Free! Anime Revealed To Be Not All That Free!
February 22, 2015 TritiumXL 0 Comments
(Image via www.entravity.com)
It’s always an interesting thing to see people with different interpretations of the same word. For example, when I say that I already “read” a book, you might pronounce that as red. But if I say you should “read” this new book that came out yesterday, that would be pronounced like reed.
When I talk about the Free! anime series, you might think of high school anime male swimmers with hot, toned bodies and amazing stroke styles. If so, good for you and I hope you enjoyed watching the show. For the rest of us who are in the dark, the cold hard reality of Free! is a dark and bitter one.
Please take a look at this:
(Courtesy of www.cdjapan.co.jp)
free (adj) – not costing any money (from Merriam-Webster.com as of 22 February 2015)
Huh, isn’t that strange. When I read the word “Free!”, I was assuming it meant the textbook definition of free. So why it is that (as of typing this post) when I convert 6800 yen into dollars, it is $71.71? I am sorry, but here in Canada, free is defined as 0 dollars. In fact, as far as I can tell, free is defined as having a ZERO amount in any universal currency. This does not seem to be a common pricing error because it is like this on the other anime stores as well.
(Courtesy of www.cdjapan.co.jp)
Free! Eternal Summer, the second season to Free!, did not address any of the above concerns either.
Kyoto Animation, the production studio in charge of the Free! anime series, haven’t seem to have realized this grave error either, having already released a second season called Free!: Eternal Summer. The biggest slap in the face is that not only does Free! – Eternal Summer cost some sum of money other than zero, but actually cost MORE money than the previous season to the tune of 200 yen extra! That is converted to approximately $2.11! Sorry but this is just unacceptable in today’s economy.
And if you aren’t aware, in the second season, the summer was NOT eternal. Or at least, it was not my definition of eternal. Kōji Ōji, the writer of the light novel, apparently has some strange new definitions for these words that I was not aware of.
Kōji Ōji. If you are listening, I would love to hear about your definition of free (and eternal), because it is not at all what I thought it was. If possible, I hope you can get Kyoto Animation to insert a disclaimer in the show or the box to warn people about the new defintion of free that you have.
In fact, you should just go ahead and package in your own rewriting of the English dictionary in the Blu-Ray box set. It would certainly be a big help for us alienated viewers. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.
