Haruka Nanase has a passion for swimming that led him to compete and win a tournament in elementary school with his friends.
Years later, they reunite as high schools students, and while Haruka and three friends decide to form a swim club, his fourth friend, Rin, attends another school in order to surpass Haruka in skill.
He has also made it clear he has no interest in being friends again.
While most memorable for its fangirl-catching boybait, there is no denying that even outside of the fan service for females, Free is a great sports anime in its own right. It may not make swimming intense, but it makes it beautiful and presents touching character stories. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Free, head on down below.
Anime Like Free!
For Fans of Water Sports
Re-Main
Minato Kiyoumizu was once a rockstar among rockstars on his junior high water polo team. However, when a car accident put him into a coma for several months, he awakes without memories from the past few years.
Not even fully understanding what water polo even is, he decides to not play and focus on his new high school.
However, when the sole member of his school’s water polo team tries to recruit him and people from his past ignite a fire, he finds himself re-learning the sport from the start.
While Free is about swimming, Re-Main is about water polo. As they are both water sports anime, neither series forgets the major appeal for female audiences – bare man flesh. Both series feature character designs meant to be appealing to women, though Re-Main embraces muscle definition a little more.
While both series love to show a lot of flesh, they don’t ignore the sport either. However, Re-main has a little bit of a more ambitious plot by giving its main character amnesia, and it doesn’t necessarily deliver on it.
Dive
Falling on financial troubles, the Mizuki Diving Club is dangerously close to being shut down. However, their new coach managed to persuade the parent company of the club to allow it to stay open on the condition that a member makes the Japanese Olympic diving team within the next year.
While Free focuses on competitive swimming, Dive focuses on competitive diving. While Free focuses on building a swimming club out of nothing, Dive focuses on revitalizing a club on there verge of shutting down.
However, while Free gets away with not being too detailed with the technical aspects of the sport by being more about the character stories, Dive isn’t particularly compelling with the character stories, and also ignores the technical aspects of the sports.
It does have the skin baring boys you may be looking for, this time with more muscle definition, but Dive is rather lackluster as a sports anime in general.
For Fans of Character Growth Through Training
Chihayafuru
Growing up in the shadow of her older sister, Chihaya Ayase is strong-willed and a tomboy with no dreams of her own. However, after learning an outcast in her class, Arata Wataya, has incredible skill at karuta and his huge passion inspires her, she is pulled into the world of the poem-based card game along with her other childhood friend, Taichi Mashima.
While Chihaya grew a passion for karuta with her two childhood friends, they grew distant when they were separated in middle school. Now a high schooler, Chihaya still aims to be the queen of karuta and wants to compete with Arata again to grow her skill.
Free makes swimming interesting to watch by accenting the beauty of the movements and the beauty of the abundance of bare flesh. Chihayafuru makes a rather obscure Japanese sport interesting by setting up character relationships that you simply cannot get enough of.
Both series follow characters that were childhood friends, but one friend moved away and sort of continued to break up with his childhood friends as a teen. Much of the series is dedicated to, while doing the sport, repairing the relationship between the main characters and the outcast-now-rival.
Of course, since a girl is the main character in Chihayafuru, it does develop a romance element as well as a love triangle.
Run With The Wind
Once an elite runner, Kakeru is now only running to escape those accusing him of stealing food.
While fleeing, he meets another runner, Haiji, who persuades him to live in his old apartment complex.
There, Kakeru finds it is full of fellow residents who all have one goal – to enter the Hakone Ekiden Marathon. Unfortunately, aside from he and Haiji, they are all pretty novice.
Both Free and Run With The Wind are sports anime that focus on sports that aren’t necessarily that interesting to watch, but does put some work into making them look beautiful when presented in anime form.
However, the biggest similarity between Free and Run With The Wind is both series aren’t really about the sport, they are about the characters. Run With The Wind has a larger cast, but still diligently explores the characters like Free. You learn their motivations and problems while also watching them overcome them as they train at the sport.
Tsurune
Kyudo is a modern martial art with a focus on archery. Minato used to be into the sport in middle school, enchanted by the “tsurune” sound made by a releasing bowstring, but gave it up after a certain incident left him with target panic.
This phenomenon resulted in Minato missing every shot he took and crushing his confidence.
Now, forces conspire in high school to bring him into the newly founded Kyudo club, but can Minato overcome his anxieties?
When Kyoto Animation makes a sports anime, you can always tell. The boys look beautiful, flawless, and you often can’t stop looking at them. As both Free and Tsurune are made by Kyoto Animation, they not only share that same look, but they share a similar focus.
Free and Tsurune aren’t necessarily about the sport. They are very much sports anime that have a focus on the characters while using the sport as a catalyst.
Both series follow characters that used to really enjoy their sport, but something in the past left them lacking something that they need to overcome in order to thrive.
Stars Align
Out-performed by the girls’ club and facing disbandment, team captain of the soft tennis club Toma Shinjou is desperate to recruit members. He immediately targets new transfer student Maki Katsuragi for his solid reflexes.
After a few rejections, Maki joins and quickly shines. This causes complicated feelings among the rest of the team who feel outperformed, but also propelled forward by Maki.
Don’t be fooled. Free and Stars Align may be labeled sports anime, but they are often about dealing with character drama while doing the sport. While that is a joke, its actually really kind of true, especially for Stars Align.
Both series are about sports that may not be the most interesting to watch, but you definitely watch them because they succeed in making the characters very interesting.
For Fans of Sports Bromance
Haikyuu
After being inspired by the small, but talented volleyball ace Little Giant, Shouyou Hinata trains endlessly despite his middle school not having a boy’s volleyball club.
Managing to scavenge enough athletes at his school to field a team for a middle school volleyball tournament, Hinata is soundly crushed in his first and last game of middle school by King of the Court, Tobio Kageyama.
Swearing to surpass him, Hinata joins the volleyball team in high school only to discover Kageyama is now his teammate.
While Free is definitely more compact in its cast of characters, a key element that makes both Free and Haikyuu so beloved is how well the characters interact with each other.
Both series really excel at creating likable, or at least complex, characters and exploring their various relationships with each other.
However, while Free is often more focused on the emotional aspects of the series, Haikyuu can be both emotional and very intense when it comes to them playing the sport.
Kuroko’s Basketball
For three years in a row, the Teikou Junior High basketball team took the championship crown thanks to their outstanding players. However, after graduating, the team split up and went to different high schools.
At Seirin High School, two students have been recruited to the team. Taiga, a player just returning form the US, and Kuroko, a student whose lack of presence allows him to move around the court unnoticed.
Kuroko was Teikou’s phantom sixth man who, while receiving little recognition, guided the team to victory with his assists.
Both Free and Kuroko’s Basketball feature quiet and more reserved characters as a sort of main character even while it is often the people around them moving the series forward.
Like Haruka, Kuroko is pretty good at his sport and is also spurned forward or held back by their relationship with teammates from the past.
While Kuroko’s Basket is innately different in that it is about basketball and often puts an emphasis on many players having a “special power” when it comes to the sport, both series put a big focus on competition forcing interaction between people who used to be on better terms in the past.
Number24
With a passion for rugby, Natsuza Yuzuki’s dreams are dashed in college when a motorbike accident leaves him unable to play. He takes up the role of manager for his team instead.
Now, Yuzuki faces new struggles of wrangling, training, and motivating his team as well as trying to get their once-ace back from retirement.
While both Free and Number24 may have almost exclusively male casts, they are certainly sports anime marketed at female audiences.
Both series, through the relationships they set up and even the handsome design of the characters, invite a lot of shipping without ever actually doing anything romantic.
Essentially, both Free and Number24 often feel like boy’s love anime without actually ever being boy’s love anime. That said, Free definitely puts a lot more depth and nuance into the character relationships whereas Number24 is trying for appeal with sheer volume of men.
Sk8 The Infinity
High school student Reki Kyan is passionate about skateboarding and board-making. While he works part-time in a board shop after school, his real interest is the underground race that happens at night.
S is a competitive skateboard race where participants are encouraged to win at all costs. Unfortunately for Reki, his most recent race came in at a loss.
The next day at school he meets new transfer student Langa Hasegawa who was a snowboarder when he lived in Canada. After a series of events that led both of them to an S race, Reki discovers that, despite having no experience on a skateboard, Langa’s experience snowboarding is unexpectedly useful in an S race.
Both Free and Sk8 The Infinity are anime that are meant to be visually appealing with either the character designs or how much skin they show. However, they are also both sports anime that are more about the characters than the sport.
Sk8 the Infinity features a fictional racing sport, so it does give time to some finer details. Yet, while both series have intense moments of competition, you get really invested in these series because of the bromance that is being forged between the main characters.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Free? Let fans know in the comments section below.
