We’ve had a wave of recent announcements and events for the swimming anime phenomenon Free! -Eternal Summer-, but we’re not done yet! Today, fresh from our AnimeExpo panel, we’re revealing two new big pieces of news—a Free! ES Premium Edition AND news about the long-awaited OVA episode!
If you’re a hardcore Free! fan looking to add a really special splash to your collection, our anime shop is unveiling today the Free! -Eternal Summer- “For the Future” Premium Edition, full of totally exclusive special additions to show some extra love for our favorite swimboys.
The Premium Edition will include not only the Free! -Eternal Summer- Limited Edition that we unveiled earlier this month (featuring that gorgeous rigid chipboard box with water gloss effect!) but also these collectibles you can’t get anywhere else:
- A full-color art book, including many gorgeous pieces exclusive only to the original Japanese releases
- Seven glossy art cards also using exclusive, highly detailed art from the covers of the Japanese releases—you’ll definitely want to frame these
- A color sports towel, so you can take the boys to the pool or beach!
- An Iwatobi and a Samezuka decal to show off your school pride
- And finally, everything housed in a handsome collector’s box to hold all your Free! collectibles
These items are exclusive to this release and won’t be remade once the Premium Edition’s (one and only!) print run sells out in our anime shop, so pre-order now before they’re all gone for good! We’ll be revealing a preview of these items soon.
PLUS! Customers who pre-order the Premium Edition from FUNimation.com will automatically be entered to win a gorgeously sculpted 1/8 scale figure of everyone’s favorite water-lover, Haruka Nanase, from Alter! These highly detailed figures are sold out in Japan and pretty rare to find, so order by September 29 to get a shot.
We’ve also been receiving a lot of questions about the Free! -Eternal Summer- OVA, a special unaired full episode featuring the Iwatobi and Samezuka boys in an intense, dramatic, no-holds-barred (and totally hilarious) water gun battle. We’re excited to finally announce that we do have the rights to this OVA, and it will be released in 2016.
We know that some fans hoped the OVA would be included in the Eternal Summer release. Given the Japanese release dates, we’ve decided to release the OVA separately in order to be able to release the season on home video this year. Since we’ve seen such a huge outpouring of passion and excitement for this title, we definitely don’t want to make you guys wait til 2016 for the entire release.
Details on the OVA are coming soon. Customers who pre-order the Premium Edition from FUNimation.com by September 29 will also receive an offer to get an additional discount on eventual pre-orders of the OVA, so don’t delay!
