English Dub Review: Free! Dive to the Future “The Grab Start of Hope!”

“That sounds like a samurai.”

 

Overview (Spoilers!) 

Isuzo tells Makoto that Haru was no match for Albert, who people refer to as the “Odin of the swimming world.” Apparently, anyone who swims against him “feels like their minds are being torn apart.” Wow, intense.

Rin meets up with Sosuke at a coffee shop and gives us… yet more recap. Yawn. He does gift Sosuke a funny shirt, though. Sosuke tells Rin that his surgery went well, in a surprisingly emotional moment. Rin tries to pretend he’s not crying.

At the kids’ practice, Makoto tells Nao… literally everything we already knew about Haru. Makoto wonders what he can do to keep Haru from dwelling on his loss, and Nao suggests that he might be good as a trainer, in a job where he can support swimmers one-on-one.

Nagisa calls Makoto from a party at Iwatobi. Both he and Rei get to go to Nationals! Shizuru reveals that Ryuuji is his uncle? Afterward, Rin and Makoto go to the aquarium together, and Rin tells Makoto about Sosuke’s surgery and meeting Natsuya. Makoto tells Rin about Haru competing in the IM. Okay, okay, we already know this, thanks.

Makoto and Rin visit Haru at practice; Ryuuji wants Haru to focus on fundamentals, but Haru feels that would be going backward. Makoto is able to make Haru understand by employing mackerel as a metaphor. Haru explains to Rin what it felt like to swim with Albert—like he wasn’t really swimming at all. Rin tells Haru how excited he is to swim with him. As his friends aim at the global level, Makoto feels left out. Ryuuji tells him that he quit swimming because of trouble with his mental game, but that he wanted to be a coach to stay involved with swimming. He thinks Haru could be even better than he once was.

Trying out Nao’s advice, Makoto gives Misaki a massage and a pep talk (which sounds a lot weirder than it is in the actual scene). Misaki swims against his rival Natsume and is delighted to discover it feels the same as when they swam together as kids. Natsume beats Misaki, but the two cheerfully congratulate each other. Makoto asks Nao for more details about becoming a trainer. Meanwhile, the Iwatobi boys head for Tokyo.

Our Take

I’m torn. On the one hand, I feel like Haru in the wake of Ryuuji’s advice—this show has definitely moved backward. Gone are the exciting, dramatic emotional revelations in favor of, once again, endless scenes where characters just talk about stuff the audience already knows. On the other hand, this episode finally gave Makoto his time to shine, which is exactly what I said I wanted in my last review. So… 50% success?

Man, this episode got Makoto right. Last week, I was wondering if he missed the competitive swimming world—so it’s super gratifying when he finds another way to rejoin at the global level, just like his friends. The idea that Makoto needs to be a trainer and help athletes with their mental game one-on-one is so perfect for him, and it’s heartwarming to watch him get so much joy just from supporting his friends. In a subtle but compelling visual metaphor, at the episode’s beginning, Makoto finds a ladybug on his hand. When he decides to be a trainer and focus on supporting the greatest athletes in the world, we see the ladybug fly high into the sky, presumably (and metaphorically) because of Makoto’s excellent support. And even the new nicknames Gou gives Makoto and Haru—which Romio decides to make them sound like a prince and a samurai—are befitting of the way Makoto supports and protects Haru from behind the scenes.

This episode also employs some fun, new visual techniques. When Makoto pictures Odin, we see the god as a dramatic silhouette, his one eye sparkling in a dark and ominous face. When Ryuuji explains an athletic theory, his face is cast in sharp pink-and-black relief, with silhouettes of various classical Japanese figures in the background. This aesthetic can be kind of overdramatic, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I enjoy the theatrics that it adds to these scenes. Although the idea that Albert makes swimmers feel like their minds are being torn apart? That’s so intense I can’t help but laugh. It’s just too ridiculous for me to take seriously, and I think I’m supposed to see Albert as a serious threat.

There’s some great comedy in this episode, though, particularly amongst the Iwatobi kids. Ayumu’s latest one-liner doesn’t disappoint—she says that Rei has improved at swimming so quickly that she wonders if he’s possessed. Rei’s character development is an underrated part of this season, and I love that the once hyper-serious boy is now able to joke with her. I only wish we had more time to spend with him—to be frank, Rei was my favorite character in Free! seasons one and two, and I really miss his antics with Nagisa.

It’s a little hard for me to connect to Haru’s arc in this episode, though. I get that losing would rattle him, but enough that he didn’t answer his phone for two weeks? That’s a level of competitiveness I don’t really understand, perhaps because I’m not much of an athlete myself. The way it’s presented is a bit confusing, too—we see Makoto tell several characters that he’s worried about Haru and can’t get in touch with him, but since we don’t know how long it’s been, I assumed it had just been a day or so and Makoto was worried for nothing. It’s not until Makoto arrives at Haru’s practice that we learn he’s been AWOL for two weeks, a necessary fact that lends the scene a lot more gravitas and should be have been conveyed to us sooner.

Speaking of Makoto’s worry for Haru—who is that guy he tells about it, when the two are sitting on a bench outside his college? That’s a new, unnamed character we’ve never seen before. That guy’s whole meaningless two-second existence sums up much of the problems with this series—in so many scenes, it doesn’t even matter who’s talking to each other. Characters fill airtime by relaying what we already know back and forth, and their individual personalities and arcs are irrelevant because these scenes add nothing to the narrative. I wish Dive to the Future had figured that out by now.

That being said, I enjoy the Makoto storyline a lot, and the scene between Rin and Sosuke, if a bit recap-heavy, is genuinely emotional. This episode isn’t perfect, but it has a good heart.