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Haruka Nanase

“ I only swim freestyle. „
~ Haruka Nanase

Haruka Nanase (七瀬 遙 Nanase Haruka) is the main protagonist of the anime series Free!, beginning with Free! Iwatobi Swim Club and the light novel High☆Speed！ written by Kouji Ohji. He is a freestyle swimmer and was vice-captain of the Iwatobi High School Swim Club. He is currently a first-year university student at Hidaka University where he also a member of the swim club while pursuing professional competition on the global stage. He prefers to be called Haru.

He is voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki and Megumi Matsumoto (as a child) in the Japanese version, and by Todd Haberkorn and Lara Woodhull (as a child) in the English dubbed version.

Appearance

Haruka is a muscular young man with blue eyes and short, straight black hair with bangs that dip between his eyes. He maintains a serious expression and rarely expresses emotion. In high school, he often wears his jammers beneath his regular clothing in order to be ready to swim on a moment's notice. As pointed out by members of his swim team, all of his jammers are nearly identical (black with minor variations in the violet striping), yet he claims they all fit differently, and he often has trouble selecting which one to wear in the morning. The most developed muscles of his form are his tricep and abdominal muscles (upper arms and abdomen).

His autumn and winter high school uniform consists of brown trousers, a long-sleeved white shirt with a green necktie, dark gray blazer, and blue sneakers. During the spring and summer, he wears gray trousers, a short-sleeved white shirt with a dark gray collar, a green dotted necktie, and blue sneakers. When not in school, Haruka dresses in stylish, casual clothes suited for his age.

Personality

He is a quiet but determined individual with a strong affinity for water. His greatest asset is his confidence in his decisions, once made. Despite his cool persona, which many perceive as uncaring, he is protective towards his friends, particularly those on his high school swim team: Makoto Tachibana, Nagisa Hazuki and Rei Ryugazaki, but particularly Makoto, his best friend since childhood. This is seen twice during the team's seaside summer training -- first, when Haruka rescues him from nearly drowning and second, when the group is back on shore and sharing stories. Makoto tells his team the truth about his thallasophobia despite Haruka's attempts to protect him by stopping his telling the story.

Haruka also values his relationship with Rin Matsuoka, another childhood friend with whom he shares an intense athletic rivalry. During elementary school, while on break from schooling in Australia, Rin loses to Haruka in a private race and declares he is quitting swimming altogether. Though Rin's reasons are otherwise, Haruka believes it is his fault and, out of guilt, quits competitive swimming. When Rin returns for high schooling in Japan, an impromptu race restores both of their competitive spirits and both join their respective school teams. Later, at an important tournament, Rin is dismissed from his school's relay team and runs off. Haruka seeks him out and reminds him that it was Rin who taught him that the most important thing about swimming is not winning, but teamwork with friends. Rin takes Rei's place in the relay race and although the Iwatobi team's resultant win is rescinded, everyone's friendships are restored.

Haruka's fixation with water sometimes makes him a comical figure as he often wears his jammers beneath his clothing and will strip down to his jammers just about anywhere if there's available water nearby (including a fish tank). He even considers an encounter with a waterfall to be romantic. Despite being stoic, he is ticklish, as seen in the FrFr short, A Distant Tremble!

Gallery

Trivia