A short promo of a new project by Kyoto Animation and Animation Do caught the attention of anime fans all across the internet back in March. That first video, full of energetic and shirtless swim team members, was dubbed “that swimming anime” by fans and spawned a large number of parodies and plenty of speculation. Many people wondered what the short would become: a series? A short animation?

Kyoto Animation has just confirmed that there is indeed more to the project. The upcoming anime will be called Free! and is based on the novel High Speed! by Kōji Ōji. The novel had previously won an honorable mention in the 2011 Kyoto Animation Award contest.

Free! will be a series about – you probably guessed it – a high school swim team. The majority of the characters are from Iwatobi High School, while a rival swimmer hails from Sametsuka Academy.  The show will premiere on several Japanese stations this July and will also stream on Niconico and ABC Dōga Club.

These are the characters and voice actors that have been announced so far:

	Voiced By:
Haruka Nanase	Nobunaga Shimazaki
Hazuki Nagisa	Tsubasa Yonaga
Makoto Tachibana	Tatsuhisa Suzuki
Rei Ryugazaki	Daisuke Hirakawa
Rin Matsuoka	Mamoru Miyano

SOURCE