An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Seasonal Selection – Azur Lane Episode 2

At some point, I have to question what I’m expecting out of Azur Lane. To an extent, this is a question for any show, as you attempt to determine what the ambition of the creators was. It would be pure madness to try to hold everything to the same standards. For Azur Lane, I think the evidence is mounting that there is at least some real desire to tell a war story, even surrounded as it is by a lot of fanservice of every kind.

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Seasonal Selection – Azur Lane Episode 1

After some worry about who if anyone would be streaming this thing, it’s finally here, the Azur Lane anime, and I’m going to be taking a look at each of the episodes as they come out, either Thursday evenings or Friday until the show is done. This week, we get a war started and find out what the anime is going to feel like.

Before really diving in, I feel I should link my pre-anime lore roundup. You can find it here: https://harperanimereviews.com/how-much-lore-does-it-take-to-justify-cute-ship-girls-a-prelude-to-azur-lane/

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How Much Lore Does It Take to Justify Cute Ship Girls? A Prelude to Azur Lane

The upcoming Azur Lane anime is… something that is weirdly in my interest. I was never really a gacha game or phone game sort of person, but I’ve been playing around on Azur Lane for most of a year now; it has some decent character writing and is overall very friendly to casual players. When I heard they were going to make an anime based on the game, though, I was… less than thrilled. It would be cool to see some of my favorite characters moving around and doing things in a more fully realized world, but adapting video games, at least ones that aren’t visual novels, into other media has historically been very thorny. True, anime does this a little better than Western media; Granblue Fantasy the Animation was… not exactly what I’d call good, but it does look a little like Citizen Kane when you put it next to the filmography of Uwe Boll (probably the West’s most famous or perhaps infamous adapter of video games). But in any case there would have to be care taken and effort output in order to make an Azur Lane anime good.

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