English Dub Review: AZUR LANE “MELEE – Pulsing Waves, Steel Wings”

Overview

Everyone fighting to defend the Azur Lane base is still recovering from the Sakura Empire attack. The girls are pulled from the water and regroup to heal themselves and their ships. Cleveland spies Enterprise after the battle, though, and realize that she isn’t resting, despite the damage she took. Enterprise assures her that she’s fine, and that all critical injuries she took have already been repaired.

Meanwhile, Akagi and Kaga are having an incestuous moment with each other before Prinz Eugen — a heavy cruiser ally from Iron Blood — appears on their ship. Zuikaku messages the trio and lets them know that they (the Fifth Carrier Division) found a detached force of ships belonging to the Azur Lane alliance. Akagi asks Prinz Eugen to backup that division, and she agrees — taking Ayanami and Z23 with her.

On the sea, Hornet (Enterprise’s sister), Hammann, Northampton, Helena, and Long Island are attempting to head back to the Azur Lane base when they’re ambushed by the Fifth Carrier Division (Shoukaku and Zuikaku.) Enterprise shows up to help her sister, alongside Cleveland, Laffey, and Javelin. However, things get sticky when Prinz Eugen joins in with Ayanami and Z23. Ayanami, Javelin, and Laffey seem conflicted about fighting, though.

Enterprise pushes herself to her limit and nearly breaks while fighting Zuikaku, but Belfast — a “maid” ship sent by Queen Elizabeth — shows up in the nick of time to save her.

Our Take

Despite being jumbled by a mass amount of characters tied into one convoluted, very odd plot, we finally got an explanation of what that weird cube was that the Sakura Empire gals wanted to get a hold of so badly. Of course, because it’s hard to fit critical pieces of information into a plot, apparently, this explanation was given in the form of a pre-episode expositional recap. Pacing is already not this show’s strong suit.

The “mental cubes” are “mysterious crystal substances gathered from the sirens.” It’s what the ship girls were created with, and the reason Azur Lane split up into two factions was because Sakura Empire and Iron Blood wanted more of them to become more powerful. If these mental cubes come from sirens and ship girls, is the reason the Sakura Empire’s mental cube is so dark and demonic because they’re secretly working with the sirens or something? Or is it just flavor to let everyone know they’re the bad guys?

Also, while a lot of the accents on the show are done surprisingly well, the German ones are a little too…”American doing a German accent.” Queen Elizabeth’s voice is dynamic and fun, though. It’s odd that such a horrible show has such great voice acting.

Oh? “It’s not a horrible show,” is it? Okay then, sure. We’ll just shelve that weird incest scene and put all criticisms of the literal objectification of these young girls away. Literally, they are being objectified. They are being objectified in the most literal way possible, because the girls are boats — and the boats have titties.

This is why people hate anime.