Nagisa’s going through some changes…

What They Say:
Nanase Haruka loved to be in the water – loved swimming. In elementary school, Nanase Haruka, Tachibana Makoto, Matsuoka Rin, and Hazuki Nagisa attended the same swimming class together. Time passed, and as Haruka was living an uneventful high school life, he suddenly encountered Rin again. Rin challenged Haruka to a race and showed him how much stronger he had become. Soon enough, Makoto and Nagisa also rejoined the group, and along with a new classmate, Ryugazaki Rei, they established the Iwatobi High School Swimming Club.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The series has definitely had some fun so far as it works its way through the first half and I’ve been kind of impressed that it’s spent as much time as it has on Rin and his group and less with Haruka and our main swimming boys. We’ve certainly had them in the show and some good encounters, but time with them has felt less so this season than before, partially because the stakes are different and we’ve seen how Rin has been shaping up his team. A good opponent helps to raise the main cast though and spending quality time doing that rather than through a montage sequence later or through a couple of small nods amid other less important material is definitely the way to do it.

With this episode, the focus shifts more to the boys once again and on Nagisa in particular. He’s a bit out of sorts for the early part of this and ends up visiting Haruka in the evening to just hang out for a bit. As it goes on and you can sense that something is going on, he admits that he’s run away but doesn’t want to talk about it. He just wants a place to crash for a bit to deal with it. The guys end up telling him to go home and deal with it, which is a little uncaring in the short term, but they do let him stay at Haruka’s place for a bit until they can figure things out. While they do have each others backs here, it just feels weird with the way they react in just telling him to go home and deal with it and pestering him to reveal to them what’s going on as a condition to staying at Haruka’s for a bit.

What it does come down to in the end is that his parents are disapproving of his swim club activities because his grades are suffering. When his friends see his grades, they realize he is in pretty dire straits and it’s a surprise since he came from a private middle school and had decent grades last year. There’s more to his issue since he has little interest in studying and little interest in the plans his parents have set for him, so it’s a kind of rebellion that in the end harms himself more than anyone else. There’s a lot of good time spent between all of them as they try to figure out what it is that Nagisa wants and to come up with a plan for him to deal with it with his parents, which leads to some good if comical moments towards the end. It’s a good piece for Nagisa overall and helps to get him back on the right path while also ensuring his continued participation. Which was essentially expected.

In Summary:
The focus on the main cast here is a big plus, as much as I like Rin and what his storyline is bringing to the table, and focusing more on Nagisa helps even more. The show does some predictable things here, deviates in odd ways a couple of times, but in the end pulls everything together so that it’s mostly the same at the end as it was at the start. Nagisa is a little changed, but more that he’s just put back on the right path to do what he needs to do. There’s little in the way of beautiful swimming animation here, but we get some decent character material for the cute boy of the group.

Grade: B+

Streamed By: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.