Reviews

Four young friends (Makoto, Nagisa, Rin, and Haruka) win a trophy for swimming a relay together, but everything seems to fall apart when Rin leaves for Australia to join a prestigious swim club there. When he returns in high school, the boys work to put together a new school swimming team with the help of Rin’s sister, Gou (or is it Kou?), and Rei, a new calculations-obsessed member, but find Rin to be a very different person.

It’s really the humor and the relationships that steal the show here, that and the level of fanservice: the use of subversive female-gaze camera shots to display gorgeous half-naked male bodies with water sparkling or dripping off of them. And the fact that the guys all bond by being boys with girly names.

The delicious rivalry between Haruka and Rin, the mystery of what happened between them to change their personalities, the way they all take care of each other, the reason Haruka only swims freestyle, and generally the strong (and supremely slashy!) friendships make this a delightful anime even if you have no interest in swimming.