Makoto Tachibana

"#4FCD10"

- If you're not there... It's meaningless without you!

Makoto Tachibana (橘 真琴 Tachibana Makoto) is one of the main characters of the anime series Free! and the light novel High☆Speed!. He was the backstroke swimmer and captain of the Iwatobi High School swimming team. He is currently majoring in sports education at Meijo Chuo University in Tokyo, with the aim of becoming a professional sports trainer.

Appearance
Makoto is a tall, muscular young man with short, olive brown hair and green eyes. His fall and winter school uniform consists of light brown trousers, a white shirt with green necktie, a dark gray unbuttoned blazer, and orange sneakers. During the spring and summer, his summer uniform consists of gray trousers, a white shirt with a dark gray collar, a green dotted necktie and orange sneakers. The best feature on his body is his trapezius muscle.

When swimming in competition, he wears long black leg skins with green stripes; otherwise, longer length swim trunks. Upon entering college, he is seen wearing black framed glasses which he uses for reading and playing video games.

Personality
Makoto is a pleasant and considerate individual, who is always concerned about the welfare of others. Due to his caring personality, he is usually seen with a gentle smile on his face. However, he is rather weak-hearted and can get scared easily, as shown when he appeared terrified of the possibility that their old Swimming Club may be haunted. When he gets scared he tends to hide behind Haruka, a habit developed during childhood. He can also show a more aggressive side when defending his friends, as seen when Haruka challenged Hiyori Tono to a race and Makoto intervened when he heard Hiyori swam the backstroke.

Makoto is one of the more sensible people in the group and can get a bit worn out from his friends' peculiar antics and mannerisms. Episode 1 He is usually the one restraining Haruka from randomly stripping at the sight of water or diving into fish tanks.

Makoto and Haruka have been best friends for so long that it seems they are able to read one another's thoughts. Makoto's knowledge of Haru gives him an advantage when convincing Haruka to do something he doesn't want to do by using water as a lure. And although Haruka dislikes it when people use his full first name, Makoto manages to win the argument and calls him 'Haru'.

History
Childhood= Makoto and Haruka have been friends since at least kindergarten. It was in kindergarten that Haruka started calling Makoto by his first name and Makoto calling Haruka "Haru-chan". It was Makoto who wanted to join the Iwatobi Swimming Club when they were children and Haru tagged along with him. Due to the length of time Makoto and Haruka have been friends, Makoto can usually guess what Haruka is thinking and vice-versa, resulting in the both of them being able to hold wordless conversations.

When Makoto was young, he would visit a small fishing harbor. At the harbor was a nice, old fisherman that would sometimes play with Makoto. One summer, during a festival harbor, Makoto wanted to scoop for fish but had already used up his allowance. The fisherman gave him two goldfish to make him feel better. Later that season, a typhoon swept the coast and the fisherman's boat sank. Many people drowned, including the fisherman. Later, when the two goldfish died, Makoto made a grave for them, changing the flowers every day. Because of this experience, he developed Thalassophobia, a fear of the ocean. Elementary= As a child, Makoto used to swim the breaststroke and usually won the 100m breaststroke events against Rin, but would lose the 50m breaststroke against him. It was when he teamed-up with Rin, Nagisa Hazuki and Haruka for the relay in elementary school that Makoto switched to backstroke and found that he was more comfortable with the stroke and has since specialized in that stroke. Junior High= In Iwatobi Junior High School, Makoto was known as "the big kid from class 2" because of his good physique. Kisumi Shigino asked him to join Iwatobi Junior High's basketball team after seeing him play during a combined gym class with Class 1 and Class 2. One day before their practice at Iwatobi Swimming Club, Makoto and Haruka ran into a stray dog. Makoto liked it, but Haruka told him to ignoere it because it would follow him around. Even though Makoto made sure not to look at it, the dog followed them and despite Nagisa's assumptions that the dog was attached to Haruka, it was in fact attached to Makoto. It stayed at the bottom of the stone stairs near Haruka and Makoto's house, but Makoto couldn't keep it because his mom wouldn't stop sneezing when the dog was near her. Haruka then told Makoto he would keep the dog if it stayed at the bottom of the stone stairs until they returned from school.

Skill
"#4FCD10"

- His stroke... A rough but dynamic stroke that leaves everyone behind... It hasn't changed at all since then. That's Makoto's stroke.

Current stats:

Expected stats:

Creation and Conception
Hiroko Utsumi, the director of the Free! anime, described Makoto in one phrase as "sweet boy." "He’s your everyday common high school boy. Strong, sweet, and a very helpful older brother. He was childhood friends with Haruka, so there’s not anything he hates about him. Conversely, he knows quite well the things he likes about Haruka. And because of that, he knows how to handle Haruka very well. Since Haruka isn’t the type to talk much, Makoto will follow up for Haruka and speak in his place. If Haruka wasn’t like that to begin with, Makoto wouldn’t become close to him. Since he is flawed, Makoto’s there by his side. I wonder if Haruka would also notice if Makoto’s big existence wasn’t always taking care of him." She also says, "He’s big, yet scary things get to him. It was a bit sad when we decided to make him scared easily yet have that body style. My impression is that as he grew bigger, he didn’t know how to use his size to his advantage. Really, a smaller body seems to fit that side of him."

Trivia

 * The kanji for his family name Tachibana (橘) is also the Chinese hanzi character spelling of the word "orange."
 * Additionally, there are also two different spellings for the Japanese family name "Tachibana"; 立華 and 立花. The character "華" in 立華 can also be translated as reading "hana," the Japanese word for "flower." Both of the other spellings are spelled with two kanji and also spell out "Rikka."
 * Like all members of the Iwatobi High School Swimming Club, Makoto has a female name.
 * Despite being on the swim team, Makoto is afraid of the ocean. However, in the High☆Speed!, Makoto is not only afraid of the ocean, but the water in general.
 * Makoto has been described as the wishy-washy type by Haruka, because he is too nice and was unable to decide which club member would be his boyfriend if he were a girl.
 * Makoto and Haruka appear to have a game that consists of Makoto guessing what Haruka is thinking.
 * According to Free! TV Animation Guidebook:
 * Makoto likes eating green curry and chocolate.
 * Makoto's best subject is Literature, while he's bad at English and Art.
 * Makoto likes physical activity and manual labor.
 * Makoto was voted Sexiest Anime Man of 2013, winning over Haru Yoshida from "Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun" with 24,861 votes.
 * Makoto won the Muscle Contest held at the renewed Iwatobi Swimming Club, where Gou was one of the judges. However, Gou gave the most points to Rin.
 * Makoto's voice actor, Tatsuhisa Suzuki, is the vocalist for OLDCODEX, the band which performs the opening themes for all three seasons of Free! -- "Rage on", "Dried Up Youthful Fame" and "Heading to Over".
 * His motif animal is an Orca - King of the Ocean.
 * Young Makoto's English voice actress, Colleen Clinkenbeard, also provides the voice for his mother Mrs. Tachibana and Tsukushi Kurimiya.

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