Miho Amakata

Miho Amakata (天方 美帆 Amakata Miho) is the classical literature teacher at Iwatobi High School and a homeroom teacher of Haruka and Makoto. She is the supervisor of the Iwatobi High School's Swim Club.

Appearance
Miho has brown, shoulder-length, slightly wavy hair. It parts in the middle, so her bangs fall on both left and right side. She has brown eyes.

Miho often wears a white shirt with a neckline edged with blue fabric; she dons a loose green sweater over her shirt. Occasionally, she would attire in a white shirt with a neckline edged with pink fabric, loose pastel orange sweater. She consistently wears blue jeans and white shoes. She usually wears a necklace, as well.

Personality
She utters the words of great figures from the past, but usually, they make no sense or have nothing to do with the current conversation. Due to her personality, when she asks something of someone, they can't refuse. She's somewhat clumsy and seems to be slightly nervous when people ask her a question and watch her directly in the eye. Although her dream of becoming a swimwear designer did not come true, she's neither bitter nor sad, but she told herself that she'll never wear a swimsuit ever again. Miho indirectly describes herself old, although she isn't. She owns a pink car and likes girly stuff.

Makoto described her as "a little strange".

History
Miho's previous occupation before coming to Iwatobi High School as a new teacher was a swimsuit model and in the modeling world she was known as "Marin-chan". Due to unknown reasons, she quit her job and vowed "never to wear a swimsuit again." Little is known about her early life other than her job.

Plot
Miho debuts in the series on the second day of the school year, when she calls on Haruka as "Miss Haruka Nanase", upon which Makoto disclaims, saying that Haruka's male.

After getting Haruka to join their unofficial swim club, Makoto and Nagisa propose the idea to their homeroom teacher, Miho Amakata, who agrees after they give her a little prompt. Finally, the club is accepted by the faculty on the condition that they find one more member, and restore the school's swimming pool themselves. After Gou volunteers to help, Miho and the group officially establish the Iwatobi High Swimming Club and Haruka can't help but christen the pool with the first swim much to his friends' dismay.

Gou proposes that the swim club join an indoor gym so they can practice swimming until summer, but due to its expense, they seek sponsorship from the school. Miho reveals that they won't get sponsored until their club earns accomplishments in tournaments, but would still require a fourth swimmer.

Believing that the added pressure will help the Swim Club in their training, Gou continues to make her countdown calender for the upcoming prefectural tournament. Meanwhile, as the guys decide on which events they will each participate in at the tournament, Gou discovers a decades old training regiment of the past Iwatobi Swim Club, and excitedly proposes that they use it and venture to an island for a summer training camp. Afterwards, the club tries and fails to get Miho to sponsor the trip. Makoto, however, proposes using camping equipment to stay outdoors while resorting to bribing Sasabe to use his squid fishing boat to take them to the island and back. On the day of the trip, before Sasabe takes the Swim Club to the island, he meets Miho for the first time and realises that he has seen her before, but can't remember where. Miho strongly denies this, clearly showing an uncomfortable expression on.

At the day of the tournament, Sasabe finally finds the group watching races and apologises for being late. Nagisa gets angry with him for showing up late, but Miho interferes thanking Sasabe for helping them the other day. He says once again that he thinks that he knows her from somewhere, but Miho denies and turns away from him, after which Nagisa scolds Sasabe for trying to hit on Miho (which he immediately denies). Later, Miho and the others cheer for Iwatobi boys.

The team, along with Gou and Miho are over at Sasabe's house, eating hot pot even though it is in the middle of summer. When Nagisa accidentally upsets a stack of old magazines, Sasabe realises that the reason he found Miho familar was because he saw Miho being a model for swimsuits in his magazines.

At the day of the final medley relay, the team makes it just on time after confronting Rin. When it is Rei's turn to swim, Gou, Sasabe and Miho stare at Rin preparing to swim in disbelief. After Iwatobi High Swim Club wins the medley relay, Miho outside the building tells the boys off for pulling off such a stunt. They were disqualified and had to endure a scolding from the staff there.

Relationships
Iwatobi High School=

Miho is Haruka's Classic Literature teacher as well as his homeroom teacher. Haruka's not really impressed by the fact that she became a teacher as her plan B, as well as the fact that she misunderstood him for a girl, calling him "Miss Nanase Haruka". However, she apologized for it immediately after Makoto had clarified the misunderstanding.

Miho is Makoto's Classic Literature teacher as well as his homeroom teacher. He met her at the opening ceremony and could tell a lot about her to Haruka the next day. She had helped him and Nagisa when they were scolded by another teacher and later, she became a supervisor of the swimming club at Iwatobi High.

It is unknown weather or not she's Nagisa's Classic Literature teacher as well, but she helped him and Makoto when they were scolded by another teacher. Later, when Miho already became a supervisor of the swimming club at Iwatobi High, Nagisa got the idea to make her wear a swimsuit so that she would attract students to join the club, but she got angry with him and he never really got the idea of her wearing a swimsuit for such a reason ever again.

It is unknown weather or not she's Gou's Classic Literature teacher as well, but the two seem to have a great relationship. They act towards each other quite friendly and often do things together.

The two seem to have a nice, coleague relationship, but it seems that he gets annoyed by her habit of quotating great figures quite often, making both of them feel awkward in such situations.

Others=

The two seem to know each other from the time when Miho worked as an office lady, but when Goro asked her if he knew her from somewhere, she denied claiming that she met him for the first time.

Later, in episode 10, it is found out that Miho used to be a swimsuit model, and the reason Goro felt like he had met her before was because he had seen her in several magazines and was a big fan of hers.

Creation and Conception
"I, happily, was able to put a lot of my own preferences in her," Futoshi Nishiya, the animation director of Free! says, "however, utmost was that she feels like a teacher." Initially, Miho was supposed to have straight hair so she would appear a little immature, but that settled into her current look. Her character was determined quickly. Gou is the beauty, so the animators considered Amakata-sensei to be the cutie. However, they trimmed down points and trimmed down her character. "A good literature teacher would be able to quote suitable phrases,", Hiroko Utsumi, the director of Free! said, "so we thought it’d be cute if she wasn’t able to do it well."

Trivia

 * Miho is the first known teacher in the series.
 * Miho's first name means beauty/sail and her last name means something like compass ("Ama"=sky, "kata"=direction)
 * Miho was voted Sexiest Anime Woman of 2013 by winning over Blue Rose from Tiger and Bunny with 22433 votes.

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Miho Amakata