Swimming in Movies/Novels/Comics/Manga/Etc

[Lynor Eclipse]

This guild needs to be livened up a bit... so here's a new topic!

What do you think when you see someone swimming in a movie? Or when it's described in a book? How about a comic/manga? Any other form of media?

Are you happy to see that the noble sport is getting some attention? Are you laughing your head off 'cause you know you can do it 100x better (and it just looks so wrong! such bad technique!)? Any specific scenes that include swimming that you can think of from a movie/novel/comic/manga/etc?  

[Lynor Eclipse]

Heh, I find that often it looks kind of funny when it's done in visual media. And I remember reading a book when I was a kid called "The Winning Stroke" about a baseball player who was injured and took up swimming to get his strength back, discovering that he actually liked the sport. I remembered thinking it was so weird that he was swimming the 500, 'cause in Canada that's not a racing distance. Of course, I realized later that it is a racing distance in the States.

Recently, I read a manga where a guy decided to swim to an island to rescue his girlfriend and everyone else was like "are you crazy? that's 500 meters away!" (yes meters, not yards). lol, 500m is not a big deal! That'd take him less than 10 minutes to get there! (it was stated that he was a good swimmer). I really rolled my eyes at the over-reaction that the other characters were making in regards to the distance. (heh, though there's a lot of terrible writing in that manga overall, at least this was funny!).  

[FoxBlaze]

This might be kinda late, but yeah, I'm sure we all cringe at the sight of actors trying to swim.

I remember when they came out with that Victor Davis movie and I was so pumped. Then I saw the swimming... UGH. Jeez, you'd think they would get a swimmer to swim the part of a respectable swimmer swimming... ._.

As for in manga/anime, most swimmer I've seen portrayed aren't bad, if not decent. I feel like the japanese regular joe respects the sport of swimming more than north americans :/ especially since most schools there have swimming as part of the curriculum and whatnot... I think?

Anyway, yeah, RL swimming portrayals are a horrible thing, really >.<