This Is So Wholesome UwU

This is so wholesome UwU

How it started

How it ended

any other writers out there ever read a paragraph of your own work and just, in the least self centered way possible, think

fuck, i’m such a good writer.

if you haven’t, that day will come eventually, i promise. but until then, keep writing whatever your little working brain tells you, because one day you’ll consider it a masterpiece or absolute shit that’ll make you laugh and realize just how far you’ve come.

keep writing words so your future self has stuff to look back on and either compare to current wips, or to reminisce on. words are permanent as long as you let them be.

aaaaaahhhhhHHHHH Baby

here's some smiling haiji to bless you all.

i hope you all have a happy and safe christmas!

I know I said I'd post some Sousuke, Makoto and Rei art but I just love Rin's design so much! His wings are SO COOL.

*reference image*

SHINDO AHHH

my boy shindo, is a real actual angel. love this running child.

Sooo... About Free!

I need to talk to other people who don’t necessarily like Free! Like, don’t get me wrong, Free! is good. It’s good. It has really adorable characters, who are sweet, and angsty, and fun, and you can really immerse yourself in the anime and feel connected to the characters when they win their tournament or whatever...

When you watch it as a Slice of Life anime (in my opinion)

But if you watch it expecting a Sports anime, it... It’s not the best. (I’m sorry, but that’s my opinion, if you don’t like it, I understand. Seriously. You’re entitled to your opinion, and your opinion matters!) But, like, I think Free! isn’t a... Incredible Sports anime. Mainly because of the plot. (LEMME EXPLAIN)

So! Free. Free has this pattern of setting up story arcs/character arcs for the characters that seem really serious and Sports anime-y, but then the pay off isn’t as serious/realistic??? FOR EXAMPLE: Makoto’s fear of the ocean. On the Free! Wiki, it says that he has Thalassophobia (a fear/phobia of the ocean and/or deep bodies of water) which sounds serious, and I’d expect, since he and Haru walk home on the beach every day he’d be anxious then. So why didn’t they show that? Like, why did they set up Makoto’s Thalassophobia ONLY during the training camp arc? Wouldn’t there be instances during swim practice, that he felt anxious? I don’t expect he’d be very anxious during high school, but when he swam in elementary, I feel like he’d be nervous to swim. Y’know since the experience is still raw at that time. 

And, (spring-boarding off of that query,) How long did it take for him to cope? Did Haru help him overcome his fear in the beginning? Or did they drift apart a little, since Makoto couldn’t swim/be comfortable in the water anymore, and Haru was fine with it? 

Then, finally, at the end of the training arc & his arc, Makoto is just... FINE. Like WHAT? Why is he just OKAY with the ocean after it all, just because “he wants to swim with his friends” and “he’s okay if his friends are with him”, like...

What I’m saying is, living with a phobia since childhood and then suddenly being fine, just because your friends swim with you (Not only in high school but also in elementary, probably, because he was swimming with his friends then, no problem) doesn’t sound realistic to me. But I get it. I can understand the counter-argument: “But Makoto is okay with swimming in the ocean with his friends because he feels protected by them/empowered when they’re with him.”

But it doesn’t sound realistic, when you consider the set up.

OR! How quickly the swim club was created. Like... REALISTICALLY it’d take a lot to create a swim club. It’d take more than finding & recruiting all the members, getting a manager, and fixing the pool. (I have no experience, but I feel like it’d take more than that.) And, the characters, despite their built physique, probably would struggle to get back into swimming/start swimming. Realistically speaking. Like, besides HARU (because I’m sure he swam whenever he could) Nagisa and Makoto probably would have struggled to get into swimming again. Because Makoto hasn’t swam in three (school) years because he and Haru quit swimming after their first year in middle school. And Nagisa hasn’t swam since elementary school. And Rei, I think should’ve struggled to learn how to swim butterfly correctly. (Not just swim butterfly, but swim butterfly correctly. Because learning to swim is one thing, but swimming correctly is another. Like, refining your stroke in consideration of drag, and endurance and all that) 

So, I say this all to say that Free! is a Sports anime and Slice of Life... that doesn’t juggle the two genres as equally as it could've... I think.

For reference, I'd recommend watching Bamboo Blade: another sports and slice of life anime.

The reason I recommend this anime as a way to see how Sports/Slice of Life anime can be effectively executed is because:

(a): It’s plot doesn’t revolve around a character arc (getting Rin to love swimming again) or nostalgia (building the swim club), but it instead is literally about a coach who gathers together a Kendo team to win in a competition to get free dinner. That’s it. And it’s a simple plot, a simple goal, because its a slice of life anime. And slice of life anime shouldn’t be held to the same emotional/deep plots as sports anime. (not to say that Free!’s plot isn’t good. it is. It just needs to pick a lane: either slice of life with little to no consequences, or sports anime with realistic consequences, struggles, and emotions.)

(FOR EXAMPLE: (sorry, I promise this one will be short,) When the boys break into a swim club, that’s the kind of behavior you’d expect from an emotionally charged sports anime. But when they get their just desserts, when the random teacher scolds them for breaking and entering, they get let off the hook without any disciplinary punishment or a call to their parents or anything. Just like slice of life. And the reason why this doesn’t work, (again, in my opinion) is because breaking and entering is a felony. So it’d hard for me to believe these characters can just be let off the hook for a crime like that. (Sorry again, this rant wasn’t short at all))

and (b): The anime (Bamboo Blade) just isn’t very serious in general. Perhaps I’m only saying this, and am more accepting to the kind of shenanigans that happen in this anime, because it’s all girls instead of all boys, and girls in slice of life anime tend to act silly and childish, which is supposed to be seen as cute. However, that doesn’t really work with boys, especially when, in Free, the plot is so emotionally charged and serious, it makes the silliness out of place?

What I’m saying is that Free should’ve been a sports anime with a serious plot and deep character growth, OR primarily a silly slice of life anime with casual sports to make the plot interesting. I think it’s main issue is that it’s trying to be both.