Free! Eternal Summer Episode 11 & 12--Life-Changing Field Trip

Nothing like international travel to put your priorities in order.

Sorry for not getting a post out before! Work got intense, and then I caught a cold out of nowhere that screwed up my plans for a week. I'm still getting over it, but at least now I can focus enough to write again.


Anyway, on to what I missed! Now that Sousuke's story has ended (sob) and the Samezuka relay team is out of the running, it's time to go back to Haru and his problems. I covered a lot of this in my post for episode nine, so I'll try not the rehash here. The difference between that and episode eleven was everybody's reaction.


Throughout the episode, Haru insists that everything's fine the way that it is, and that he doesn't want anything to change. However, things are about to change whether he likes it or not--it's his last year of high school and his final tournament with the club. There won't be a "next year." But there's more to it than that; Haru has grown from his season one mantra of "I only swim free" to focusing all his energy on the team relay. Up until this point, this his been a great source of character development, but now it's become his excuse. After freezing up in his individual race, he's placed even more emphasis on swimming and winning with his friends.


However, I think subconsciously he's afraid of leaving them all behind. Despite insisting that he's fine, Haru is still carrying around the career sheet he didn't fill out properly in this episode. He knows that things are going to change, and he wants to hold onto it. He doesn't want to go into that world of dark water where there are no friends to support him, only scouts who care about performance. He thinks he's going to lose his freedom.


But that line of thinking is still just running away from the problem, and his friends get increasingly concerned about him. Their times in the relay drop as a result, and Makoto finally ends up staging an intervention of sorts.


This scene was fascinating (and heartbreaking), since we've never seen Makoto get mad before. But he's right about what he says to Haru, and it also ties in nicely with what Sousuke says to him earlier in the episode. It sucks, but things are coming to an end, and choices have to be made. Haru needs to face what he's spent the entire season running away from, and find a new dream to chase.

However, it's not that simple.

But that's where Rin comes in

For a little bit there, I thought that Makoto and Rin had this whole good cop/bad cop thing planned out in order to snap Haru out of it, but it turned out to just be really good timing. Rin's tying up all the loose ends, heading back to Australia to become the swimmer he couldn't be before.


I really appreciated the way that they expanded his backstory, since in the first season it was heavily implied that when Rin went to Australia he found out that he was a big fish in a small pond all along and took out that frustration on Haru. However, that was never explicitly stated. I'm glad that they got into it here, since it makes a good point about how far Rin has come since the start of the first season. Everything is coming full circle for him.


Because of that extra world experience, Rin knows that Haru would do well on a national stage, but it's not only about that for Rin. He admits that it would be strange for him to move on without his rival, since as Sousuke and Makoto found out, only Rin and Haru can challenge the other to keep pushing their limits. Rin will be able to move on competitively with or without Haru, but Rin would prefer to have his friend realize that there's much more to his dream than what he's already achieved.


And when Haru stands on the edge of that pool, he realizes that the word "free" has more meaning than he'd ever guessed. Haru has been associating competition with restriction and stagnation, and was afraid of not meeting the expectations that he never asked to have in the first place. But swimming on an international stage doesn't necessarily mean at your only motivation is to win. It can be to swim in more places, race against more people, to follow that drive to see just how far you can go.

Haru's dream was right in front of him all along. He just had to redefine his definition of "free."

Which brings us to the final episode airing tomorrow. (Hopefully I won't be so late with that post.) Argh, I have no idea what to expect! I hope that Iwatobi will win, of course, but it feels like most of the leftover plot threads have been tied up. All that's left is to say goodbye...

I'm just going to hold on to what Momo said

Even with context, this is possibly the gayest line in the entire series

Images from Crunchyroll.com.