Considerations This is a spoilerfree review. This review covers only the first season on Free 80 in my view means a very good media. Ive reduced the number of images and gifs so it can stay spoilerfree. The Story The story is centered around Haru a boy who in elementary school used to swim with his friends and win a lot of competitions. But suddenly when Haru starts middle school he quits the swimming club and swimming competitively. Haru is now a secondyear high schooler and his friends from elementary school are trying to create a swimming club and bring Haru back to the pools. Its difficult for me to write a synopsis for Free Because theres a lot of drama involving each character as well as many conflicts and things that you only understand as you progress through the series. What I can easily say from the story is that it covers way more than the usual sports anime. First they start looking for prefectures instead of directly aiming for nationals which leaves a lot of room for personal improvement for each character. They also focus a lot on the mentality and emotions of each character. Its not only focused on the sports aspect. Another point for the sports aspect is that they cover medleys a combination of four different swimmers in one race in addition to individuals. So you get both individual development and team development. Really nice. The Animation KyoAni outdid themselves with this work. There are a lot of angles when covering the swimming part. They use front back top and bottom views to give you full immersion. They also use depth perspective to give you an impression of speed when showing the frontal part. The swimming is very well animated. 420https://64.media.tumblr.com/e5be2e1415acd983bb9ae9ba0f45fa4a/tumblrms9mhrS1hO1rydwbvo1500.gif An example of a fantastic angle I know that as soon as you bring Free into some conversation people start talking about how they picture muscles and everything and can be even taxed as a girls sport anime but in my opinion that could not be far from the reality. Yes they portray a lot of muscle scenes and muscular men but they also emphasize the importance of building your body having endurance and how a swimmer builds their body which is valid. 420https://i.pin.com/originals/c3/4e/8c/c34e8cdd1aad9ce5deeb136683e91969.gif Example of how muscles are portrait on Free Backgrounds characters and everything else are very well animated and I personally couldnt find anything really bad about it. The Characters I really like the character aspect of Free. Every character has their own unique style. As with any sports anime we have the extroverted the introverted the energetic/angry and so on. I like how they also show the foundation of the core characters mentality by going back and forth between the present and the past. Each character is unique and nicely done. The main character Haru has a really nice development during the season and its really nice to watch as he grows. Conclusion If youre like me you skip everything and read only the conclusion because you dont want to get spoiled with other themes. So I will try to be brief on this point: Watch it. Free They have all the good points that you can expect from a sports anime. Training competitions physical and emotional development. Combine that with a really nice soundtrack animation and character designs and youve got a really steady show to watch.