be made into a TV series.
The CM’s character designs were brush-ups of the initial designs director Hiroko Usumi made for Free!. Together with Futoshi Nishiya, they tried many things such as adjusting head heights and adding fearless facial expressions. In order to get a female point of view of the characters, they thoroughly included a summary of opinions from the female staff members.

Hi, I edited this piece - apologies for the error, I wasn't personally familiar with the production history of Free!. I've edited the piece to remove all speculation.

Re: High Speed!, the film isn't available in English yet and the article was working with official sources only. We'll update this piece once Funimation releases it.

Re: High Speed!, the film isn't available in English yet and the article was working with official sources only. We'll update this piece once Funimation releases it.

Their old friend Kisumi - rather, Makoto's friend, since Haru never really cared for him - and his uncle. When they finally find a place, conveniently located right by a public pool, the camera lingers on his new neighbor, a silver-haired boy who will doubtless be important in the coming season.

The final segment is a series of comedic misunderstandings, as the Samezuka team hopes to throw a goodbye party for Rin. Gou's roundabout questions make him think she's dating Momotaro, and he challenges Momotaro to a race for his little sister's virginity.

There are couple issues with the review for Take Your Marks.

Quote:

Their old friend Kisumi - rather, Makoto's friend, since Haru never really cared for him - and his uncle. When they finally find a place, conveniently located right by a public pool, the camera lingers on his new neighbor, a silver-haired boy who will doubtless be important in the coming season.

I think there's part of the sentence missing in that bit about Kisumi. Also the silver-haired boy is not Haru's new neighbor, he's the person who just moved out of the apartment Haru is moving into.