Review: 'Free! -Take Your Marks-' gives everyone their happily ever after
Despite its exciting sounding title, “Free! -Take Your Marks-” is more of an epilogue to the “Free!” anime series about the members of the Iwatobi Swim Club. Unlike most anime films that come out after the series has ended, “Free! -Take Your Marks-” doesn’t give its characters a new antagonist or challenge to face. Instead, it shows them moving on to their next, more peaceful phase of life.
The movie tells four interconnected tales, divided into “episodes”, showing the “Free!” characters moving on to college, the next level of high school, going on vacation, capped off with one last swimming competition to end the film. It emphasises the episodic nature of the film with actual unique episode title cards and ident bumpers in the middle of each “episode” to simulate the feel of a television series (without any of the annoying commercials).
As a result, it feels like an anime mini-series rather than having the gravitas of an animated feature film. While this may seem like an odd stylistic choice to make, it’s actually quite in line with the light-hearted tone of the film. It’s a character-driven film that goes back to the anime’s roots of being a slice-of-life type of anime.
Seeing Haruka (Nobunaga Shimazaki) and Makoto (Tatsuhisa Suzuki) go apartment hunting in a new city was one of the more enjoyable vignettes of the film, balancing character studies with fun moments as they deal with potential separation anxiety and the nervousness of starting a new phase of their life. The other characters are shown to be mentoring and cultivating the next generation of the Iwatobi Swim Club back in school, employing relatively madcap schemes to attract new students.
It’s interesting to see them put in all these uncomfortable situations and learning to trust and depend on each other, rather than the usual angst and conflict that comes from betrayal and baggage. Of course, there are some dramatic moments, but they’re not as painful or over the top as before. It’s more of a side story, rather than being a critical part of the overall “Free!” narrative.
However, the downside to all this is that there isn’t much swimming until the very end — but then, “Free!” was more about the bonds of friendship between the main characters than the competitive swimming element. As a result, there’s not as much fan service as you’d expect (definitely not as much as the first two compilation movies, for sure).
The film ends on a feel-good note with a set of interesting scenes during the credits, which spotlight all the characters one last time. Although it hints at a possible future sequel, it does leave you with a sense of closure about the fate of the characters of “Free!”.
Should you watch this at weekday movie ticket prices? Yes.
Should you watch this at weekend movie ticket prices? If you’re a “Free!” fan, yes.
Score: 3.4/5
Secret ending? No.
Running time: 100 minutes
“Free! -Take Your Marks-” is a sports anime film that tells an original tale featuring the characters from the “Free!” franchise.
“Free! -Take Your Marks-” is directed by Eisaku Kawanami. It features the voice talents of Nobunaga Shimazaki (Haruka Nanase), Tatsuhisa Suzuki (Makoto Tachibana), Tsubasa Yonaga (Nagisa Hazuki), Daisuke Hirakwa (Rei Ryugazaki), Mamoru Miyana (Rin Matsuoka), Yoshimasa Hosoya (Sosuke Yamazaki), Koki Miyata (Nitori Alichiro), and Kenichi Suzumura (Momotaro Mikoshiba).
Marcus Goh is a television scriptwriter, having written for popular shows like “Lion Mums”, “Crimewatch”, “Incredible Tales”, and “Police & Thief”. He’s also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. You can find him on social media as Optimarcus and on his site. The views expressed are his own.
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