After last time, we get a breather episode! As predicted, the last events on mist-shrouded island are resolved before the opening, and after that we’re all back at port with nothing more needed to execute the escape. The rest of the episode… remains at port, eschewing the fighting for a double (or more) helping of Azur Lane’s fanservice.

First of all, I do want to mention that the opening scene, a continuation of how last episode ended, is actually very well done. Ayanami hesitates, and without a lot of (or really any) dialogue we see what Laffey’s offer means to her, and the struggle she goes through before slapping the offered hand away and fleeing – actions that are themselves telling considering she had Laffey and Javelin cornered.

The next real segment we get is another round Belfast/Enterprise interaction. This one, however, actually seems like it’s moving forward, with Enterprise coming out of her shell and actually engaging with others, discovering that she’s fairly popular and being unsure just how to handle that. We also get another round of discussion about the Kansen being or not being human when Enterprise notices the growth of a bustling market at port, Ping Hai and Ning Hai’s meat bun stand from last time fortified by Akashi among others (because of course Akashi, who runs the shop in-game, would immediately set up a shop). After that on the Azur Lane side we get a very long and extended bath scene.

The bath scene is something I have mixed feelings about. For one, it’s super fanservice-y, as you’d expect out of having all the girls going bathing and bantering in and around a public bath and the changing rooms. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Again, fanservice-heavy source material, and it’s pretty much always better to embrace your brand with pride. What’s more, while the sequence is fairly light it’s not devoid of character and emotion either. Most of the characters involved say something, and react in ways that are predicated on who they are. Did we need to have Sheffield flash the Cleveland class (horrifying Cleveland in particular) just to answer the question of if she liked frilly underwear? No, but how Cleveland and company ask, how Sheffield answers, and how they deal with the answer are decent moments.

Similarly, I guess the main moment in the bath sequence has to do with Unicorn’s nerves, since Unicorn is a character we’ve spent more time with as a person and she’s spending time with even more significant characters Javelin and Laffey. Again, it’s not strictly necessary to get her making honest friends and coming to terms with herself through dealing with body image issues (predicated in the fact she’s more developed than other ships with similar heights and youthful faces – itself a second level of fanservice since Unicorn’s default ingame pose has her hugging her plushie to her chest and hiding what’s there, sparking many debates over whether or not she’s a loli) but it is a way that works, and we get more than just fan service out of the sequence with her.

Plus, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t still funny how the creators are finding opportunities for spontaneous cruelty towards San Diego. Hopefully it pays off when she actually gets to kick some ass but her goofball persona and “love her, hate her, or love to hate her” fandom status really do lend themselves to the kind of comedy she’s suffering.

On the other hand, it is a quite long sequence compared to the amount of meat in it. There’s nothing wrong with having the meat of a scene somewhat hidden by the motions the characters are going through. In fact, I prefer it: having a scene framed around some activity other than talking “important” talk gives a character and dynamism to the narrative that you don’t get if everyone just sits around in darkened rooms saying plot relevant stuff (oh how I loathe that style). But to do it well, you do kind of want to keep the scene rolling, and because there’s so much fanservice to get through, the episode does kind of grind to a crawl even if it doesn’t reach halt while we’re in the baths. And the fanservice is… odd. Again, I’m watching this first run streaming. I don’t think there’s any “extra” censorship that’s not in the original airing, but the magic censor steam is really off the charts. We get some very fetching shots of some of the girls, but we also get other scenes where (in the changing rooms while they still have their undies on) their sterns have blatantly had some whiteout applied. You’d think we’d have gotten enough shots of Cleveland’s panties when she’s jumping into action that we could see them non-scandalously without peeking up her skirt. The alternative is actually distracting, and not just because we aren’t getting the ‘full’ fanservice. Some of the sequences are handled well; most of the bit with Unicorn, for instance, and oddly enough the part of the scene where we’re actually in the baths rather than the changing room. They still have the magic steam, but it’s not flagrantly interfering because the shots are composed in such a way that the creators clearly knew they’d need it and that it would be best if the need was sparing. Many of the changing room shots are instead composed in such a way that you think the creators didn’t feel they needed the steam, and it had to be added after in shots it was never meant for (probably because they were tamer underwear shots rather than images that would be nude without it).

The Sakura Empire side of things is much briefer; when it comes to actual downtime, we pretty much just get one sequence of Akagi and Kaga out shopping, where Akagi buys a somewhat uncomfortable Kaga a hair ornament, followed by the child-like Mutsuki class having a run-in with Kaga and getting scared despite Kaga’s best efforts to seem non-scary. There, that didn’t take me very long to say… but it takes the show much longer. It’s not a bad sequence. It shows more of the dynamic between Akagi and Kaga (which is important already and hinted to be more important going forward) and kind of establishes the position the foxes have on base in contrast to Enterprise’s position at home. But did defusing the Mutsukis have to take as long as it did? I was calling for Akagi to come and bail out Kaga well before it happened. Ah, well.

The breather dealt with, though, there is actually plot in this episode! Two to four scenes (depending on how you count) in particular kind of show us where we’re going on from here.

The first scene or two is when the Azur Lane forces are examining the black cube – we get some talk from Akashi and the locals about what it is or could mean, and the general consensus that the Sakura Empire is, as a whole, being deceived (essentially setting up the everybody versus Sirens ending, or at least everybody except possibly Akagi and some of the Ironblood. The second component of the scene occurs when Enterprise touches the cube.

Other characters have handled the darn thing before, but for Enterprise, there’s a reaction. She finds herself in a vision on a sea reflective as a mirror (I decline to call it a “Mirror Sea” since that term in game seems to refer to actual pocket dimensions created by the Sirens and this is only the image of one), except her reflection isn’t quite herself. Instead, it’s Ash, who in-game her bitter and haggard other self from a timeline somewhere ahead of the Azur Lane main universe, blessed with incredible power and burdened with incredible suffering. In the show, the twisted reflection does a lot to communicate Ash’s status. Her pose and even her fluttering, tattered cape give her a very strong look, but she is distinctly ragged compared to the clean-cut Eagle Union hero that is the original. And, as Enterprise experiences this vision, it inverts: she sees herself as Ash, with the familiar Enterprise as the reflection.

Again, as with a lot of good scenes, this is all done with excellent pacing and through visual storytelling. I don’t dislike the dialogue in Azur Lane, but I’m convinced that if the creators put their minds to it they could put out an entirely silent episode and have it work just through the strengths of the visuals. In any case, Enterprise is shortly shaken free of her experience, and left wondering along with the audience just what that was she saw. Coming in from the game I think I have a better idea, but it’s still enigmatic. Does Ash exist in this timeline, and if she does did she see Enterprise because of that connection with the black cube? Or is Enterprise seeing what she became in another dimension that the Sirens and Project Orochi (described as something of an Ark) could reach? Or perhaps it’s instead showing Enterprise what she could become, if only she embraced that same darkness.

There’s not really a follow-up right now, but it’s clearly preparing us for something coming.

The other scene that bears note on the same level is the closing sequence. We return to the Sakura Empire where Kaga is drinking alone and giving melancholy looks to the little hair ornament Akagi bought her when Prinz Eugen interrupts. Kaga tells Eugen to piss off, but Eugen can’t leave her without teasing in some way, and throws shade on the relationship between Akagi and Kaga, calling it out as a one-sided love – by implication, from Kaga to Akagi and not the other way around, as affectionate as Akagi may act. This seems to hit home well enough. Eugen suggests that Akagi and Kaga aren’t on the same page, which brings us to the question… what page is the Ironblood on? Despite her getting a great focal shot in the intro, we haven’t seen Bismarck in the show yet. Eugen is aware of the black cube and possibly the deal with the Sirens, but why is she goading Kaga? Is it because Akagi is going to backstab the Sirens, because the mortal plan is to backstab the Sirens and Akagi is going to ruin that, or just because she’s Prinz Eugen and likes teasing people?

Cut to the other part of the scene, where we see Akagi. This is really brief, but really huge: she declares that she’ll see her sister Amagi again soon.

I touched on Amagi in my commentaries of Episode 3, and the direction of Akagi’s obsessive behavior in Episode 4, and it seems like that’s actually paying off. So, a little source material lesson. Historically, Akagi, Amagi, and Kaga were laid down as battleships, but the Washington Naval Treaty meant they had to be either converted into Aircraft Carriers (as was intended for Amagi and her sister ship Akagi) or scrapped (as was intended for Kaga). The Great Kanto Earthquake, however, caused irrecoverable damage to Amagi’s hull and in the end she had to be scrapped while Kaga was added to the treaty allotment of Aircraft Carriers. This plays out in the game version of Azur Lane during an event. There, Amagi is Akagi’s elder sister and battleship Kaga’s mentor. Amagi is initially selected to become the new flagship of the Sakura Empire, while Kaga faces possibly being scrapped or converted. Kaga goes on a bit of a suicide attack against a Siren stronghold and Amagi relieves and rescues her, telling her to live on. It’s revealed that Amagi is incurably sick due to a damaged cube at her core, and Akagi and Kaga will have to take care of everything in her stead. Amagi became a lot of players’ favorite ship, with her fleshed-out story, tragic existence, and kind yet cunning persona. In fact, she recently took first place in the popularity polls for the English-language global servers. Not bad for a ship that was never actually completed.

The implications of Akagi’s line, in context, are fairly clear: Amagi is dead (or close enough) in the Anime continuity’s universe (Parallel to Enterprise’s bedridden big sister Yorktown preserved, since we get another flashback to the last time she and Enterprise spoke this episode), and Akagi’s obsessive love is directed not at her “adopted” sister Kaga, but really at her lost sister Amagi… and something about her cooperation with the Sirens or the Orochi project promises to restore Amagi. It’s a powerful motivation for the ship that’s basically serving as our main villain, and one that can carry a lot of weight to it. It also does lens her previous interactions with Kaga, including Kaga’s hesitance to accept Akagi’s affection (even when Kaga herself seems to declare similar affection), considering that many of Akagi’s lovey-dovey lines have been about not Kaga in particular but the nature of sisterly affection.

And really, I think that does come to part of what Azur Lane does best. The action spectacle and the fanservice are fine, but where the franchise really shines is in humanizing the shipgirls, and making them rounded characters based in history rather than flat expressions of history. Thus, it makes sense for the anime to capitalize on that and have (as it looks to be going for) a conflict that does include the Shipgirls-versus-Sirens battle for survival, but is more predicated in personal motivations. I want to see Enterprise and Akagi fight not just because there would be a cool clash of planes, gunfire, magic, and assorted superpowers, but because I want to see them use that violence to work out or contest against each other their different world views and approaches to grief. I’m engaged in Enterprise coming out of her shell, because that’s essentially what the series had to do to begin with: take something without human emotion and make it human.

This isn’t a perfect show, not by a long shot. Some scenes could be paced better, and there are a bunch of dopey scenes (especially notable this episode) where the camera zooms out and the animation quality drops like a stone. But so far, it’s a good show, and I think I’ve got enough backing to say that it’s on course to continue to be a fairly strong product in its own right.

One last programming note; Next week for Azur Lane appears to be a recap episode, possibly with actual History Lesson included. If there’s not really any new material (and especially if it’s not considered to be the ‘real’ Episode 7) I won’t be covering it in its own article. See you all when we get to the next proper episode!

Enterprise “Owari da” Count: 1 (This is going to get to, like, 2 or 3 max isn’t it?)

Game Lore: https://harperanimereviews.com/how-much-lore-does-it-take-to-justify-cute-ship-girls-a-prelude-to-azur-lane/

Previous Episode: https://harperanimereviews.com/seasonal-selection-azur-lane-episode-5/