Makoto Tachibana

Makoto Tachibana is one of the main characters from the Free anime and light novels.

Makoto was the backstroke swimmer and a captain on the Iwatobi High School swimming team. He is currently majoring in sports education at a University in Tokyo, with the aim of becoming a swimming teacher for kids.

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

While swimming, he wears black long leg swim pants that have green patterns on them. He's seen wearing black framed glasses once, but it's not said whether he really needs them or not.

Personality
Makoto is a nice and considerate guy, who is always concerned about his friends' welfare. Due to his caring personality, he is often 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 or cling to him in some way.

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

Makoto and Haruka have been together for so long that Makoto is able to read Haru's mind. He is also shown to be slightly manipulative, often using Haruka's love of water to his advantage to convince Haruka to do what he wants. It was also shown that Haruka dislikes it when people use his first name, but Makoto always somehow manages to win the argument and calls him 'Haru'.

Trivia

 * The kanji for his family name Tachibana is also the Chinese hanzi character spelling of the word "orange".
 * Additionally, there are also two different spellings for the Japanese family name "Tachibana". The character can also be translated as reading "hana", the Japanese word for "flower". Both of the other spellings are spelled with two kan'ji 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 by winning over Haru Yoshida from Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun with 24861 votes.
 * Makoto has won the Muscle Contest held at the renewed Iwatobi Swimming Club, where Gou was one of the judges. However, the one Gou gave the most points was Rin.
 * Makoto's voice actor, Tatsuhisa Suzuki, is the vocalist for OLDCODEX, the band which performed the opening themes for the 3 seasons of Free!, "Rage on", "Dried Up Youthful Fame" and "Heading to Over".
 * He occasionally wears glasses.
 * His motif animal is an orca.
 * Young Makoto's English voice actress, Colleen Clinkenbeard, also provides the voice for his mother Mrs. Tachibana and Tsukushi Kurimiya.