Free -Dive to the Future- Episode 10 Review: The Grab Start of Hope

Your Otaku Friend in Japan

This episode gave me a lot of warm fuzzy feelings, which I did not expect, especially after my boy Haru’s crushing defeat last episode… But, this is Free! we’re talking about, so there’s always somegut-wrenchingg emotional moment just around the corner…

Plot

After losing to Alex in the friendly race, Haru doubles down on his training. Meanwhile, Rin is recently back from Sydney and he is making the rounds, visiting old friends. After seeing his friends working so hard for the All Japan Invitational, Makoto questions his own path in life…

Episode Highlights

Rin and Sosuke’s Chat: Free is full of emotional moments, but the sweet moment between Sousuke and Rin takes the cake. It’s like no time has passed and they just fall back into the same stride, teasing each other and being vulnerable with one another… it’s cute.

Makoto Speaks Haru: Azuma spends hours trying to explain a swimming technique to Haru, but it completely goes over his head. That is until Makoto steps in and explains it in terms Haru understands. Hint, it involves Mackerel.

Themes & Trivia

Odin: Alex is known as the Odin of Swimming. Odin is one of the gods in Norse mythology and the King of Asgard. While Makoto correctly recounts that Odin is God of battle and death, Odin is also associated with wisdom, healing, and sorcery, as well as a whole host of other things.

Ladybug: When Makoto is having one of his obligatory Free internal monologues, a ladybug lands on his hand. In many cultures, ladybugs are seen as a sign of good luck.

‘Shuhari’ (守破離): Is a concept that describes the stages a person must go through to ascend from merely learning something to complete mastery.

Shu (守) is ‘upholding the fundamentals’- traditional wisdom
Ha (破) is ‘breaking tradition’- detachment from tradition
Ri (離) is ‘transcendence’

Comments

There were a lot of great character moments in this week’s episode all of which just happened to involve Rin (which is especially surprising seeing as I never really cared for Rin all that much). I especially loved seeing Rin and Makoto hang out, even though their trip to the aquarium looked a hell of a lot like a date, but, I mean, this is Free after all. I’m also glad that we finally got a resolution for Sousuke’s surgery drama. Season three spent so much time on the Haru/Ikuya drama, I was afraid we were gonna have to wait until the last episode to get anything concrete on that.

I’m curious to see how they deal with Haru’s recent loss with only 2 episodes left, I can’t help but feel like this is what the season should have focused more on early on, rather than the silly character drama… but, alas….

Keep Moving Forward

This was another solid episode. The focus was again on the swimming with the character-driven moments serving that end. Of course there were the usual monologues and declarations of love for swimming, but, somehow, it seemed less cheesy than usual. All in all, a rather enjoyable episode.

I’ll be back next week with another Free! Dive to the Future review, but in the meantime, be sure to check out MANGA.TOKYO’s other amazing Summer 2018 reviews!!

NEXT TIME: Streamline of Unity