The Azur Lane Anime is More Competent Than Expected
Going into Azur Lane, I had zero expectations of finishing the anime (or even getting further than a few episodes). Having had spent an embarrassing number of hours playing the mobile game, I was morbidly curious how anyone could make an anime out of the wild, shameless waters of this historic battleship simulator. What I expected was fan service, more fan service, and as many beach episodes as humanly possible. The reason I’m writing today, however, is to share that this anime was far more competent than it had any business being. First, I’d like to discuss the savvy way it handles a virtually nonexistent story and turns it into a passible exploration of worldview and individuality. After this, it would be fair to call attention to the unavoidable nature of the franchise that makes a good deal of this anime problematic as well. I’d also like to give credit to the anime for trying to make super ambitious fight scenes, even if the execution was certainly sloppier than I’m sure they were hoping for. My final point drifts more into the franchise as a whole, but I’d like to highlight the spirit of Azur Lane’s attention to naval history and how this makes its characters rich with history.
Turn Nothin’ Into Somethin’
One of the most surprising parts of this anime was how the story was acceptable and lent itself for some interesting character drama. The mobile game for Azur Lane certainly has more story than most of the genre, but that is not saying much. In the game, the cryptic cutscenes point to a break in peace treaty as the subtly named Sakura Empire joins the Naz- I mean Iron Blood forces against the not US Eagle Union and not the UK Royal Navy. Also, there are…aliens? UFOs? The game doesn’t do a great job of explaining who the Sirens are. As for the anime, we get a bit more explanation as to why the Sakura Empire decides to shack up with Iron Blood and make a push towards recreating WWII. Spoiler for a show I really don’t think deserves its own spoiler tag- the aliens convince the Sakura Empire to hastily attack the Azur Lane (think Allied forces here) and to fuel their knock-off Allspark “Dark Wisdom Cube.” I said the story was coherent, not revolutionary, alright?
Jokes aside, where this anime’s story shines is through how it handles its colorful cast of characters. Sure, we could do drive by “hey look it is (ship’s name)” shooting (which the anime certainly does) but the short project decided to dive into some unexpected character depth. The two main members of the Azur Lane- USS Enterprise and HMS Belfast- demand most of the story’s character drama focus. In particular, the broody Enterprise is explored to a great depth.
Where I really enjoyed the story was through how it used Enterprise’s conflict with her sense of purpose to convey a message regarding worldview. The sea is often used as a device for characters to hash out their differing worldviews, and it is interesting to see how Belfast helps Enterprise along with her changing viewpoint of what the sea was. While Enterprise sees it as a terrible thing that could only bring misfortune, Belfast and the other members of Azur Lane try to introduce perspective that the sea can also be a beautiful sight that brings joy. It is a bit on the nose, sure, but it is well executed. As for the individuality side of things, Enterprise grumpily states that they are all instruments of war and that they cannot be normal people with freedoms and personalities. This is exactly where Belfast shines. She introduces Enterprise to the concept of self-care through making her become more conscious to diet and relaxation, builds self-confidence by showing her how much people look up to her, and, finally, convinces her to socialize with others, building her social support system. Belfast single-handedly integrates a normal, healthy lifestyle for a war-scarred machine. Again, Azur Lane has no business being competent in certain character developments and storytelling, but it surprises and does anyways.
Sailing for Sales
With that said, we all know what was inevitable with an anime adaptation of a popular gacha game where you collect anime boat girls: there is a boatload of fanservice. There are three separate beach episodes (or beach settings) and at least two different instances where different costumes are utilized (the Royal Navy ships go golfing in full golf attire, Royal Navy spies pretend to be part of the Sakura Empire in kimonos). One of the episodes is just an all-out cash grab as the ships…get maintenance done. The whole affair is especially uncomfortable given some of the…shall we say…size and commission age of the battleships.
No matter how much enjoyment one gets out of the gacha game or found the anime to be entertaining for other reasons, there will always be a large stain that is unavoidable with this kind of franchise. The shameless cash-grab of fanservice and appealing towards degeneracy is like a spilled glass of red wine in an open concept studio apartment that the designer decided to make everything from the walls to the carpet snow white. You can try to cover it up with a rug, but that stain is never going away. I adore Azur Lane in a way that I adore other anime franchises like Monogatari, but the reputation will always follow it and make me, as a fan, read like an absolute degenerate.
Ambitious, Albeit Average Animation
Perhaps the most misleading criticism of this anime I experienced was that Azur Lane had “basically slide-show animation” and that it was some laughable attempt. While it is confirmed that fans were furious over the animation quality to the extent that the final few episodes were outright delayed for quality control, I am not entirely convinced this was some heinous animation. Sure, it was rough, but I think we have seen far worse still push forward with delusions that it was acceptable as was. No, I’m not just stanning it because I like the franchise- I actually think there is a better answer for why the animation was so rough in the cited frustrated stretch.
The episode span that brought forth the delays saw the Azur Lane having a wicked fight with the Sakura Empire through an environment filled with glaciers and snowy mountains. While it was guilty of trying this before, this conflict had nearly every scene involving a fight executed at breakneck speeds and covering a lot of distance at once. It reminded me of Fate/Apocrypha where, at the peak of speed of its fights, the animation struggled mightily to keep up with the scene. We see ships suddenly become super thinly drawn and the “camera” (so to speak) jerk around. The payoff moment that was supposed to be more epic than it ended up looking had HMS Javelin and USS Laffey going all out to save IJN Ayanami at a dizzying height. On paper, this scene sounds really cool (like most of the fights in this snowy climate setting) but, unfortunately, it was clear the production value was not high enough to reach this. As the final fight and a bulk of the non-combat moments show, however, Azur Lane was passible as a “fine” grade in the animation department. While I know it ultimately sank the reputation of this anime, I cannot help but to wonder what could have been if this ambitious stretch of a few episodes looked as pretty as I’m sure the scriptwriters imagined.
What Makes Azur Lane Work For Me
This should come as no surprise- I love military history. Boats, planes, tanks, you name it. My school district picked me to represent them at an academic conference based off of a paper I submitted in my high school history class. When I enlisted, my instructors were far more impressed with my presentations about military tactics and great military leaders than my actual marks on exams and practical exercises. I missed the whole Kantai Collection/KanColle thing since I wasn’t really into anime when that was at a fever pitch, so I never really had a franchise that explored a subject I nerd out to.
When Azur Lane dropped, like most things I don’t realize what I was getting into, I never realized how problematic the community around it was. Sure, the game was shameless with marketing, but I was more fixated (read: addicted) to collecting my favorite ships throughout history. The characters themselves were secondary to me, and I found myself looking up and realizing I had plowed through all of the content the game had to offer. Besides events I missed before joining, I had every Eagle Union ship and most of the Royal Navy. By this point, I decided to quit playing.
What made the franchise so fun to me? Well, after I got done collecting all of the ships, I thought it was fun to see how the writers worked in real history into the “characters.” I took tremendous pride in the fact that my home, Cleveland, was represented by one of the best Eagle Union ships in the game! It felt like the same kind of pride one takes in a sports team that represents their home. Ships of the same build classifications were “sisters” and shared different appearance traits or abilities. It was all small “attention to detail” stuff, but it amused me greatly. I had never really stopped to consider the toxicity of the fanbase. Sure, I saw my fair share of…fanart of the ships, but it was not why I enjoyed the franchise. It has always been fun to figure out which ship was closest to where my friends lived or, in the case of my Navy friends, show them which character they were assigned to. It was good, innocent fun in that regard.
The unfortunate fate of the anime is not something I find particularly shocking. For worse, those who were already off-board were not going to be won over by this attempt. Fans were already torn about there being an adaptation, and the introduction of an ultra-small studio did not bode well for reputation either. By the time this ship even left port, there were damning holes in it. I enjoyed it for what it was, and even found some of what it did kind of moving. It was cool to see all of these ships I spent all this time getting being as expressive as they were written to be. The anime answered weird little questions like “how do they get the ship parts? Are those always there or something?” in creative ways. For being such a big undertaking, I thought it was competent for the most part. Unfortunately, animation is, in fact, something that is required in an anime, and the greedy run it had at making something remarkable fall so flat could not be salvaged by the average animation found throughout. If you don’t already like Azur Lane, I don’t think there is any rational reason for you to even consider this anime. If you do like the ship collect-athon and were curious, however, I think it is worth giving a look. If you go in with low expectations, it will be enjoyable.
Ultimately, I think it is important to consider that an anime that many call “trash” and immediately blitz with the same tired jokes could be enjoyed by someone who has an open mind and lowered expectations. Not everything is going to be Violet Evergarden or Astra: Lost in Space, and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we can enjoy mediocre anime like Azur Lane for their few fun moments.
My name is DilKokoro, you can find me @DilKokoro on Twitter! My articles are available narrated on Anchor at DilKokoro Collection and my biweekly podcast with the AniTAY and other anime writing community members can be found as The DilKokoro Podcast. Thanks for your time, and happy holidays!
