English Dub Review: AZUR LANE “SHACKLES – Tying Bonds, Binding Hearts”

Overview

Belfast continues to nudge Enterprise into understanding the more human sides of Azur Lane — and herself. She gets breakfast, where she weakly interacts with people who are glad to see that she’s including herself with everyone. She and Belfast later meet up with Cleveland, Vestal, Hornet, and the Prince of Wales to discuss the Mental Cube they obtained from the Sakura Empire. Akashi, who is now living with Azur Lane, explains that the Sakura Empire’s ship, Oroshi, controls the siren ships they’ve built — the cube is just for support. Enterprise touches it and has a brief vision of a dangerous looking girl on the water. She shakes it off. Meanwhile, Akagi and Kaga go shopping and play with some local kids, envying the naivety of youth.

Belfast tries to convince Enterprise to take up a hobby other than fighting, while Javelin ruminates on Ayanami’s rejection of her and Laffey’s friendship. Then, all the girls go to the bath house, where Eagle Union girls learn that the Royal Navy ladies either wear sexy underwear, or none at all. They then enjoy their baths, but Unicorn feels self-conscious about her Gigantic Anime Titties on her small body. Javelin and Laffey convince her that all bodies are great and normal, and all the girls in the shower show off their Gigantic Anime Titties to help her feel better. Unicorn accepts that she has some Huge Dobonhonkeros and they all take a bath.

Enterprise and Belfast drink on the beach at night, Prinz Eugen accuses Kaga’s love for Akagi of being unrequited, and Akagi mysteriously vows to see her lost sister, Amagi.

Our Take

Here’s the thing: despite the fact that some things were pretty silly and weird in this episode, they at least attempted to spin it off in an endearing way. Attempted. At the very base of it, this might have just seemed like a filler episode, but it feels like this is exactly what the series has been missing so far. From the beginning of the show, it seems like we were just thrown right into a civil war with boat girls about sea witches where some of them have cat ears and some don’t. It read as utter nonsense, and still does, but the other problem is that there’s just been an insane amount of character dumping. We’ve haven’t been given much time to get to know the characters on a personal level — and while there are still a bunch that probably won’t get touched on deeply, it’s still nice to see that the show is capable of dialing things back for two seconds. After all, one of the underlying themes of this show seems to be about the girls’ “humanity.” There needs to be human scenes in order to highlight that!

That’s exactly what this episode did. Not gonna lie, it was genuinely hilarious when Sheffield revealed that she’s always commando and flashed some of the Eagle Union girls. If there was anything to critique, it would be that Unicorn’s self-consciousness about her body would have been more impactful if it was a more…common thing to be self conscious about. For instance, it could have been great if all of the boat girls had actual differing body types, rather than just skinny and big-chested. Still, it was…sort of sweet. Sort of.

Watching Enterprise and Belfast’s relationship grow is sweet, too. When it comes to Akagi and Kaga, though, it seems there’s a lot of lore we still don’t know about. Who is Amagi? Does Kaga’s “body” have anything to do with it?

Maybe a “body” positivity session would help.