Impression
If last week was a Rei episode, then this was very much a Samezuka episode. More specifically, there was a lot of focus on Rin and Sousuke, and on how their ideals continue to diverge despite them remaining great friends. It’s a pragmatic and somewhat harsh approach, but I can sort of see where Sousuke is coming from – something like training for a relay could divert Rin’s attention away from his other goal of continuous self-improvement, which would help him achieve his dream far more easily. And I do agree that swimming is by and large an individual sport, whereby your reliance on yourself is the only assured key to victory – much like many track events or tennis. There are team-type versions of these sports, but it still remains different from something like football or rugby. Of course, other sports series have gone out of their way to destroy that notion completely – Yowamushi Pedal and Chihayafuru being recent examples. The latter even mentioned something along the lines of “a team match is an individual match, while an individual match is a team match”, while Yowapeda is stuffed full of team-orientated feels. And in the end, discarding your friends is a really bad idea – if Rin runs into a wall and finds himself alone like he did in Australia, it won’t be fun trying to pick himself up again and keep moving forward all by himself. Though Sousuke says he wants to understand where Rin’s coming from and participate in a relay with him once more, I’m not sure how that’ll turn out in practice.
There are still a couple of challenges for Samezuka’s relay team beyond Rin and Sousuke’s differences – in terms of actual swimming ability, that is. While Mikoshiba and Nitori seem like shoe-ins for backstroke and breaststroke purely because of plot armour, they’ve been pretty inconsistent thus far. A relay relies on the strength of all members, after all – Rin and Sousuke can’t hold up the rest of the team by themselves, and with two lagging members they’ll get curbstomped by Iwatobi. Nitori’s improving, at least, and I have a feeling that Mikoshiba’s growth curve will be filled with Gou-related incentives.
Meanwhile, Iwatobi spent a lot of the episode worrying about nutrition issues and their lack of a balanced diet, which was fun but slightly pointless. Also, I’m not sure how seriously I should be taking it all – I have a feeling that Gou’s true agenda involved something to do with building their muscles. If anything, this would represent their own way of preparing for the prefecturals and getting their act together – it’s not like they have to select team members for various events, and unlike the first season I doubt they’ll be holding a training camp in order to prove themselves. Things are heating up now, and we’re rapidly moving towards the first real competition we’ve had from this series in a while – let’s see how far Iwatobi get this time, now that they’ve been lifted of that unwritten curse in sports shows where the protagonists never get anywhere in their first year of competition.
Eva will be back by next week, but it’s been fun blogging this! Free is an odd guilty pleasure show for me, and you can bet I’ll be watching it all the way to the end.