History:Wiki. Appearance: He's the doucher with the red hair trying to look cool. He's got really stupid teeth. When he's actually wearing clothes, he tends to sport a lot of athletic wear like tank tops and loose pants, although in most of the promotional art he's trying to pass as a european model. Rin is 5'10 and 150 lbs, but looks slightly older than his 17 years thanks to bullshit anime magic I don't know bullshit anime puberty.
Personality: We have to go back a bit to talk about Rin's personality. Rin, age 12, starts out as something of a manic pixie dream boy. A transfer student, he blows into the protagonists' lives as a ball of energy and charisma, with a big smile and a big, obvious heart on his sleeve. Despite not knowing anyone in the school, he's cheerful and gregarious, and reveals himself to be a hopeless romantic, wanting to swim in the cherry blossoms despite the cold weather. His relationship with Haru is especially significant; after seeing Haru swim, he's hugely impressed and becomes obsessed with swimming with him, showing great persistence in trying to get Haru to swim with him in a relay medley. Although he comes off rather single-minded and maybe even selfish, he repeatedly emphasizes how much fun it will be, and how important the team is to him -- when their class creates "memory blocks," Rin dedicates his "For The Team," and cares an enormous amount about his new friends. It's almost a foregone conclusion, considering the boy's exuberant personality; the other boys get swept up in his relay-fervor, and he ends up acting as the catalyst that brings Nagisa, Makoto, and Haru together to swim in the relay, which creates a long-lasting memory for all involved, especially Haru. Before the relay, however, Rin drops a bomb on Makoto and Haru; the reason he had so badly wanted to swim medley with his friends was because he is leaving to go to a prestigious swimming school in Australia. There, he wants to become a great swimmer and pursue his late father's dream of becoming an Olympian.
Rin leaves for Australia and comes back, oddly somber, and requests another race with Haru -- this time against one another. When he loses, he bursts into tears, says he's going to quit swimming, and books it.
Rin returns to Australia, and when he comes back to Japan for good at age 17, he's a total brooding asshole.
This is where Free! starts, and is one of the main conflicts that the show must resolve. Without recapping the entire season, we slowly find out that although Rin had entered the Australian school with enormously high hopes for himself and his talents as a swimmer, he was given a harsh reality check in being surrounded by other talented swimmers. To his frustration, he hit a wall in his swimming, and watched his times plateau into mediocrity -- far from his big dreams of the Olympic gold. That quickly, the happy, smiling Rin who had befriended the Iwatobi boys isn't seen again, replaced by a quiet and guarded boy who keeps to himself. Although this extreme reaction seems petulant and childish at first, one might recall two important things; first, the reason for Rin's investment in swimming was that he wants to fulfill his late father's dream, and to be seemingly unable to improve and achieve this dream -- and not even being able to beat Haru, with all his training and hard work -- hit him hard. His self-worth, with the lack of friends and family to support and love him, becomes entirely wrapped up in swimming and success; winning becomes more important than anything else, and he loses his love of swimming, and of life.
Secondly, the isolation of being far away from the friends he valued so dearly is something he doesn't seem to be able to adjust to. Lonely, isolated, disappointed in himself, and frustrated with swimming, Rin comes to the sorry conclusion that it was swimming the medley that "ruined" him. He finds every accomplishment he manages on his own pales in comparison to those he managed with his team, and it embitters him, making him isolate himself further from other people and cultivate a harsh, intimidating persona. His friends find it hard to believe how much Rin has changed; although he's still charismatic, it's in a very negative way, and he doesn't seem to want to be with the people his intense personality draw in, instantly pushing them away. However, the mask of arrogance and condescension he adopts hides deep and painful insecurities, all horribly mixed up with the death of his father, the isolation from his friends, and the eventual self-loathing he feels at being unable to get past the relay. He's outright hostile to Haru and ignores the rest of the team, unable to connect with even his sister, Gou, who only wants to see her brother smiling again. When he finally beats Haru in a race, he's at first elated, thinking he'll be able to leave all that pain and frustration behind -- but it doesn't make him happy, because that pain had never really been about winning, despite what he'd convinced himself.
However assholish he acts towards his friends face to face, there are many points in the show where Rin slips up and shows he still cares for them, somewhere under all those dumb, turbulent emotions. He remembers Makoto's fear of the ocean, asking "Is Makoto really okay with that?" when he hears the Iwatobi boys plan on training at the sea. When pressed, of course, he quickly retracts his concern, but at the beach, he stays up worrying about his friend. He is constantly shown thinking (brooding over) his friends, growing fiercely jealous and bitter over Rei's supposed "substitution" of himself, despite all of his outward protests at their offers of friendship. He shows a lot of soft spots, as well, in his interactions with Nitori and Gou; although he acts as if he'd like to be totally alone, he seems to care a good deal about their respective well beings, getting worked up at his Captain's attentions to his sister and half-mentoring, half-befriending the overenthusiastic Nitori. He's still, after all, a romantic at heart, overemotional and given to sentiment even at his worst, the type of person to feed stray cats and keep a diary. His emotions are still terribly obvious, always embodied in his behaviour; when he feels awful, he acts awful, yelling at Nitori and kicking trash cans and crying on Haruka's face. When he feels good, he shows it likewise, splashing in vicious delight when he beats Haru for the first time, hugging Haru and bursting into tears of joy and relief when they swim together again in a relay. Rin is not a bad person, although he acts like an asshole; he is actually a very good and deeply feeling person, who has been his own company for too long, and done a terrible job at it.
At the end of the anime, once Haru has been through his own character arc, he becomes able to reach out to Rin. He tells Rin that it's Rin he swims for, because he hasn't forgotten that "sight" Rin showed him as a child -- how his passion for swimming was possible through his fierce love and support of his friends, which had shaken Haru out of his own childhood isolation. Rei sacrifices his spot at the relay so that Rin can finally rejoin the Iwatobi boys, and Haru shows Rin that same sight again, restoring Rin's trust and passion for his friends, and his love of swimming. In the final moments of the season, Rin tells Haru that it's not just his dad's dream that he's chasing, anymore -- it's his own. He's freed from the past, and the isolation that had held his heart down and made him lose himself so badly.
Due to how much happens in the last episode of the season, Rin's personality is changing one more time; although we don't have any post-canon updates, the last couple minutes of episode 12 suggest that it's a certainty that he's changed for the better. At this canon point, he's neither the shitty, aggressive Rin of the initial episodes of Free!, or the manic grinning boy of High Speed!; he's somewhere in the middle, given to being irritable and withdrawn or outgoing and cocky given the situation and the people he's interacting with. He's no longer totally insufferable to be around, as he's becoming willing to reach out to others and let others reach out to him again, although likely not as readily as he did as a child. He's still highly competitive and hard working ("I'll show you how strong Samezuka is," he tells Rei, when challenged to a race. "We have our sights set on the world."), but his achievements are not the only measure of his happiness and self-worth -- his friends are now a part of what his happiness is, supporting him and reminding him of the idealism, self-confidence, and compassion he's capable of.
[ EDIT STARTS HERE ]
The Drama CD provides more context for Rin's personality post-season. He's still as competitive as ever with Haruka; they spend all day at a festival, to the bemusement of their friends, competing at everything from who can take their clothes off the fastest to who can collect the most crabs. When it comes to things that aren't swimming, he's a classic example of a tsundere more often then not, wary of showing positive emotions for fear of being embarrassed or made fun of. Unlike characters like Nagisa and Haru, he seems to care a lot about how others see him, likely because he's always cared so much about other people, and because he's had to impose such high standards on himself in pursuing his dream.
He takes great pride in his body, diet, and training routines, which can make him a bit overbearing when it comes to his expectations for others; he wants nothing less but the best from those he wants to admire. Like when he was younger, he's capable of invigorating the group and getting everyone pumped up, causing competitive and passionate responses from the taciturn Haruka especially. Although his tunnel-vision on his dreams isn't as bad as it was at the beginning of the series, Rin still sometimes finds it difficult to balance his exceedingly ambitious dreams with things like manners, fun, and relaxation. Because of his impatience to pursue every last moment to its fullest, he can come off as quite blunt and brash, especially to people who are more laid back or carefree; if he's treated politely, however, he makes obvious efforts to return the respect, even if he slips up now and again. He's a high energy character who needs to have a goal at all times, and if there isn't one, he'll make one, even if its something trivial; Rin Matsuoka is ambition personified.
That hard edge of competition and drive in him is juxtaposed neatly against his incredibly wide soft streak; as previously mentioned, he trends towards being an overprotective big brother to Gou, and lets characters like Nitori and Makoto fuss over him. The fact that he can be so rough and assholish to his closest friends is directly linked to the insecurity he often feels around them; more often than not, he doesn't feel like he's "doing it right," and many of his conversations with anyone, especially Haruka, are just a mess of miscommunication. Nevertheless, he's unbelievably happy to be included and remembered, hugely sentimental underneath all the snapping and pointy teeth. He adopts a cocky, boisterous, fake-it-til-you-make-it attitude, which he's always had, but has become overly aggressive since going to Australia. This can get confusing, because he acts cocky when he's pleased and playful as well; the only difference is that in one case, he actually feels it. His temper is short and easily sparked, and he's kind of a big, cranky baby about it -- he doesn't take especially well to teasing or being made to look foolish, wanting to look cool and tough at all times. He very rarely says what he means or feels, although he finds it easier to do with characters like Makoto, who are patient and used to reading emotion, rather than being told about it. His relationship with Haruka is also a big part of his personality; Haru brings out the best and the worst of Rin, but they always understand each other on some level most people can't tune into.
In a few key words, Rin is proud, ambitious, caring, hard working, emotional, blunt, romantic, and insecure. He falls on his face a lot, and has a difficult time managing the intensity of his emotions, being his own worst enemy, and getting his real feelings out. But he'll never give up, now that he's surrounded by supportive friends and found a dream of his own; he can only grow more as a character from here.
Abilities:Rin Works Out. He's one of the buffer Free! boys, owing to his more intense attitude towards training; you don't get to the Olympics without keeping yourself in immensely good shape. He attended an international swimming school, and he's a total powerhouse in the water. Rin also lifts, he runs, he eats well and probably has regular bowel movements, the whole shebang. He's also got an amazing sense of self-discipline, resolve, and will power, both in and out of the pool -- he pursues his goals like a shark after blood (HOO HOO), and he's no dumb jock. In fact, he's ranked among the top 10 in every subject at his school. Other: nah man
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Re: matsuoka rin | free! iwatobi swim club | reserved
Appearance: He's the doucher with the red hair trying to look cool. He's got really stupid teeth. When he's actually wearing clothes, he tends to sport a lot of athletic wear like tank tops and loose pants, although in most of the promotional art he's trying to pass as a european model. Rin is 5'10 and 150 lbs, but looks slightly older than his 17 years thanks to
bullshit anime magicI don't know bullshit anime puberty.Personality: We have to go back a bit to talk about Rin's personality. Rin, age 12, starts out as something of a manic pixie dream boy. A transfer student, he blows into the protagonists' lives as a ball of energy and charisma, with a big smile and a big, obvious heart on his sleeve. Despite not knowing anyone in the school, he's cheerful and gregarious, and reveals himself to be a hopeless romantic, wanting to swim in the cherry blossoms despite the cold weather. His relationship with Haru is especially significant; after seeing Haru swim, he's hugely impressed and becomes obsessed with swimming with him, showing great persistence in trying to get Haru to swim with him in a relay medley. Although he comes off rather single-minded and maybe even selfish, he repeatedly emphasizes how much fun it will be, and how important the team is to him -- when their class creates "memory blocks," Rin dedicates his "For The Team," and cares an enormous amount about his new friends. It's almost a foregone conclusion, considering the boy's exuberant personality; the other boys get swept up in his relay-fervor, and he ends up acting as the catalyst that brings Nagisa, Makoto, and Haru together to swim in the relay, which creates a long-lasting memory for all involved, especially Haru. Before the relay, however, Rin drops a bomb on Makoto and Haru; the reason he had so badly wanted to swim medley with his friends was because he is leaving to go to a prestigious swimming school in Australia. There, he wants to become a great swimmer and pursue his late father's dream of becoming an Olympian.
Rin leaves for Australia and comes back, oddly somber, and requests another race with Haru -- this time against one another. When he loses, he bursts into tears, says he's going to quit swimming, and books it.
Rin returns to Australia, and when he comes back to Japan for good at age 17, he's a total brooding asshole.
This is where Free! starts, and is one of the main conflicts that the show must resolve. Without recapping the entire season, we slowly find out that although Rin had entered the Australian school with enormously high hopes for himself and his talents as a swimmer, he was given a harsh reality check in being surrounded by other talented swimmers. To his frustration, he hit a wall in his swimming, and watched his times plateau into mediocrity -- far from his big dreams of the Olympic gold. That quickly, the happy, smiling Rin who had befriended the Iwatobi boys isn't seen again, replaced by a quiet and guarded boy who keeps to himself. Although this extreme reaction seems petulant and childish at first, one might recall two important things; first, the reason for Rin's investment in swimming was that he wants to fulfill his late father's dream, and to be seemingly unable to improve and achieve this dream -- and not even being able to beat Haru, with all his training and hard work -- hit him hard. His self-worth, with the lack of friends and family to support and love him, becomes entirely wrapped up in swimming and success; winning becomes more important than anything else, and he loses his love of swimming, and of life.
Secondly, the isolation of being far away from the friends he valued so dearly is something he doesn't seem to be able to adjust to. Lonely, isolated, disappointed in himself, and frustrated with swimming, Rin comes to the sorry conclusion that it was swimming the medley that "ruined" him. He finds every accomplishment he manages on his own pales in comparison to those he managed with his team, and it embitters him, making him isolate himself further from other people and cultivate a harsh, intimidating persona. His friends find it hard to believe how much Rin has changed; although he's still charismatic, it's in a very negative way, and he doesn't seem to want to be with the people his intense personality draw in, instantly pushing them away. However, the mask of arrogance and condescension he adopts hides deep and painful insecurities, all horribly mixed up with the death of his father, the isolation from his friends, and the eventual self-loathing he feels at being unable to get past the relay. He's outright hostile to Haru and ignores the rest of the team, unable to connect with even his sister, Gou, who only wants to see her brother smiling again. When he finally beats Haru in a race, he's at first elated, thinking he'll be able to leave all that pain and frustration behind -- but it doesn't make him happy, because that pain had never really been about winning, despite what he'd convinced himself.
However assholish he acts towards his friends face to face, there are many points in the show where Rin slips up and shows he still cares for them, somewhere under all those dumb, turbulent emotions. He remembers Makoto's fear of the ocean, asking "Is Makoto really okay with that?" when he hears the Iwatobi boys plan on training at the sea. When pressed, of course, he quickly retracts his concern, but at the beach, he stays up worrying about his friend. He is constantly shown thinking (brooding over) his friends, growing fiercely jealous and bitter over Rei's supposed "substitution" of himself, despite all of his outward protests at their offers of friendship. He shows a lot of soft spots, as well, in his interactions with Nitori and Gou; although he acts as if he'd like to be totally alone, he seems to care a good deal about their respective well beings, getting worked up at his Captain's attentions to his sister and half-mentoring, half-befriending the overenthusiastic Nitori. He's still, after all, a romantic at heart, overemotional and given to sentiment even at his worst, the type of person to feed stray cats and keep a diary. His emotions are still terribly obvious, always embodied in his behaviour; when he feels awful, he acts awful, yelling at Nitori and kicking trash cans and crying on Haruka's face. When he feels good, he shows it likewise, splashing in vicious delight when he beats Haru for the first time, hugging Haru and bursting into tears of joy and relief when they swim together again in a relay. Rin is not a bad person, although he acts like an asshole; he is actually a very good and deeply feeling person, who has been his own company for too long, and done a terrible job at it.
At the end of the anime, once Haru has been through his own character arc, he becomes able to reach out to Rin. He tells Rin that it's Rin he swims for, because he hasn't forgotten that "sight" Rin showed him as a child -- how his passion for swimming was possible through his fierce love and support of his friends, which had shaken Haru out of his own childhood isolation. Rei sacrifices his spot at the relay so that Rin can finally rejoin the Iwatobi boys, and Haru shows Rin that same sight again, restoring Rin's trust and passion for his friends, and his love of swimming. In the final moments of the season, Rin tells Haru that it's not just his dad's dream that he's chasing, anymore -- it's his own. He's freed from the past, and the isolation that had held his heart down and made him lose himself so badly.
Due to how much happens in the last episode of the season, Rin's personality is changing one more time; although we don't have any post-canon updates, the last couple minutes of episode 12 suggest that it's a certainty that he's changed for the better. At this canon point, he's neither the shitty, aggressive Rin of the initial episodes of Free!, or the manic grinning boy of High Speed!; he's somewhere in the middle, given to being irritable and withdrawn or outgoing and cocky given the situation and the people he's interacting with. He's no longer totally insufferable to be around, as he's becoming willing to reach out to others and let others reach out to him again, although likely not as readily as he did as a child. He's still highly competitive and hard working ("I'll show you how strong Samezuka is," he tells Rei, when challenged to a race. "We have our sights set on the world."), but his achievements are not the only measure of his happiness and self-worth -- his friends are now a part of what his happiness is, supporting him and reminding him of the idealism, self-confidence, and compassion he's capable of.
[ EDIT STARTS HERE ]
The Drama CD provides more context for Rin's personality post-season. He's still as competitive as ever with Haruka; they spend all day at a festival, to the bemusement of their friends, competing at everything from who can take their clothes off the fastest to who can collect the most crabs. When it comes to things that aren't swimming, he's a classic example of a tsundere more often then not, wary of showing positive emotions for fear of being embarrassed or made fun of. Unlike characters like Nagisa and Haru, he seems to care a lot about how others see him, likely because he's always cared so much about other people, and because he's had to impose such high standards on himself in pursuing his dream.
He takes great pride in his body, diet, and training routines, which can make him a bit overbearing when it comes to his expectations for others; he wants nothing less but the best from those he wants to admire. Like when he was younger, he's capable of invigorating the group and getting everyone pumped up, causing competitive and passionate responses from the taciturn Haruka especially. Although his tunnel-vision on his dreams isn't as bad as it was at the beginning of the series, Rin still sometimes finds it difficult to balance his exceedingly ambitious dreams with things like manners, fun, and relaxation. Because of his impatience to pursue every last moment to its fullest, he can come off as quite blunt and brash, especially to people who are more laid back or carefree; if he's treated politely, however, he makes obvious efforts to return the respect, even if he slips up now and again. He's a high energy character who needs to have a goal at all times, and if there isn't one, he'll make one, even if its something trivial; Rin Matsuoka is ambition personified.
That hard edge of competition and drive in him is juxtaposed neatly against his incredibly wide soft streak; as previously mentioned, he trends towards being an overprotective big brother to Gou, and lets characters like Nitori and Makoto fuss over him. The fact that he can be so rough and assholish to his closest friends is directly linked to the insecurity he often feels around them; more often than not, he doesn't feel like he's "doing it right," and many of his conversations with anyone, especially Haruka, are just a mess of miscommunication. Nevertheless, he's unbelievably happy to be included and remembered, hugely sentimental underneath all the snapping and pointy teeth. He adopts a cocky, boisterous, fake-it-til-you-make-it attitude, which he's always had, but has become overly aggressive since going to Australia. This can get confusing, because he acts cocky when he's pleased and playful as well; the only difference is that in one case, he actually feels it. His temper is short and easily sparked, and he's kind of a big, cranky baby about it -- he doesn't take especially well to teasing or being made to look foolish, wanting to look cool and tough at all times. He very rarely says what he means or feels, although he finds it easier to do with characters like Makoto, who are patient and used to reading emotion, rather than being told about it. His relationship with Haruka is also a big part of his personality; Haru brings out the best and the worst of Rin, but they always understand each other on some level most people can't tune into.
In a few key words, Rin is proud, ambitious, caring, hard working, emotional, blunt, romantic, and insecure. He falls on his face a lot, and has a difficult time managing the intensity of his emotions, being his own worst enemy, and getting his real feelings out. But he'll never give up, now that he's surrounded by supportive friends and found a dream of his own; he can only grow more as a character from here.
Abilities: Rin Works Out. He's one of the buffer Free! boys, owing to his more intense attitude towards training; you don't get to the Olympics without keeping yourself in immensely good shape. He attended an international swimming school, and he's a total powerhouse in the water. Rin also lifts, he runs, he eats well and probably has regular bowel movements, the whole shebang. He's also got an amazing sense of self-discipline, resolve, and will power, both in and out of the pool -- he pursues his goals like a shark after blood (HOO HOO), and he's no dumb jock. In fact, he's ranked among the top 10 in every subject at his school.
Other: nah man