Haruka Nanase

"#199AFE"

- I only swim freestyle.

Haruka Nanase (七瀬 遙 Nanase Haruka) is the main protagonist of the anime series Free! and the light novel High☆Speed!. He is a freestyle swimmer and was the vice-captain of the Iwatobi High School swim club. He is currently a freshman at Hidaka University where he also a member of the swim club.

Appearance
Haruka is a muscular young man with short, straight black hair and blue eyes. He always 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 triceps and abdominals.

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, Haru dresses in stylish, casual clothes suited for his age.

Personality
Haruka 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, Nagisa and Rei, but particularly Makoto, his best friend since childhood. This is seen twice during the team's seaside summer training -- first, when Makoto feels compelled to tell his team the truth about his fear of the ocean and Haruka, immediately sensing Makoto's discomfort, commands Rei to drop the question, though Makoto insists just the same and second, when Haruka actually resuces Makoto from nearly drowning the following evening.

Haruka also values his relationship with Rin, 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's quitting swimming altogether. Though Rin's reasons are otherwise, Haruka believes it's 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 tournament, Rin is released 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 win is rescinded, everyone's friendships are restored.

Haruka's fixation with water makes him a very comical person as he will strip down to his jammer just about anywhere and in anything 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 seventh FrFr short.

History
Childhood= Haruka had been friends with Makoto ever since they were very young. One day, at the playground near their homes, Makoto asked Haruka to join the swimming club with him, but Haruka immediately refused, saying it's "too much trouble". When Makoto said he won't join as well and was asked why not, Makoto said that there was no point in joining if Haruka wasn't with him. Makoto eventually got Haruka to join the club with him and since then, they were the members of Iwatobi Swimming Club. Elementary=

Junior High= Starting his junior high school life, Haruka wasn't intending to do club activities at all because he didn't like that they would cut his swimming time down. He didn't see the point of doing anything other than swimming and time spent in P.E. classes doing sports was enough for him. On the first day of school, Asahi approached Haruka and said, "You look like the type of guy with no friends," therefore having a one-sided friendship with him. Haruka didn't seem to like Asahi and when he asked him to call him "Haru" like Makoto does, he said that he could, but just because he did not want Asahi to follow him around more.

Skill
"#199AFE"

- That Haru... Every time I swim against him, he gets faster. He's like a freaking monster!

Current stats:

Expected stats:

Creation and Conception
Hiroko Utsumi, the director of the Free! anime, described Haruka in one word as "cool." "Haruka seems to be equipped with 'coolness'," she says. "One aspect of him is his love for water. He has a bit of an eccentric image; he has trouble interacting with people at a fundamental level. If he’s not interested in something, he won’t do it. Normally his facial expression is very unsociable, but he gets highly emotional when it comes to water. He’s a direct boy who has a strong obsession with the freedom that water gives him." The director said that the audience will get to see Haruka gradually change as he matures throughout the series, as was seen in episode 9.

The animation crew didn't have any troubles designing Haruka's character. They paid special attention to his eyes, that were made to be blue to reflect his love for water. On the close-ups of his eyes, the animators made them detailed and made sure to use a lot of frames. The character designer, Futoshi Nishiya, made Haruka lightly dressed for easy removal, because when he sees water, he wants to swim in it. The designer also said that when he designed school uniforms for the Iwatobi High School students, they fit perfectly on everyone except on Haruka, so the crew was pretty shocked by that.

The animators named Haruka a "waterdere", because water brings out his true emotions, which nothing else can do. "Sometimes it's obvious that he loves water by how much his eyes sparkle when he sees it. Those kinds of actions and glances speak as much as words to help bring out that humanity in him," Utsumi explained in one of the interviews.

Trivia

 * Like all members of the Iwatobi High School Swimming Club, Haruka has a female name.
 * Haruka shares same birthday as real-life U.S. Olympic Gold Medal Swimmer Michael Phelps
 * He bathes with his swimming trunks on.
 * Haruka will go anywhere as long as there's a body of water that he can get into.
 * Haruka has exceptionally great art skills, such as drawing and wood carving.
 * The year before, Haruka had been one of 987 entries entered in the Iwatobi Town mascot contest. His entry was named Tobimaru-kun. According to Gou, it wasn't very cute.
 * He has a certain romantic attraction to water.
 * Rin stated that Haruka has said "Tadaima" (ただいま), which means "I'm home", upon arriving to their swimming club during elementary school.
 * If Haruka was a girl and he had to date one of the boys from the Iwatobi Swimming Club, he would choose Makoto because it was the easiest choice. However, his choice was quickly changed to Nagisa when the first year promised to cook him mackerel for breakfast every morning.
 * Rei states that Haruka's decisions all center around mackerel.
 * Haruka and Makoto appear to have a game that consists of Makoto guessing what Haruka is thinking.
 * Haruka once wore a girl's swimsuit in elementary school. Nagisa borrowed his trunks because the blonde's sister swapped out his swimsuit for a girl's one. Haruka claims that he had no recollection of this memory, but shows that he does at the end of the track.
 * According to Free! TV Animation Guidebook:
 * Haruka's best subjects are Home Economics and Art, while he's bad at English.
 * Haruka likes cooking and doing chores.
 * Haruka is also shown to have baking skills. He baked a chocolate-mackerel cake for Makoto's birthday party.
 * He always bathes with a dolphin toy he received on his first day at Iwatobi Swim Club.
 * Haru is ticklish, and the only time he will ever laugh out loud is if he is being tickled.
 * Once in elementary school, Haruka sleep-laughed, which was one of the only times he has ever laughed out loud.
 * His motif animal is a dolphin.

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