English Dub Review: AZUR LANE “ACTIVATION – The Girls Who Soar on the Seas”

Overview

The series opens with exposition about how an alien threat named “The Sirens” had come to the earth to conquer its seas. To combat them, humanity created a global alliance called Azur Lane, which consists of four different sectors: Eagle Union, Royal Navy, Iron Blood, and Sakura Empire. These armies consist of more anime girls who were built with different aspects of the world’s most powerful warships. While the sirens were successfully pushed back, a new threat has arisen: a civil war between the factions. Eagle Union and Royal Navy only believe in using human-made efforts to fight with, while Iron Blood and Sakura Empire have taken to using siren technology — which seems to have corrupted them with demonic energy.

Cleveland, the Prince of Wales, and Illustrious all gather at Azur Lane Academy on the joint Azur Lane base to talk about the threat. Meanwhile, Unicorn, Javelin, and Laffey meet each other with the goal of finding Unicorn’s plushie — which winds up in the hands of Ayanami, a Sakura Empire agent. She returns the plush but then attacks the base with Kaga and Akagi, who are Sakura Empire leaders. All the ship-girls at the base battle the Sakura-led front, but are failing until Enterprise — a legendary Eagle Union fighter — shows up to defeat them. Ayanami hesitantly leaves, following Kaga and Akagi who retreat with a ball of energy — calling the attack “successful” despite losing. They formally declare war and leave.

Our Take

Okay, so we have another video game anime. That’s great. That’s cool — and it’s ship girls. It’s a lot to unpack, but let’s start out with the glaringly good things before we trash this.

The voice acting is actually superb. Hearing all the different accents and tones separates each character as an individual. The Prince of Wales is especially soothing to listen to. Plus, it doesn’t seem like the accents are someone “putting on” a character — they’re pretty well voiced. Additionally, the animation is pretty. All the fight sequences and movements are fluid, and the backgrounds are enchanting to look at. All of this had the potential to be highlighted…

…if it weren’t for the fact that it’s hard to tell what the f**k is going on.

Clearly, this is an anime that was made for fans of the game. The exposition is grueling because it attempts to recap things that viewers would have rather experienced themselves if they were going into it blind. The enemies’ intentions are unclear because, despite all the exposition done, the mysterious cube they’d somehow acquired had no context. Also, side note: what was the point of the sirens’ invasion in the first place? They came to earth to rule its seas, but why? Just to hang out?

All of these boat girl anime shows all read like they had the same exact pitch:

“What if boats…had big, honkin’, anime titties?”

And maybe another genius said,

“What if boats…were lolis?”

And no one got arrested! What a world we live in.