Azur Lane

When the "Sirens," an alien force with an arsenal far surpassing the limits of current technology, suddenly appeared, a divided humanity stood in complete solidarity for the first time. Four countries—Eagle Union, Royal Navy, Sakura Empire, and Iron Blood—formed Azur Lane, paving the way for the improvement of modern warfare, which led to an initial victory against the common threat. However, this tenuous union was threatened by opposing ideals, dividing the alliance into two. Sakura Empire and Iron Blood broke away and formed the Red Axis, and humanity became fragmented once again.

As a seasoned and experienced fighter, the "Grey Ghost" Enterprise shoulders Azur Lane's hope for ending the war. But behind her stoic persona hides a frail girl, afraid of the ocean. Even so, she continues to fight as she believes that it's the only purpose for her existence. Meanwhile, Javelin, Laffey, and Unicorn—three ships from the union—stumble upon Ayanami, a spy from the Red Axis. Strange as it may seem, they try to befriend her, but as enemies, their efforts are for naught. Still, they persevere in hopes of succeeding one day.

Amidst the neverending conflict within humankind, the keys that could unite a fragmented race might exist: a soldier coming to terms with her mysterious personality and camaraderie between those with different ideals.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Enterprise Main

Ishikawa, Yui Japanese

Laffey Main

Naganawa, Maria Japanese

Belfast Main

Horie, Yui Japanese

Akagi Main

Nakahara, Mai Japanese

Kaga Main

Kayano, Ai Japanese

Prinz Eugen Supporting

Sakura, Ayane Japanese

Atago Supporting

Kayano, Ai Japanese

Ayanami Supporting

Taichi, You Japanese

Z23 Supporting

Abe, Rika Japanese

Cleveland Supporting

Horigome, Saya Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Kanemitsu, Kazuhiro Producer

Tamura, Satoshi Producer

Aida, Tsuyoshi Producer

Reviews

May 17, 2024

lalaeda

Recommended

I have never played the game and started watching the anime without prior knowledge of AL's universe. So I am rating it solely as an anime.

Overall, I would say I enjoyed the animation with a lot of beautiful scenes and the sound/OST are also great.
Due to a lot of characters, there are also a lot of seiyuu, and I really enjoyed watching the anime in its original language with subs.

The plot is not bad at all, despite what I have read in the reviews from others who are well-known with AL's universe. I may not realize how deep the overall plot and idea ... of AL's universe are, but the anime could be a good starting point to delve deeper into it. I believe it would be hard to pack everything into 12 episodes, so there's nothing to blame on the adaptation. Consider this as an advertisement of the Azur Lane. Personally I'm satisfied with the plot development, as well as the underlying messages that it delivers throughout the series.

So I assume if you never played the game but heard quite often about this anime, and don't mind not seeing any male character during the whole series, you may give this anime a try.

And yeah, fanservice though.. it is also included. - "Cons?" - "Not a single one".

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jul 5, 2021

Upset_Nimbus

Mixed Feelings

Ah the sea! Where girls come to swim, play, and erm ... fire 16 inch 50 caliber naval armaments at one another? Was that in the script? Azur Lane I've heard is based off of a game (which I should probably try out) and seems to be a slice of life but with two extra pats of action seasoning. Girls in battle? Really cool, the torpedo salvo ripping through the waters, the papers burn into fighter biplanes, Zuikaku's sword charging via PUMPING SAID PLANES into her sword hilt was sick! Girls at home? (base) adorable as fuck. There's quite a bit of fanservice but not ... too much that it takes over. The interactions the girls have with one another is gold but it takes a keen eye. One of my favorite parts was during one of the dining scenes some ship girl in the background straight up invaded one of her comrade's fish n chips with wayyy too much ketchup I know its a tad bit mean but it was cute and I'm all about stuff like that. The grand concept had me expecting more from the story though. It's, unfortunately, a bit tame and mediocre. Some characters are introduced but unfortunately never really used in a meaningful full way. Tons of ship girls in the background but no label or story about them. Not saying I would want to sink some of these lovely ladies but the plot armor is strong with pretty much every ship making it out of conflict alive and enterprise seems to be the uncontested ace of the battlefield eating a lot of the action (but she does it in a pretty cool way such as riding her own biplanes into combat).

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jun 14, 2021

Valkyriis

Not Recommended

Alright, let's just keep it a $1.50 here. I love the game, I don't love the anime.

It's an anime adaptation of a popular mobile game. While the mobile game itself has been done splendidly, the anime adaptation was done in a less than splendid way (and that's an understatement to say the least). As an anime, it's alright. We get some characters to look at to form fanservice theories about, to find a "best girl" and to wonder who will experience the most development over the course of the show. Sadly, with Azur Lane being a mobile game, this anime was nowhere near to showing ... enough characters for fans and anime watchers alike. No one is able to really connect to the characters if they've never played the game. 12 episodes of random fights and nonsensical "feel-good" moments made it very hard to develop any real connection or fondness to any of the characters. It made it even harder to sit through and watch both the English and Japanese versions, which I had done many times prior to this review. While I felt a sense of pride knowing that Enterprise was the focus of the show, I feel an even more sense of embarrassment from how badly she was written and portrayed, along with all the other characters they included.

To put it out there, there are over 600 characters in the mobile game, not including the Siren characters. There's no anime out there that will ever be able to cover 600+ characters and keep the story as linear as possible. It's just not going to happen. It could've taken the direction Azur Lane: Bisoku Zenshin! took and gave us 20 minute long episodes of daily life with the characters, introducing different characters each episode who have no impact on the previous episode. They could have even given us mini arcs with the characters based on the events in the game. Alas they did neither of those things.

While the anime does it's best to introduce characters, unless you've played the game, you're not going to know who 85% of them even are. They don't get named at all in the series. The ones who do get named aren't even the most popular, OP or memorable from the game. Not to say Unicorn, Cleveland and Prince of Wales aren't memorable, but including Nevada and Oklahoma and Koln as opposed to including Nelson, North Carolina or Dido as forefront characters just for the fanservice is beyond me. They had literally hundreds of characters to pull from, as well as the main 4 characters from the game to focus on, but they chose lesser-known characters? I still can't figure out why they thought it was a great idea to focus on Enterprise instead of the Big 4. What's even worse is they took one of the Big 4 (Z23) and gave her very minimal screen time just because she was a secondary character on the Crimson Axis side. It felt Prinz Eugen got more screen time than Z23 did. Ball dropped, if you ask me. But that's not the main issue with the show.

The music isn't memorable, the English voice acting was very cringy and the lack of character focus (except for Enterprise and Belfast, because the studio thought they were better main characters than the original 4 starter characters from the game for some reason) are just a few major issues with the show as it stands. These still aren't the main issues with the show.

The main issue is the show didn't have a solid plot. They wanted to take it in a bit of a different direction than the mobile game, but for the most part, it was the same. Azur Lane vs. Crimsons Axis vs Sirens. Nothing really new here, it was just done so badly. The game literally has an entire introduction storyline explaining all of it and they still managed to mess it up. While it did open a clear path to Azur Lane: Bisoku Zenshin! with having all the girls from all the factions spending time together, it did a very poor job establishing a dynamic relationship between all the factions and characters to begin with.

The biggest takeaway from this is for an anime? It's meh. Really average. Not terrible by any means. The animation isn't the greatest, but it's not the worst. The story is a very popular theme, so it's quite dull, and the entire cast is quite predictable and hard to grow attached to. The music doesn't really stand out in the entire show, so that's not going to be a redeeming quality. None of that makes it the show worth a 1. Not even a 2. I'd say it's really a hard 3, soft 4 in terms of an anime.

Now, for it being an anime based on a popular game that's rich with lore, characters and detail... Yeah. It's a 2, but not a 1. If they had followed the original storyline or even branched off into the events the game experiences, the show would be leagues better than what it is. Watch it with caution, as you may lose interest after the first few episodes when nothing of note really happens. Do yourself a favor, and go play the game, watch Azur Lane: Bisoku Zenshin! and read the manga adaptation. All of that is much better than this anime adaptation. If you're a glutton for bad story tropes, uninteresting characters and short, pointless battle scenes, then by all means, watch this show. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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