English Dub Review: AZUR LANE “REUNION – Reaching Out To You”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Akashi and Edinburgh are hiding out on a deserted island — a place that was once full of human life, but is now a decaying ruin of buildings. Surrounding the island are old, defeated Siren ships. Sheffield sneaks around the area to keep watch, but discovers that the Sakura Empire and Iron Blood have approached the isle. She reports this back to Akashi and Edinburgh, who are terrified — considering that they stole the Black Box.

Meanwhile, on the Sakura Empire ships, the girls sexually harass each other and question Akagi’s schemes. Some worry about Akashi, but then Iron Blood gives them the heads up that Azur Lane is incoming. Enterprise and Belfast have a conversation about their “humanity,” and Belfast attempts to convince Enterprise that they all must assist each other by being a light in the world. Atago comforts Ayanami about having to fight other factions — after sexually harassing Takao.

Azur Lane then begins firing at Sakura Empire and Iron Blood. Sakura Empire recognizes this to be a distraction so that they won’t go into the island to search for the Black Box, but they do. Akashi, Edinburgh, and Sheffield go undercover to move out.

Prinz Eugen and other Iron Blood members corner Edinburgh and Sheffield, but are intercepted by Belfast, who protects them. Enterprise appears to out-power them by using the element of surprise, and Iron Blood retreats alongside Sakura Empire.

Laffey convinces Ayanami not to fight them, and to be their friend instead.

Our Take

There was a lot of complex fighting in this episode and a lot of it was hard to follow. They keep introducing characters who seem to have no weight in the plot. A big writing rule is, if a character is only there to further the plot — it doesn’t need to be a character. If it’s an action or piece of dialogue that can be done by any other character, then condense the characters. We really don’t need this many, and it seems like the only reason they’re all there is for fan-service.

…Speaking of fan-service, we really have to talk about that Atago and Takao scene. That was just straight up sexual harassment — if not, sexual assault. It literally feels like a bunch of dudes were in a room and went, “What do girls do with each other for fun? Grope each other? Yeah, grope each other. That’s probably it.” Please make it stop.

Also, there was something kind of jarring about the way this episode just…jumped into war. It seemed like such a big change in tone that it felt (and looked) like a flashback of some sort — especially with that ghostly, misty gradient placed over the scene in the beginning. This seemed like a very climactic episode out of nowhere.

The voice actresses are still doing a great job, despite the odd plot and characters in this show. It’s still difficult to decipher where the sirens will fit into the equation, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll definitely have big, honkin’ anime titties.