High☆Speed!: Free! Starting Days

Yasuhiro Takemoto's 2015 anime takes place before the Free! series and covers the characters' middle school years. Haruka and Makoto join the swim team at their new school, where the squad is more serious, more competitive and more closed off than they are. Haruka does not want to compete, only to swim, and that attitude conflicts with the team's aims, which is where the film's tension comes from. The story builds the series' familiar theme of friendship on a smaller scale, through the hierarchy of a sports club. Kyoto Animation's water scenes are meticulous, with stroke, breathing and the break of the surface all worked out individually. Two of the new characters do not appear in the series and the film's emotional centre lies with them. Who it's for: people who watched Free! and viewers who like sports anime. Who it's not for: anyone new to it; the film assumes you know where the characters end up.