English Dub Review: Free! Dive to the Future “Interference of Loss!”

A formidable villain appears!

Overview (Spoilers!)

Haru, Makoto, and Asahi arrive at Ikuya’s college, determined to apologize to their old friend. After a silly run-in with Ikuya’s teammate Terashima, the gang is intercepted by Hiyori, who tells them that Ikuya is swimming on his own. The three friends eat lunch in the Shimogami cafeteria, where they have another awkward run-in with the mysterious stubbled man from Haru’s first-year tournament.

At practice, Ikuya is still tormented by images of himself drowning, and he nearly sinks under the water. He has been rereading a picture book of The Little Mermaid and equates himself to the main character, who had to sacrifice greatly in order to obtain her goals.

Haru, Makoto, and Asahi return to the pool, but Hiyori stops them yet again; he believes that they don’t have the right to talk to Ikuya after the way they treated him. Hiyori challenges Haru to a race for Ikuya’s friendship—but because Hiyori’s specialty is backstroke, Makoto agrees to race him instead.

Meanwhile, the Iwatobi Swim Club plans a training camp with the swim clubs from Samezuka and Soufuukan. Ai and Gou both inform Sosuke, who has been cleared to swim again after his shoulder injury. Makoto and Haru encounter Misaki—a young boy they met while apartment hunting—and discover that he still doesn’t have a swim coach.

Makoto and Hiyori race; although it’s a close match, Hiyori is the victor. He informs the others that Ikuya had another serious near-drowning incident while studying abroad in high school. Hiyori smiles as he ominously tells Haru, “People you swim with all seem to end up suffering, don’t they?”

Our Take 

This season of Free! has found its antagonist, and what an antagonist he is! Makoto tells his friends, “There’s something about [Hiyori] that doesn’t seem right,” and I couldn’t agree more—in the very best possible way. Hiyori is deliciously menacing, not least because of Jason Liebrecht’s stellar voice work. The seemingly innocent line “But I’m his best friend” sent chills down my spine because of Liebrecht’s creepy-as-hell delivery. Bravo.

I’m thrilled to say that this episode has a lot more drive than previous installments of Dive to the Future. Instead of recap and aimless searching, there is oodles of emotional conflict. Yay!

Ikuya’s arc becomes much more complex now that we know what role Hiyori plays in his life. I thought he was pushing himself to swim alone because of his experience in middle school, but now we learn that Hiyori serves as a quiet manipulator behind the scenes of Ikuya’s world. Ikuya believes that he should devote himself to swimming and swear off the Iwatobi boys’ friendship because Hiyori wants him to.

It’s difficult to suss out Hiyori’s motivations for sure, but there are so many possibilities—He wants to be Ikuya’s only friend because he’s jealous? He wants Ikuya to swim well, even at the cost of Ikuya’s mental health? He earnestly believes that no one is worthy of being Ikuya’s friend unless they’re as talented at swimming as he is? Or is Hiyori really, earnestly just trying to protect his friend from the people who hurt him? Probably it’s a mix of a few of these, and I love the complexity that this episode brings to Hiyori’s character.

Through his metaphor, Ikuya becomes a deeper character as well. I love the choice of The Little Mermaid here. Most of us are familiar with the Disney version, a story where Ariel easily achieves her happily ever after. But in Ikuya’s book, every step that Ariel takes on land causes her agonizing pain, it’s a great analogy for the emotional pain that Ikuya is in. I love that he’s slowly realizing that the sacrifices he made in the name of swimming are perhaps too much for him to bear. Or should I say… he realizes that the loss of emotional connections is interfering with his swimming. Har dee har har.

The Mermaid sequence features a shift in artwork, and Free! becomes a slideshow of storybook-like illustrations. The scenes are partially blurred to make them appear more waterlogged and fantastical, and though I get what this is trying to do, the effects make the images difficult to see or appreciate in full. When Ikuya’s reading of the book is interspersed with Hiyori and Makoto’s race, however, I’m on the edge of my seat. And of course, it’s great to see Makoto swim again!

“Interference of Loss!” also sets up the potential for Haru’s emotional growth because of the bomb that Hiyori drops on him. Poor Haru probably doesn’t need more guilt about his behavior in middle school, but I’m super excited to see him do more than look for Ikuya in future episodes.

Despite its serious subject matter, there’s some pretty on-point comedy in this episode, too. Terashima’s dismay at his nickname “Archerfish” continues to be hilarious, and I chuckled out loud at Asahi’s derision of a film called A Rat’s Life 2 (perhaps a less charming spin-off of Ratatouille?). The stubbled man, too, offers some welcome comic relief in the form of advising the gang on what food to order in the cafeteria (of course, he does so in the creepiest possible way).

Yet this episode can’t seem to break away from the Dive to the Future mold completely—we do have to sit through a few scenes that purely recap. Haru and Asahi explain their relationship with Ikuya to their college team, a relationship that’s already perfectly clear to the viewers. Sosuke learns that he’s cleared to swim (didn’t we learn that in episode 1, though?) and tells Gou so in the very next scene. Although I guess she also tells him about the training camp—one scene after Ai and Momo discuss it.

And there’s still a fair share of our good boys trying to work out the ever-interesting logistics of how they’re going to run into Ikuya. (Last episode? They didn’t know what days he had off from practice. This week’s thrilling saga? They don’t know what department of the university he’s in.)

Despite a few less-than-exciting moments, this episode really raised the stakes for this series, and I’m so, so glad. The main theme of the season—the conflict between pursuing a sport and pursuing friendships—was brought to the forefront, not least because of Mikoshiba’s speech to the Hidaka University swim team. “There’s more than one way to make yourself stronger,” says Mikoshiba. “Everything that you gain from the people in your past makes you a better version of yourself today. Practicing’s important, but plenty of other things in life are more important.”

After this episode? Maybe of one of those more important things is watching Free!.

Score
8.0/10