Azur Lane 01
アズールレーン episode 01

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis

An alien race known as Sirens invade Earth. To combat this, four factions come together to form Azur Lane. The Americans create the (Eagle) Union faction. The British form the Royal (Navy) faction. The Germans form the Iron Blood faction. And the Japanese the Sakura Empire. After the Sirens were repelled, the Sakura Empire and the Iron Blood factions broke away from Azur Lane. They had different ideas on how to deal with the Sirens than the Union and Royal factions.

At a newly constructed Azur Lane base, the Light Cruiser Cleveland (Union) walks with the Battleship Prince of Wales (Royal). Cleveland is excited for the arrival of the Carrier Enterprise (Union). The two head off to greet the newly arrived Carrier Illustrious (Royal), and the Light Carrier Unicorn (Royal), who appears very young and is very bashful. Unbeknownst to them, the Destroyer Ayanami (Sakura) is there at the base on a spy mission.

Unicorn has lost her “pet” named U-chan, which appears as a winged unicorn. Unicorn is very distressed by this. As such, the Destroyer Javelin (Royal) agrees to help her. They find the Destroyer Laffey (Union), drowsy on a bench. However, she too agrees to search. Meanwhile, U-chan is chasing a butterfly and is found by Ayanami. Unicorn and company come on her, not realizing she’s with the Sakura faction. They thank her for finding U-chan. Ayanami creates a distraction to leave. where she reports to her superiors.

The kitsune-appearing Carrier Akagi is with fellow Sakura faction Carrier Kaga, who also looks like a nine-tailed kitsune. The two launch an all out attack on the base. Cleveland springs into action, defeating the initial wave of fighters. Unicorn enters the fray, so Kaga transforms into a giant beast form, intent on consuming Unicorn. Javelin is stunned when Ayanami is revealed to be an enemy whom she’s forced to fight. Unicorn is defeated, but as Kaga moves in for the kill, her beast form is attacked by Enterprise and defeated. The Sakura forces are forced to retreat.

Thoughts/Review

I’ve long known about the Azur Lane gatcha mobile game. So when the series came to anime, I thought that I’d watch Azur Lane 01 and see what ship girl stuff was all about. After all, the other ship girl series Kantai Collection is still on my watch list, collecting dust. 😅

Why World War II Ships?

The premise of Azur Lane is that Earth was attacked by aliens, and so humanity got cute battle babes and lolis, and gave them the power of World War II warships. Azur Lane 01 did not make clear to me when the Siren invasion happened. I presume it was during World War II, considering the appearance of the ships attacked by the Sirens.

From a game perspective, it doesn’t really matter why you have battle babes and battle lolis with the names and abilities of World War II warships. But from an actual story perspective, I’m rather curious. I suppose these babes and lolis are not actually human, but are some sort of technological creation. After all, the tech used to change an actual-sized warship into some sort of battle harness is mega-advanced.

World War Premise

I get that the gacha game wants to re-enact World War II with battle babes and battle lolis. And to that end, make the Japanese Sakura faction and the German Iron faction the enemies of this anime. But in Azur Lane 01, the reason for the Sakura Empire to attack the Royal Navy and Eagle Union factions is rather weak. The Americans and British want to use human tech to defeat the Sirens. OK. The Japanese and Germans want to use Siren tech.

To me, you ally up to defeat the alien threat, then you can work on establishing which faction of humans rules the planet. The faction with the Siren tech shouldn’t be concerned over such petty details.

But I did notice that in addition to the Sakura Empire representing the fairly vicious Japanese military of World War II, their ship girls had the appearance of supernatural beings from Japanese mythology. As such, Kaga and Akagi appeared as nine-tailed kitsune. Ayanami had technological horns, and called herself something that was translated as “demon” (’cause all Japanese supernatural beings can be called that). So maybe that’s to emphasize they are evil.

Anyway, I hope future episodes clear things up.

FUNimation

FUNimation’s subtitles for Azur Lane 01 are on the heavy localization tip. So there’s considerable twisting and turning to say awkward things in English just to avoid Japanese honorifics. The exception to this is U-chan, ’cause apparently, everything they could think of to flush that “slant-eyed gook smeg” out of the subtitles didn’t work. 🙄

Also, for some reason, even though faction names were shortened to “Royal” or “Union” (as an example), the subtitles felt the need to spell it completely out each time. I guess the viewers are too stupid by half to understand if the faction name isn’t fully given every smegging time it is said.

Nee-sama

Lastly, the moment I heard Kaga address Akagi as “Nee-sama,” I laughed and thought, “inbound yuri thing coming up.” And sure enough, I was right. That’s a trope that FUNimation’s twisty-turny adaptation does not convey at all.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Even though I found Azur Lane 01 to be kinda weird, I do have a bizarre fascination with the series. As such, I do plan to blog the series just to see what they do with things. But I have no desire to play the gacha game. 😅

What are your thoughts? Do you play the mobile game? What did you think of this first episode? Let me know in the comments.