Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-14894688-20130808144956/@comment-1454424-20130812140607

LightofWay wrote: Question! Is Makoto afraid of the ocean ONLY or is he afraid of water in general? Either way, he's pretty brave to keep swimming through his fear... though he claims that he's always running away while in the water.

That actually does not have a straight forward answer. In the novel it says "Even though Makoto was afraid of the water, he loved to swim, but when he got into the pool, he started wanting to flee, and so he thought that he wanted Haruka to be there with him"

But the thing to remember is that Makoto used to swim breaststroke and even beat Rin at breaststroke while they were kids. But then the medley team was form, Makoto had to swim backstroke because all the other strokes were taken (Nagisa - breast, Rin - butterfly and Haru - freestyle front crawl). He became happier swimming the backstroke and why he now specialises in backstroke. In the anime Makoto mentioned backstroke was good for people who are afraid of the water. So maybe he's not running away any more... we might find out in the anime soon.