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]
Nenhum episódio encontrado.
Comentários
ShinodaChan
As someone who loves Azur Lane, I'll be honest: This adaptation was terrible. - Mediocre story featuring a generic plot, awful pacing, an OOC lead (Enterprise), forced yuribait, and an inconsistent setting. If the writers' goal was to sum up the in-game story so far, they failed spectacularly. No in-game events are mentioned or animated, and what context is presented is vague and never expanded upon. Enterprise is reduced to a one-note ration addict without common sense who can only be saved not by her sister (Hornet) or her dedicated repair ship (Vestal), but by Belfast because yuribait. One of the major factions in-game (Ironblood)is sidelined with their starter ship only getting ~3 minutes of screentime, and the minor factions are nowhere to be found. Episodes sporadically hop from serious moments to lighthearted ones as if the writers couldn't agree on the atmosphere they wanted to present. There are several more issues I can give (e.g. that one episode where it took ~12 minutes of ships slowly approaching each other before they actually started fighting, Akagi being stuck with the idiot ball for several episodes) but you get the idea.
- Inconsistent animation; compare the first and second halves of Episode 8 and you'll see what I mean. There's a reason Bibury had to delay the last two episodes by three months just to make them serviceable. Speaking of which...
- Terrible 'fight scenes' with no sense of choreography or intensity. Zooming around on planes and dodging bombs is not a fight scene, it's a snooze fest. Some fights were better than others (Enterprise vs Zuikaku), but for the most part they were laughable.
- Forgettable soundtrack outside of the OP/ED outside of one or two tracks.
- Dub was hilariously bad; the German accents were way too thick.
Now this adaptation wasn't garbage at everything, and it's true that viewers had low expectations going in since since Bibury is a freelance studio that normally does in-between animation instead of entire adaptations. However, the only redeemable things about this adaptation (e.g. most character portrayals including voice acting) are done just as well if not better by the game, the manga adaptations of the game, and even Azur Lane Crosswave (regardless of its controversial gameplay). It's disappointing, and I feel bad for both Manjuu and Yostar because they've put their heart and soul into the IP for years, but now they have to deal with the bad reputation of an adaptation that was clearly doomed from Day 1.
If you have not played Azur Lane, please give it a shot. I can guarantee you that the game is much better than this adaptation on all fronts, and that Manjuu & Yostar treat it with plenty of love and care. As for this adaptation...well, at least the Blu-rays remedy some of the animation errors.
March 2021 Edit: Yostar Pictures's adaptation of Azur Lane (Bisoku Zenshin) just finished airing and is far better than this adaptation was, so be sure to give it a look if you were hoping for something else. I've also edited this review for concision.
Stark700
Perhaps the theme of ship girls isn’t an overly saturated idea in the anime medium. We’ve only had a handful of anime about ship girls in these recent years. Azur Lane does gleefully feel similar to Kantai Collection, a franchise that it drew influences from. Back in 2015, Kantai Collection presented itself as a love letter to fans of the game. Azur Lane follows a similar path and by that, it tries to please the fans. But as an anime original viewer, Azur Lane presented itself to me as a fan disservice of naval storytelling. The plot deals with nations fighting against the mysterious alien forceknown as the “Sirens”. Azur Lane is a military alliance established to counter the threat that consist of the Eagle Union, Sakura Empire, Royal Navy, and Ironblood. However, these nations develop ideal clashes that breeds internal problems within the alliance. Let me tell you this right now and that is, you should not expect much character development for the oversaturated cast of characters. Besides a few of the more prominent characters such as Enterprise, Akagi, Unicorn, Javelin, Belfast, and Kaga, there’s far too many to count or worth investing time into. It’s a flaw of the anime with viewers being easily lost within its sea of characters and even the plot. Azur Lane seems to be the type of anime that’s aimed for an audience already familiar with the franchise.
That being said, the anime isn’t completely unwatchable. Naval warfare takes shape with a war drama story that isn’t difficult to understand. The main question is how much you feel attached to the story it tells us. The main plot deals with how each nation operates by using its arsenal and military units in the conflict against the Sirens. When it doesn’t engage in war, we do have the so called “breather episodes” to give the characters time to relax. The first half of the series even had a particular beach episode to give time off for the ship girls. Other times, it brings together characters from different nations and their ideals. One of the most prominent character is Enterprise, an ace renowned for her skills and her experience. Throughout the anime, she faces her own personal demons including dealing with the incident of her sister, Yorktown. While the anime doesn’t pull the trigger on most of the cast, Yorktown does become a victim of warfare and in respect, Enterprise feels responsible. In a sensible topic, war can be a life altering experience. Azur Lane seeks to promote character assassination on occasions despite the highly fictional content.
As I mentioned before, Azur Lane seems like type of anime targeted to fans who are already familiar with the franchise. There’s far too many cast and as result, many of the characters gets demoted to background extras or even omitted. A primary example is the limited focus on Ironblood and its members. The anime attempts to remedy this by having groups of characters appearing but it doesn’t really leave a good taste. On the other hand, it’s easy to see that some character relationships to be intimate than others. No, this is not a shoujo-ai. But sometimes, you do get a ship tease between characters such as Akagi and Kaga. Unfortunately, the relationships in this anime is eye catchy at best but filled with utter nonsense. Watching Azur Lane made me feel like a kid who got a flashy new toy but gets bored the very next day. Characters such as Unicorn serves as mascots that brings little value to the storytelling. If you’re seeking for a concrete plot, seriously look elsewhere. This isn’t an anime that will make you quote lines from what it’s selling.
On the technical elements, Azur Lane became a victim of for its visual quality and animation. There's obvious problems with the production values when the producers decided to delay the series' final two episodes by 3 months. While character designs doesn't suffer from CGI, some of them looks inconsistent in background scenes. Most of the time, the characters looks scripted on set and the battle chereography seems like it's a live slideshow. There's no easy way to say it but Azur Lane takes a big fall on its animation front.
Ah, Azur Lane. Somehow, I got the impression the producers wanted to throw all this together to get the audience's favor into the game. Honestly, the plot is so poorly written that you may have to look up a wiki to understand the full gest. Without playing the game, this show won’t be much of an enjoyable experience. It's not even an eye pleaser with the atrocious animation. You will certainly not come out of this show remembering a memorable quote or two. And it’s a shame really. It's 2020 and we haven’t received a decent anime about ship girls in ages.
KANLen09
AHHH...Azur Lane, how we missed ya then and back, and now out again. The promise that we'd have a decent game adaptation with an original storyline that subsequently went to shit as it progresses, not to mention the many warship waifus and the mediocre animation that accompanies this dreaded show. Based on the gacha game of the same name (that was insanely popular at the time), Azur Lane features anthropomorphic World War 2 waifu ships that we have the joy of the love-hate relationships between its insanely big cast of allies and enemies to develop their growth overtime as we please and experience some of thevery best mobile games have to offer. And of course, the anime adaptation was a sure-fire thing back when it got massively popular back in 2017. But what we got instead was a production so haphazard, it's like the production staff at Bibury Animation Studios knew what they were doing under the tutelage of the studio's owner and director Tensho (Grisaia, Rewrite series) and on Jin Haganeya (Guilty Crown, Demonbane) being series composer (at the recommendation of publisher Shanghai Yostar's president Li Hengda, with Demonbane being one of his favourite shows), even all of that went to naught with this show.
Starting with the story, it's your standard run-of-the-mill "heroes vs. villains" cliche archetype with the impending "ideals vs. realism"-sake type of story with the central huge cast of characters. Of course, they're already known by which group they belong to (if you played the mobile game). This setting isn't bad, but it's one that has been done a thousand times over and over again to the point of boredom. If you'd refer back to my earlier "name-notables" with Jin Haganeya, he's a pretty mediocre writer, with Guilty Crown being the easiest victim to blame for (since Despite the recommendation for him to be writing the storyboard for this show, I found it to be pretty much nonsensical, or at worse times non-existent even with a decent storyline, other than the waifu ships which have garnered lots of love the way before the anime started, and those same feelings are endorsed here.
Character-wise, what's there not to love about the character cast? From Azur Lane's seasoned leader "Grey Ghost" Enterprise with her assistant Belfast, Eagle Union's loli warships Javelin, Laffey and Unicorn to former comrade-turned-spy Red Axis's Ayanami and Sakura Empire's Akagi, they're pretty much the standard bogfare and the core foundation of the series to date, and I am happy to say that they absolutely have no faults (well, except how they're utilized in the story).
The elephant in the room has got to be Tensho's Bibury Animation Studios, who came out of the deal with doing second-rate in-between animation, and then split out to produce the Grisaia: Phantom Trigger movie to decent results. And now, with this show being it's very first TV series, the same feelings that can be said on the Grisaia movie sadly shares the same with Azur Lane here. Don't get me wrong, the visuals are all done nicely...for the first few episodes. And then they just seemingly went with the flow of sacrificing quality for quantity when it comes to the bombastic action scenes (that are supposed to be as good as the game itself, mind you) of which Azur Lane (the game) is no stranger to such good animation and lets the gamers feel fulfilled (after tanking hours of gameplay). Even the CGI scenes which were meant to be flashy, ended up as wack and we're all left wondering if that was actually incorporated at the very last minute or the lack of skill to make even such scenes stand out. Needless to say, all of that didn't translate well to the anime despite the popularity over in Japan when it was first launched there to successful results.
Another wacky area is always with the music. Other than a forgetful OP (of which May'n is producing decent to mediocre songs nowadays) and the nice ED by Kano, I honestly don't remember any good tunes, even after the 3-months gap due to production issues. Other than that, it's only the fanservice that gets us feeling good that is the best part of this show.
When all is said and done, what happened with Azur Lane: The Animation, it's all the same as selling merchandise: this show is meant to be a cash-cow adding onto the popularity of the series in its many mediums. The same with the subgenre with shows like Girls und Panzer, Kantai Collection, they have their own niches and I can't complain about that. Stick with the games and forbade on the anime, your experience will vary on the better side than to side with the show, which is a +1 to the many mediocre game adaptations of recent years. This show HAD the potential to be good (and us the audience are honestly in for it), and it was horrendously wasted to trash.
slavemaster_1991
You know, I learned one thing about adaptation of video games: they are almost never good. Azur Lane had it even worse being a gacha game for phones, so it could not rely on having a good story that can be comfortably put into 12 episodes. So instead of a plot we are overflowed with fanservice (and I think people watching this anime came for it), wich is not bad on its own, the problem lies more in budget and amount of work invested into the title. And let me tell you - neither is really impressive. Yes, fanservice part is okayish, but it isnot really a hard thing to do when you have an already massive amount of reference material of varying lewdness. However, animation showed itself worse in "action" scenes. Correct me if I am wrong, but the beauty of naval warfare comes from the scale: massive ships with giant guns shell at each other making water around them explode with missed shots. But if you turn your ships into cute girls, your weapons get scaled down to the same degree, so instead of epic naval battle you watch a few anime girls with handguns, blades, bows and such staying in the open (it is an ocean, you know, there is no cover there) and shooting at each other with abysmal 2-3 frame animations. Same goes for characters, being a gacha game Azur Lane has way too many characters, and while anime included many of them, none of them had any reall substance, they are just there to show their skimpy clothers.
But you know, the biggest problem in my opinion is that after watching all 12 episodes I don't have much to say about it. There are good shows that you like and write reviews of how great it is. There are bad ones that you hate with passion. Azur Lane was just "a" show, one that I watched and that I will forget a few minutes after finishing this review. It is not bad, it is not good, it is just way too shallow and empty to be anything but a quick doze of fanservice.
AlexPaulLEWZ
Before I start , I want to say that I would try my best in refraining to mention game material in this review so that I would avoid spoilers. War never changes. Be it any era, wars have only done nothing but chaos towards the people participating it. That fact remains until today. People will always want to gain something other people have: territories, resources—anything. Once the dispute reaches between governments, a lack of communication will always ensue with WAR. Soon, war moved on from the lands to the seas, and naval warfare became one of the most pivotal battles a side cannot afford to loselest their disadvantage. In this series, however, an alien forces known as the "Sirens" with extremely powerful technology suddenly appeared, spreading threat to humanity.
To combat this situation, all of mankind miraculously stood in unity against the common foe, creating an organization called "Azur Lane," which mainly comprised of four countries: Eagle Union, Royal Navy, Sakura Empire, and Iron Blood. The countries used objects named "Mental Cubes" which let them embed the power of full warships upon female soldiers—a breakthrough in technology. This effort of solidarity gave humans an initial victory against the Sirens.
However, humans will always be humans, and soon, even Azur Lane was broken into two opposing factions. With humanity once again divided alongside the continuing threat of alien enemies, what will be this world's fate? Such is the story of this series. The premise itself reflects how the world was in the past—even how it is today in times of peace. Conflict is the main essence of man, and the anime did a great job portraying that reality.
I love how the story became developed as episodes went by. In some instances, I felt that pacing was too fast, but that also refers how life is, especially in wartime, where one must be vigilant at all times because no one knows what will happen in the future. Next day, you might be already dead—killed by the enemy. That is a part of reality this anime portrays, and the execution was quite nice.
I also like how the art was drawn, especially in scenes where the girls equip their warships and head to the battlefield. Like in the history of war, there were many variations of warships: cruisers, carriers, destroyers, etc. I like how the artists tried their best to draw the actual warship alongside with the character portraying it, for example, you can see Enterprise aboard the runway of the USS Enterprise, and as Enterprise equips her ship, the transformation may be clichéd, but I still like it.
There were some flaws in the character design, especially on the consistency of body statures—especially a part I'd rather not explain here—but I found it kind of nice and made it a game to spot inconsistencies, but I won't dwell on it too much. As an Azur Lane gamer, just seeing the girls move around and alive is already a big thing to me, that's why it has a special place in my favorites.
The character development in the anime also deserves my praise. I like how the main characters change into people who are lone wolves to team fighters, and that in itself is one of the reasons I love this series. Like I have said before, just seeing the girls adapted into anime makes them more appealing. There was also a good amount of fanservice that are just too good to be missed. The personalities each of the girls had were also preserved in this adaptation, which then was used to create an original story—just splendid.
The sound is also noteworthy, especially the opening theme with lyrics that reflect with the protagonists' problems and how they should approach it. When it comes to the credit sequence, the music that accompanied it is very relatable—very peaceful—a situation everyone hopes that the world should be. Looking at it technically, the execution of music were greatly in line in the situations the characters were facing, be it a happy scene, or the spoils of war. I also loved how the anime shipgirls were also portrayed by their respective voice actresses from the game. It puts a smile in my face.
I greatly enjoyed watching this anime. I watched this anime when it was airing, and even though the conclusions of this show was delayed by three months, that only made my excitement go stronger each day that the episodes are nearing to be aired. Once again, I really loved how the anime portrayed its story without straying far from the essence of the game's original premise. Overall, I'd say that it is one of the most memorable anime I have ever watched. That's how I loved it.
Now, I want more especially because of the ending. If there is a second season, I will gladly watch it.
But would that be possible, especially when there were a lot of production issues? I hope so.
Hikari-Kuro
Azur lane? More like Azur lame. This series makes no sense. Let me explain. This series is supposed to be about aliens coming to conquer earth but instead we have the iron blood and Sakura empire at war with the Royal Navy and eagle union. So far I only see Sakura empire vs Royal Navy and eagle union. Iron blood is totally absent except for a few cameo. Alien evaders? What Alien evaders? Ayanami should be branded a traitor. I mean she rather be with the enemy? She rather not shoot at the enemy when they have no problem firing at her comrades? She enjoys her time as theirprisoner of war. She says her Sakura empire friends are important to her but she makes no attempt to escape. She is not missed, no wonder her friends at the Sakura empire does not even bother to attempt to rescue her.
Battles are pointless as no one gets injured or die.
The higher ups at the Sakura empire are shown to have all the awesome weapons but never ever participate in any battles?
The girls said it themselves that they are not human but battle ships so why are they seen eating and having meals? Throughout the series I was siding the sirens hoping they would destroy any one of the series’s characters.
Skip this series, go watch Kancolle instead.
robert788
Azur Lane (2019) [Spoiler Warning] Now, people can be upset by the delay and I totally appreciate that. But, overall the series was pretty damn great. In terms of best girls, what can I say? I say girl's because there is not just one. Cleveland since the bath scene is my overall best girl. Adorable reaction. Nagato is second best because she is so cute.Akashi because her cat things are insanely cute and her hands like paws when she talks.
Z23 because she is a great character in a cute outfit.
Prinz Eugen is our sadistic waifu character.
Ayanami is just generally cute and when her sisters are with her it is insane.
Laffey in Japanese has the most adorable voice.
Unicorn is just generally cute and sweet.
Warspite because she looks cute and also because her role as the Knight.
Sheffield because she is a bit lewd (Bath scene that made Cleveland top girl) and her voice is adorable.
The Siren Tester she is pretty good Waifu material.
The Bullin girls at the last episode are pretty cute.
San Diego when her ship is wrecked is pretty funny.
Long Island again is pretty cute.
Hood and her elegance are just awesome.
Ark Royal with her lolicon nature is hilarious.
Admiral Hipper is adorable with her reactions especially. Proper Tsundere.
Zuikaku and Shoukaku make a great pair together.
Amagi is great too, great older sister type.
Akagi and Kaga being foxes with such great tails to fluff are perfect in their own way.
Effectively it is cute ship girls doing cute things and also combat. I could list many more but I want you to watch it and find them yourselves.
Now I would love to have seen more of the girls as I play the game.
For me, the story was pretty good. It is very similar to a few other franchises but then all Isekai are basically the same story, so this story can be recycled often too quite happily.
The art of the show did vary throughout with at some points being pretty bad but at others is pretty good. I did hope the delay would have made the last two episodes flawless but that was not what happened. It is still a great work of art.
The sounds in Japanese the voices are all great. The dub is great too but it makes it more a comedy because of how each nation is represented in voice structure. Battles are greatly done too.
Characters are greatly varied all over the place and are awesome. It was great even at the end to see Z23 being accepted into the starter ship group.
For enjoyment, I can honestly say I loved it. It got me playing the game when it first came out and I love the franchise as a whole.
Overall despite its flaws, the show is great. It is entertaining, a bit ecchi and also flows nicely. It has a great ending that finishes it but also leaves a ton of room for more to come. I would absolutely love to see more seasons come for it or even a movie. Much worse shows have been renewed in the past.
Also like I said the dub is hilarious. Watch it in Japanese with subs for serious watch and then in dub for a comedic one. It isn't bad just hilariously done.
*Edit: Also the Submarine girl was great to see.
lalaeda
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 ideaof 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".
morfeene
Man, where do I start. Azur Lane is a repulsive, boring, disgusting waste of anyone and everyone's time. So much so, that I have chosen to write my first review for the sole purpose of dogging on this terrible series. Story 2/10: The only reason I didn't give this portion a 1/10 was because the story in this anime is somewhat conceivable. The characters actions as well as the world itself can be somewhat made out. However, just because a story can be seen, does not mean that it is a pretty one. I have never personally been too big a fan of Naval combat or seabased stories so when I was met with the raw amount of inconsistencies in the pacing and overall telling of this story I was appalled to say the least. To top this all off the overall message of "we aren't that different after all," and crude attempts at heartfelt moments expressed by the end of the show are some of the poorest tries at some of the poorest most overused tropes imaginable.
Art 1/10: As weak as this anime was. This was by far one of the weakest portions. Watching this genuinely made me mad that a studio could mess something up this hard. There are vivid moments in my memory of characters mouths not being drawn all the way, making it so that when they open their mouth to speak there is nothing but a white abyss inside, no tongue, no teeth, nothing. It'd be one thing if this was consistent because maybe you could pass it off as "a unique style," but no, they actually just screwed up that much as it only happened two or three times and was for roughly 10 seconds at a time. Mistakes aside, the art style for this anime was extremely poor and unoriginal. None of the colors popped and everything just looked extremely bland, making even the action scenes extremely unexciting and dull.
Sound 2/10: I'm not gonna write a lot here because I genuinely remember nothing about the soundtrack of this show, despite watching the opening and ending all the way through each episode. It being the least memorable part of this garbage excuse for television easily makes it the most redeeming portion of the series, thus the 2/10.
Characters 1/10: Nearly every character throughout the entire series showed very little interesting development. The closest thing to character growth we saw was seeing Enterprises mentality change from the first episode to the last which was one of the most useless subplots of the entire thing as it, like everything else in this show, ultimately led to nowhere. I'd say the most interesting characters throughout this entire series were the Sirens themselves which receive a collective 8 minutes of screentime throughout this 288 minute pile of crap. Other than the previously mentioned characters, everyone else just follows basic character tropes with no innovation making up for arguably the most forgettable cast of characters imaginable.
Enjoyment 1/10: This was the most agonizing piece of media I have ever forced myself to sit through. I have never come closer to dropping a series and I felt every. god. damn. second. of this anime as it went by. I would only recommend this to the most distinguished of masochists who can only experience pleasure through the most tremendously painful of experiences. The only thing I have gained from this viewing experience is that now if I find myself in a tough situation I can always tell myself "c'mon, you finished Azur Lane you can get through this." Please don't watch this if you value your mentality in any way.
Overall 1/10
Valkyriis
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 showingenough 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.
Cycryllic
Alright, let's get this clear, this show was shit. Like, really shit. I already hated the game previously for reasons I won't get into but man, I didn't think it could get any worse. First, the story/plot. Where did that go? As if the game itself lacked a story, this is an anime. It's meant to have a story regardless of how minor it is. And here's the thing, this show has so many different subplots, almost none of which make sense. This show carries absolutely nothing over from the game other than the character names. Oh by the way, what was up with Kagaand that random monster wolf spawn? where did that come from? No explaination for that I guess. Also, how about we talk about that absolute garbage BS rushed ending? So here's the scene. They have what they attempt to call a story. its the typical good team vs bad team all that nonsense. In these last 2 episodes, all of a sudden, the sakura empire side pulls an Italy on us and joins the good guys? Like what? The way they set it up was akagi and her band of fellow ships hate enterprise and her band of ships. And now amagi, who we have close to no info about and was randomly tossed in as well as a majority of the characters, has control. OUT OF NOWHERE, enterprise says "hey join us" and throws a speech that makes no sense. Keep in mind this was the last two episodes. And what's up with all that fan service? Keep that out of my shows. Overall, story was 1/10 since you can't rate 0.
Next up is the art, which I'll tie in with animation to save time. There isn't much to say here. The animation was the bottom of the barrel, in many many frames the faces were distorted and you couldn't tell what expressions they were making. The setting lacked a lot of detail as well. The animation itself was very clunky and watching it felt like it was moving at 10 fps. You could pretty much tell where the frames were cut off. There were many times where they used crappy CGI and it looked really out of place. Overall, 1/10 seemed pretty half-assed to me.
Sound/music. While the sound effects and soundtrack which there may or may not have been was absolutely forgettable, I will admit the intro and outro were acceptable. 2/10.
Characters: This was also really really stupid. The characters in the show only resembled the in game characters purely based on looks. Even then, that's still pushing it since at times as previously stated, they sometimes didn't even resemble the original characters at all. They way they acted were out of character compared to the original game. One of the best examples of this is Enterprise. In the game, (bias aside), she may be stern but she means well and can be nice. However, in the show, she seemed like an Akame ga Kill reject. Like damn that's a lot of edge. Also, for some odd reason, the show decided to form relations between ships that were pretty uncalled for. An example being the relation between Belfast and Enterprise. That was not expected and isn't welcome. Just stick to the original. Aside from that, there were so many important characters in the game who either had at most 5-10 seconds of screentime or not even included at all. 1/10
Enjoyment: I found absolutely no enjoyment out of this, unless we count laughing at its stupidity. Otherwise, it was this convoluted sack of mess. 1/10
Overall: This has got to be one of the most confusing and all over the place show I'd ever seen. No real story, the art was bland, the characters were not like the originals, there were way too many subplots, the sounds were forgettable, all in all making for quite a disappointment. Not that I expected much from anything involving azur lane.
1/10. I do not recommend anyone watch this sad excuse of an adaptation
Saikar22
It's not great. I've played the Azur Lane mobile game since fall 2018 and watched this anime develop with wariness. It always felt like the type of game that wouldn't adapt well into a show. How do you tell a coherent story about a game with five hundred characters that spans 8 or 9 nations and a huge period of time? The answer isn't only that you don't; it's that you don't seriously try, apparently. I think the biggest failing of the Azur Lane anime is that it tries to be everything at the same time, all smashed awkwardly into twelve episodes. It tries to be acharacter-driven show, focusing on Enterprise, Belfast, and Akagi - but constantly introduces a dozen "hey look its that girl from the gacha!" characters an episode. There's very serious discussions of the ramifications of war and its affect on combatants, but it's after a beach episode with a bunch of young girls running around in swimsuits and making sand castles. There's a reasonably good two-episode arc about infiltrating an enemy nation and a harrowing escape that's followed up by (I kid you not, this actually happens) a big-boobed character being insecure about her body type and finally coming to terms with the fact that breasts of all shapes and sizes are beautiful. I know they wanted to sell uncensored blu-ray copies, but come ON.
There's occasional moments of greatness. A highlight was a tense standoff between two massive navies in and around a flooded, destroyed city. If the show had been willing to tell a serious story it may have worked. But the constant juxtaposition between doom-and-gloom PTSD and borderline softcore porn ruined both sides. It was too slow to be a proper slice-of-life, and too goofball to work as either a serious or an action show. My best guess is that it wanted to tell a serious story but was worried that its audience would want more boobs and slapstick and so we ended up with this mess.
If anyone watched this, or otherwise had a run-in with it, I have two things to say to you:
First, my condolences. Like I said, it's not good.
But second, don't let this... thing... turn you off from the mobile game. It's better written and is ridiculously generous compared to every other gacha I've found, and gets a lot of new content. The idea of characters fighting these large-scale battles is an inherently interesting one, and the game acts it out far better than the show did.
The best thing I can say about this is that the devs know it wasn't good and are working on a totally different, apparently slice-of-life anime. Much like with the game itself they seem to be open to feedback and fan wants, so maybe - just possibly - we'll get a better Azur Lane show out of this mess on some distant day.
LegendAqua
"HEY!" "HELLO!" "HAJIMEMASHITE!" "SHOUNEN!" "KIMI WA... War, yes war never changes and so does the gacha... So this is some of the few mobile games that LA HAS played and it getting an adaptation was for one, surprising and two, it was actually pretty good, yeah sure it deviated from the game's story whilst changing a few things but still if it made LA go back into the game, then this adpatation was doing something right. But where LA played Azur Lane LA ignored the story (more waifu's and gameplay less story)...but nonetheless the story for this adaptation for Azur Lane...well actually falls nicely into place much likeKantai Collection, it's rival and somewhat anime adaptation predecessor in a ways. Why does LA say this, well it's anthropomorphized warships battling monstrous ships to save the world, just in Azur Lane's case there's an internal struggle with some of the factions about using the monstrous ships namely the "Sirens" technology to banning their power together to fight them. This on the onset is the base setting of Azur Lane however as we have actually two narrative focus, one more focused than the other that being Enterprise voiced by Yui Ishikawa and the other of Javelin voiced by Nozomi Yamane. Enterprise's story arc is mainly focused on her being soo preoccupied in the battles that she worn herself down,, thankfully she gets better once Belfast voiced by Yui Horie arrives. The other is of Javelin and Laffey voiced by Maria Naganawa wanting to befriend Ayanami voiced by You Taichi as they are on different factions.
Z23: Am I a joke to you?
So the factions...that of the Sakura Empire, Ironblood, Eagle Union and the Royal Navy. Sakura Empire is obviously Japanese, Ironblood is German and Eagle and Royal Navy are America and UK respectively and you can connect the dots with the war setting but LA brings this up as in the game Azur Lane is historically accurate with World War II with it's ships, with this adaptation however it takes a few liberties from the likes of Hood. As for the Sirens, it's kinda obvious what they are suppose to represent, that of the nuclear bomb.
The animation done by Bibury Animation Studios comes out blazing with it's great animation of it's characters, the battles and the like. Though most of the time the background is of the sea and whatnot, it make sup for it with it's battles as Azur Lane obviously takes liberties on how battles pan out in comparison to the games battles and the animation pays off with it's battles LA swear. On the other side however Bibury Animation Studios tends to derp in weird ways time to time and it's throughout the anime as much as the animation is great in most of it's elements, the derps are there some blatant, some are blink before you miss it. Nonetheless Bibury Animation Studio even with the derps, did a great job in terms of animation.
The voice cast is HUGE from the four HUGE factions in the games, to the Sirens themselves. To this, let's go straight to who LA's MVP's of the voice cast are. Yui Ishikawa as Enterprise is an obvious choice but also Yui Horie as Belfast. You Tachi as Ayanami and finally Mai Nakahara as Akagi and Ai Kayano as Kaga were some good standouts in the voice cast. Nonetheless this HUGE voice cast isn't something to be understated and even then the standouts were something else in Azur Lane, expected from most of the veteran seiyuu's.
With all this being said, Azur Lane does have it;s store of flaws, the first being as much as the anime starts off flying and bringing us pretty well into what we might be getting into with all the action and lore given, the anime takes some detours in trying to be a slice of life and gives fanservice to the fans (be it through "fanservice" or references to players of Azur Lane) all the while it's trying to pull 2 other character focuses arcs at the same time, alot is going on with this anime, almost like the anime is trying to pack EVERYTHING that Azur Lane wanted. Next is the animation derps which LA said above and finally is due to the huge huge huge roster of characters as there are four factions compromising of 20+ character in each and maybe more on others...yeah unless your favourite ship is Enterprise, Akagi, Kaga, Javelin, Laffey, Ayanami, Belfast and Prinz Eugen don't expect much screentime on them especially from the Ironblood faction but to this defense, LA will say the anime's plot is focused on them and this doesn't necessary mean we need to look at EVERYONE's backstory or focus a mere cameo is good enough in all honesty with an anime adaptation like this.
Oh and LA's favourite characters from the game that easily transferred into the anime are Illustrious, Enterprise and Takao by the way and they all get decent screentime soooo LA is happy nonetheless.
Azur Lane for an anime adaptation though it deviated from the game story, it still by the by keeps Azur Lane's "flavour" to it and for newbies brings in a general aspect of what Azur Lane is like lore wise. Yes Azur Lane is for the fans whilst also bringing in newbies with this anime (if not the tons of ads through Youtube got you into it before this anime was even released, you know what LA is saying.............HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-) but this anime adaptation though with some flaws with a rather slow progression of slice of life, even if it starts off flying and very narrow narrative character focused arcs and derps in animation at times, even with ALL these flaws, Azur Lane was nonetheless a great watch seeing Azur Lane on the silver screen that for the most part is one of the nicer mobile game anime adaptations from not only Fall 2019 but in the rising better mobile game adaptations whilst isekai is getting more and more saturated.
Welcome to the Sandy Cult...
entysupremacy
Ok, I've watched this show a few months ago and I've yet to write a review for this so... Alright, I play Azur Lane, I love the game, I play it everyday, every time, do my dailies and stuff, the game is very enjoyable, now when I found out that this was getting an anime adaption I was VERY hyped. But... The story is very meh, it feels like it was written by a middle school student, but sometimes, even those can be better. There's nothing particularly special about the story, seeing how there isn't really much of a plot going on in the game itself, forthem to manage to write something for a game that has little to go with, quite impressive actually. But from a general POV, the story is indeed meh.
The art in this was very inconsistent, the animators copied the poses of the in-game art, and just made so they were moving and such, and there were a couple of episodes where the art wasn't even complete, it was just base colors and outlines, I think they outsourced the animation for those scenes. It was just plain bad, quite disappointing. Other than that, theres tons of fanservice art here, so if you're into that, I guess you could check this out.
Ok, here's the good part, the soundtrack is very fire! Never thought I would every bang my head to one of the lesser anime I like, graphite/diamond is a real banger song, absolutely love it. The ED is also very good, seeing how it was sang by Kano, one of my favorite singers.
Well in all honesty, you can't really judge the characters here because they are from the game. Well knowing my waifu Enterprise is in the anime, I give a very biased 10/10.
Enjoyment? Well it's really joying to watch my shipfus move around and shoot Sirens, I get to hear more than their voice lines in the game too, so that's a plus. I don't like fanservice in general because I think it's just a tease. I'd rather read the doujins. Well something at least motivated me to uhm... release some pent up stress with the fanservice
Overall: I give this a 7/10, and I think a 7 is really cutting the bad type of anime, but I didn't give it a 6 just because it's Azur Lane. Very biased. >:3
Robberator
How are people sleeping on this show? I'm not out here claiming this is some masterpiece, but it is a straight up, action packed shounen that's hype as frick from episode one! To be upfront, I'm writing this as an avid player of the mobile game, so my experience would differ completely from someone who's coming into this show blind. What that difference entails might be that just a simple throwaway line from a background character holds inherent value for me, because it's one of the girls I know from the game, and how cool is that!? Reference! But take all that away, and the fundamentals ofthis show still remain: fun battle scenes and high drama! I especially enjoyed all the ways they realized the rig system from the game in this show. They had so much fun with it visually! And though this might muddle the rules to an extent where it's hard to follow what's even possible, or how things work, it also makes for some of the craziest visuals out there. It came to a point, where even as a fan of the mobile game, I had no idea what to expect from the battles, and at times I just stopped to wander at the inspired scenarios the creators made.
Now to be perfectly clear, the animation isn't as top tier as it could be. I wouldn't venture to say that it gets ugly at any point, but the places where the characters go off-model are usually off-putting.
Also, because of the immense detail some characters and their rigs hold, there is an abundant use of cgi in the show. Speaking as someone that finds things like that annoying even in the best of times, I was actually impressed with how well everything worked together. I never thought these animation styles were clashing, they complimented each other very well, and I think that comes down to consistency. The alien technology and the rig-system was usually 3D and since it remained so whenever they showed up, I think it was a good compromise to bring to life the details of these assets.
Storywise I think the show also explores some interesting areas. Though I have to admit, the storytelling could be very ham-fisted at times, hammering home the same point over and over, but I think all the angles they approached it were enjoyable. Ayanami, Enterprise, and best of all, Kaga and Akagi. There were some genuine heartfelt moments, and if you're a fan of the game and are familiar with these characters, those moments are all the more powerful.
In the end, this show is just a genuine good time, and a real triumph for the fans of the game. I hope we will get a second season somewhere down the line, so the new content of the game gets a chance to shine as well. But, for the time being, I think we can be content.
Kagashy
In general, I can say that I liked it. But if we look at it as a subject, warships may not attract everyone's attention. I had fun though. The visuals are brilliant and the story is manageable. I advise. If you have played Azur Lane before, you already know the events and characters. If you have some history knowledge, you can have a really fun time. It's an above average series. Recommended for anyone who is curious. The main character, Enterprise, unfortunately has not been kept in the foreground. This obviously upset. Although it is a classic subject choice in terms of subject, it isnot bad enough to be watched.
aurora_aeterna
tl;dr Imagine KanColle anime with a dearth of likeable characters and an even less cohesive plot. I suppose one cannot write this review without the inevitable comparison to KanColle, but I'll do my best to speak to this anime alone first. For an anime that inherently focuses on its characters, there were really no likeable or even cute characters, as well as an almost complete lack of character development. No depth to the highly predictable plot or even hints of deeper tones, yet no slice-of-life content to replace the missing material. Animations of characters were ok, but became almost laughable in battles, as did the sound. I wasn't familiarwith Azur Lane before, but I also wasn't familiar with KanColle and found the anime much more enjoyable than this, even though it doesn't rank highly either. KanColle just had a more coherent plot, likeable characters, MC character development, and at least it tried for an impactful plot and "moe" slice-of-life. Azur Lane did neither.
ThaHentaiGod69
Everything about this anime feels like a failed marketing attempt, especially the story. It literally felt like something ripped straight out of some kids' movie and added softcore pornography to attempt to please its fanbase. The art style didn't even try to stand out. It was just... mediocre. But oh my God, the characters just look overly simplified compared to their game counterparts. The characters here are so predictable. I wouldn't expect much coming from an Azur Lane anime, but this is just horrendous. The character development of the "protagonist", Enterprise, feels extremely forced. But despite all that, I wound up laughingmy guts off throughout the entire experience, and that ironic enjoyment managed to save this show from becoming a 1. So overall, it's a 2/10 for me.
In a nutshell, this shit whack bro.
Traxdize
Welcome to Shipgirls Fighting Each Other ft. Aliens! Anyway I was really expecting this anime to deliver since I play the mobile game. But what did I get? Very good animation and a mediocre story. The animation is so good that they need to delay a season. Anyway, I felt that Yostar should have just made Azur Lane into a Slice-of-life. From there they should gradually move into an action story. That's what I feel anyway, instead they decided to do the reverse of it. But I hope Slow Ahead is good. (they need to adapt Queen's Order too). The story is very mediocre, it focusesmore on Enterprise, and Belfast sometimes. Occasionally Akagi, and Kaga if you consider it. (there is a lack of Warspite screentime here so I am dissapointed). Long story short the anime is about Enterprise being an edgy emo kid and suddenly Mama Belfast came. Then we have a beach episode. Suddenly, war. Yea that's the gist of it.
As I have mentioned earlier, the art "was" very bad. Fortunately they decided to remake the whole thing. The fight scene was descent, though the best animation was the first 2 episodes or something.
The opening was the best of thing of this Anime. The Ending was nice too, at least better than the whole Anime. Even the Opening sequence is so much better that it has gotten to the point in which I think all the budget went there. Also Yuukyu no Catharsis is a great song.
Featuring edgy depressed emo Enterprise and mama Belfast, also featuring delusional Akagi and existential crisis Kaga. (and a pinch of Bismarck)
Yea I was able to go through the whole anime. And that's only because I play the game.
