Here comes a piece of very good news, with a decent amount of time before (courtesy of Funimation) Free! Eternal Summer’s February home-video release. Crunchyroll, who has the rights to Free! Iwatobi Swim Club, is streaming the entire first season of the highly popular swimming anime WITH an English Dub version. That’s right Free! fans – Crunchyroll has made your dreams come true. The English Dub includes the same exact dub cast as Free! Eternal Summer, which makes this surprise, and welcome announcement, all the more exciting.
Fans of Free! were disappointed when Funimation was only able to obtain the home video license of Free’s 2nd season. Hope of a dubbed 1st season seemed to dwindle even further as Discotek Media released the 1st season on DVD with subtitles only. Now, fans can watch a dubbed 1st season all thanks to Crunchyroll and Funimation. The English dub for Free! Iwatobi Swim Club is streaming worldwide – with the exception of “Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Mainland China, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Brunei, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Vietnam, Timor-Leste, Palau and Papua New Guinea, South Korea and Japan.”
Crunchyroll describes the premise of Free! Iwatobi Swim Club as:
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.
Free! Iwatobi Swim Club’s English dub is streaming now on Crunchyroll, and Free! Eternal Summer will be available on Blu-ray/DVD February 16th. Will the 1st season’s English dub be made available on Blu-ray/DVD as well? Will Funimation license Free’s prequel film High Speed! –Free! Starting Days–? Only time will tell, but for now – let’s enjoy what we do have of Free!
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