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]
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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
2life
Azur Lane is an anime original, adapted from the game with the same name. I love the game. The game itself has sort of a story line and has many events with their own story line often not involved in the main quests. I feel like that the creators of the anime had a bit of struggle to write a good plot. Later on it become's clear there's a lot of plot armour if it wanted to fit the personality of the game. The animation is sometimes good but most of the time it's trash. As a war/action anime it should have been dynamic and moving.Yet we get moving picutres (not good). The studio postpone the last 2 episodes to make the animation better, but there was no improvement compared to earlier episodes.
The plot is very weak/ non-existent. It had one cheesy catchphrase where the show should have revolved around. You're leaved confused on what was important or what actually had to be tense. There was just no exitement from the plot. Yet it's an original story, but that's the only plus.
Characters are exactly the same in the game. It could have been charming if they gave a bit more lore or personality to let the character "live" and step out of the game. To bad they wanted to fit as many faces in the anime as possible and that made every character plain and bland.
This anime is nowhere near what i expect a war themed anime to be. The studio had all the freedom to create their own story with a lot more action. Yet they didn't and that dissappointed me. The Fate/ franchise has done this way better on animation and plot. They had better lore, a more logical way of dealing with a ton of characters and the dialogue wasn't dead.
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.
PyraXadon
will fully admit that while I was watching this entire show from beginning to end, I was also playing the game off to the side. PR ship farming takes a long time, so I gotta take whatever time I can to ease that burden. Story: Humanity has come under fire from a new threat called the Sirens. In order to combat this seemingly naval-only threat, humanity used the power of the Wisdom cubes to turn their own ships into humanoid ship girls that take on the mantra and characteristics of the vessels they come from. But a rift divides the four factions from fighting the Sirens tofighting amongst each other on how to save humanity instead, leading to the creation of two groups: Azur Lane (The Allies) consisting of the Eagle Union (America) and Royal Navy (Britain) and the Red Axis (Axis Powers) consisting of the Sakura Empire (Japan) and Ironblood (Germany).
Based on the mobile game of the same name, Azur Lane the Animation is only tangentially similar to its home game with the setup of the Azur Lane fighting the Red Axis. As a setup, the different ideologies of the different sides make the show conceptually interesting given how there's no 'player' character, so the entirety of the show has to rely on the strength of the shipgirls to take and drive the plot and fight for their different philosophies against this new threat. But that's where the show ultimately struggles to keep itself afloat.
The plot is in short, a mess. The show only takes a few notable members of the game's more popular ships and puts them out in front, but even the number they chose was too many. The show runs three separate plotlines with maybe one or two subplots with varying degrees of success, switching back and forth between the three at any given scene or time in order to try and give each of them ample enough screentime to make an impact. That however becomes difficult because the story's writing doesn't feel impactful to begin with.
Themes like wanting to be friends with the enemy, overcoming the necessity of war, and the mourning of loss feel half-baked in the show and I could only really follow along the plot of the show because I've played the game and its various events for long enough to understand the motivations behind some of these ships (some of which are kind of rooted in historical fact? But only kind of.) I could only imagine someone going into this blind and how lost they would be with just the sheer amount of just...stuff they would have to consider and digest. Even so there were numerous plot points where I just feel like the show was just making up something completely new just for the sake of intrigue, which had the opposite effect because everything felt far too complex for the show's own good. I'm almost certain they never explain why the girls need full-sized ships just to turn them into their guns and various, wearable armaments anywhere in the series.
In the end, this adaptation's story is just not that good. I honestly couldn't tell you what the story was because the show pulled itself thin in so many directions that I kind of just gave up halfway through and focused solely on what was being presented in the moment instead of how everything connects to each other. Some story threads were easy to follow so that was alright, but others...I just didn't bother after a certain amount of time.
Characters:
Now, Azur Lane as a game has several...hundred shipgirls. And obviously, not all of them show up. So in order to create something of a digestable show, Bibury chose instead to pick and choose some of the more popular ships of the game and devote the story to them. As such, to make things easier, I'll be discussing each plot thread and their requisite 'main' characters.
First is the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and the light cruiser HMS Belfast, two characters that contribute to a story about nothing. Enterprise comes into the series seeming like a hardened veteran fighting her nature as a warship to her existence as being human-like, which on its own sounds like a philosophical disaster. So much of Enterprise's character is shown through moody and angsty snaps towards other ships around her and doesn't really make her feel all that interesting since it's clear mostly everything about her is meant to be shrouded in mystery. Belfast by comparison is pretty much only a supporting character to Enterprise, whose only character trait is 'Being a Maid' and tending to Enterprise as per the Royal Navy's orders. Together the show makes it seem like there's something significant between them, but ultimately becomes nothing where things get resolved without explanation. Which is a shame because they already had something to work off of with the relationship between Enterprise and Yorktown being on display in multiple scenes throughout the show, which they never do anything with.
Next is the 'fox duo' from the Sakura Empire, the aircraft carriers IJN Kaga and Akagi. Their story has probably the most significance in the show due to their contributions being directly affiliated with the show's climax, but nothing about this thread feels properly explained and sort of requires the audience to go along with the flow. Their motivations fall along the lines of a twisted form of 'love' which is something I really only accepted because their in-game counterparts are like that anyway. Really though their contributions are only a means to an end, and for some of the more popular ships in the game there really isn't anything meaningful they contribute to because even then they're not directly responsible for causing the climax.
Finally is the starter destroyer trio (technically quartet but Nimi doesn't matter I guess) of HMS Javelin, USS Laffey, and IJN Ayanami. The theme this time is compassion and friendship, even with the enemy. This is by far the easiest to understand plotline of the three yet somehow is still not impactful. There's not a lot to explain here aside from the first two girls trying to convince the third girl on the other side that they don't have to be enemies, but friends. It's kinda cute I guess, but is ultimately meaningless since it's by far the least impactful thread the show tries to push.
And obviously it's not just these lot. Several dozen more ships come into the picture from all four factions and then some, ranging from the memetastic USS San Diego, the fletcher class squad, various sister duos from the Sakura Empire like the crane sisters of IJN Shoukaku and Zuikaku, Royal Navy battleships with accompanying maids, and KMS Bismarck for like fifteen seconds. There're obviously way more ships than I've mentioned here, and it is factually impossible to know all of them unless you have played the game for a long length of time. I chalk up most of these appearances to being fanservice, making a sort of minigame out of which shipgirl is going to show up and which ones won't. Although in terms of story impact, that's up in the air due to each individual girl's impact being on a massive, massive spectrum.
Aesthetics:
Now Azur Lane had a bit of a...production switch towards the end of its runtime.
Bibury's art quality was very much a point of contention among the fans, and it shows. The art for the series wasn't generally all that bad, leaning towards a lighter color scheme and the lovely detail of all of the ships being put on display even though it's clear that the stills in-game were far better quality than their animated counterparts. Putting the story aside, the dogfights and naval battles were really supposed to be the spectacle that the show was supposed to deliver, as the little sprites firing guns and launching planes during gameplay don't really have that same impact. Unfortunately that's where the art suffers the most. Characters going off-model in addition to questionable water and movement animations really made what were supposed to be the best parts of the show some of the worst parts. So in the end, Yostar said, fuck it, we'll do it ourselves.
So when Yostar Pictures came in to take over the last two episodes, there was a noticeable improvement in art quality. Enough to make it palpable, but not much beyond that. It's clear that the animation got a something of an upgrade, opting to use 3D models in certain areas to make things look a little more fluid in addition to more attention to detail and better looking scenes and characters to look at. It's not that much of a step up since there's still many similarities between the two styles, but I'm glad Yostar at least took it upon themselves to improve the product even if it was only for a short while.
May'n's 'Graphite/Diamond' is probably one of the better parts of the adaptation. The dramatic music in addition to the visuals of the wisdom cubes flying up and the girls getting their armaments is everything I've wanted from this adaptation. It's an action-packed song that is a little generic, but is a song I have a soft spot for only because what they depict in the OP is a show that's a low better than what we ultimately got.
Kano's "Hikari no Michishirube" by contrast is a softer piano ballad that serves as a complete opposite to its OP sister. For me personally, I just find it cute to hear the song accompanied by a bunch of the girls all having fun together. The songs for Azur Lane really are a lot better than they have any right to be in comparison to the show they come from, but I'm ok with that.
Final Thoughts:
Despite production issues, backlash from Japan for being portrayed as the 'bad guys', and a pretty spotty record throughout the show's run, I'm legitimately surprised that this show even made it to being made in the end, stumbling on the seas and coming back damaged and in desperate need of repairs.
The intention of Azur Lane's adaptation felt like it was meant for fans of the game instead of bringing in more players or as a marketing ploy. As a longtime player, it was actually kind of fun being able to pick out and point to all of the girls that I recognized, and be able to see a number of my current roster moving on-screen and interacting with the other girls. Even if that was the intention, it doesn't feel that way. Even as a veteran I felt hard pressed to even try and follow the story and really just focused on trying to enjoy watching the ships fight Sirens and each other.
The original story the show tried to do didn't feel all that fulfilling even though I'm thankful that they decided against putting a player character in the series. It felt like they were putting too many eggs in one basket, and ended up dropping all of the eggs in an attempt to include as many shipgirls as they could while also having something of a narrative for the audience to follow. Had the show focused on a single battle at a time or various different battles one after another, involving only a select few girls to reenact history (like they do in the game's events), then I think it would've been better. As it stands though, the show tried to do much and came out with very little reward.
As a recommendation, I think only Azur Lane players should even consider checking this adaptation out and get as much of the adaptation's fanservice as they can. The adaptation feels remarkable unfriendly towards anyone not familiar with the game, and I find it hard for anyone to be able to enjoy it given the sheer amount of stuff and lore they tried to pack into this thing. Even for Azur Lane fans though, this show still feels undeveloped, and should only be viewed expecting some disappointment coming out the other end. But hey, at least Enterprise, Ayanami, and a few other characters say 'their lines'. So that more than makes up for everything, right? ...Right?
curvedtree
I started watching the series without even knowing its premise nor that it was based on a mobile game. I was aware it involved ships, but girls that are actually ships didn't cross my mind. Story 1/10: it has a story, but it feels lacking, with no clear purpose. The world has a number of nations which are divided in two factions: Azur Lane and Crimson Axis. On hindsight, we are shown the perspective of both sides, so it is not so easy to antagonise one side over the other, even though it is clear Azur Lane are more likely portrayed as the "good" ones andstand with humanity, meanwhile the Crimson Axis uses Siren's technologies to destroy the Azur Lane;
Art/Animation 6/10: I heard some people complaining about the animation on this show, I have watched it after it was over, and since they had a three months hiatus between episode 10 and 11, the company probably fixed those earlier episodes as well. Nothing worth mentioning, it is "alright";
Sound 7/10: There are moments where the battle music will instantly make you think you are playing a RPG, at least I had this impression, other moments the music fits well with the moments and are somewhat good to listen to;
Character 4/10: There are too many characters, some were just voiced in one or two episodes and yet they are shown on other episodes where people are talking and they just stand there idle, so what is even the point for them being there? Also, only a handful of characters are developed, so that was lacking as well. Another important characterisation of each "girl-ship" is that each one represent a different class of ship, but I felt like the introduction of each ship (eg Light Cruiser, Aircrafter, Warship) and their importance in strategically was something mandatory and it didn't happen;
Enjoyment 6/10: it is a soulless show, but it is not bad either, if they manage to elaborate a better story and work better the character it could be quite better.
AnimeWalke
Whoo boy. I had no idea what I was getting into but hey I figured cute waifus why not. The quality of the anime quickly dropped after episode 2 or 3. And when I say dropped, I mean it dropped so much that even I noticed it, and I don't watch that much anime. The plot line was confusing, with instant teleports in one part of the episode mid season and then a sudden shower fan service scene. I'm also told that the shipping (ha pun) between Enterprise and Belfast wasn't in the actual game, and I will say that that one episode with itdid feel like it was trying to force shipping (ha).
Near the end of the season, the plot line was still going nowhere, and then they announced a 3 month break for the anime. Well it's been 3 months, and they have upgraded the quality of the anime, but then they had to do a whole plot line to finish the season in 2 episodes, so it was really rushed. There was no big battles until the last 1/3 of the season, and even then they were resolved quickly.
Overall the anime felt like it had potential, with the large cast, but squandered the potential by starting a plot line and then finishing it in 1-2 episodes, and then had sudden transitions to the next plot line.
Vekyll
Garbage anime, don't waste your time bros. Budget cuts can be felt from 3rd episode. If this is supposed to sell Azur Lane as a mobile game - it does pretty bad job at it - I played Azur Lane before, but if I didn't I'd never download the game with garbage story and animation like that. Would not waste time on this if not for a bet. Would give 0/10 but it's not possible. With this utter garbage story comes our kirito-wannabe Enterprise - ship known for lack of any character beyond "I will do this" or "This has to be done". Character development?Nonexistent just like anything else that should be in an anime - Budget = 0. Story = 0. Art = has it's moments (mostly still images, maybe few seconds total in entire season) that's why I gave art 2/10. The rest? Absolute trash beyond human capability. It even uses still PNGs from the game in few moments of the anime... Just don't watch it. Save your time.
TL;DR Stay as far away as possible. Pathetic / 10.
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...
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
