Free! Episode 001 Discussion
 

Watched this with a friend on Crunchyroll, and after all the teasers I'm not disappointed. Yeah, there's obvious fan-service (I mean swimming suit plus apron, yes please). There's a lot of dramatic stripping, but realistically the show was just overall funny so far. I was kinda surprised at how nice the flow worked as well. It's also animated amazingly, but we might see dips are the new episodes come about.

Makoto is my favorite. He's not emo or super derpy, but he's not super stuck up either.

Does anyone know how many episodes the series is going to be?

Re: Free! Episode 001 Discussion
 

Honestly, I gotta say for the dudes out there.

The fan-service isn't really as noticeable unless you want to notice it. Free seems to be like any other sports series, with an large amount of slice of life added to it.

First episode was mainly slice of life, like Kana said there was "fan-service" but really, it was about as much "fan-service" as you'd see watching olympic swimming, or dragon ball (the one "skinny dipping" scene where you see a butt for like 3 seconds.) which for straight dudes isn't really fan-service at all.

I enjoyed it. I'm hoping fore more technical swimming information. I love how sports series can present real information on the sport even if it turns into insane unrealistic god level techniques in the end like Prince of Tennis, though I don't think that'll happen here.)

((As you can see from my AvaSig set I'm still waiting for an epic level hockey anime. (Curling would also be awesome.)))

Re: Free! Episode 001 Discussion
 

While swimming as a sport doesn't excite me (I like to swim but not to their degree), this series actually has me partially interested. Of course my only complaint is the over emphasis on the need to strip. I'm not too crazy about the music either, the ED theme I'll give a break.

However if there is ONE thing I can absolutely gush over, is how much this anime glows with 1080p quality.