So, even in Azur Lane, an anime set entirely in ocean and oceanside environments and about the humanoid incarnations of warships, there must be a beach episode. I guess that checks out: the game gives you the option of a lot of swimsuit costumes for the girls, and the previous shipgirl show I watched, Arpeggio of Blue Steel, managed to work in a ‘beach episode’ as well. The question is not whether or not it’s here, but how it was used.
Weirdly enough, this episode has gone a
long way to convincing me that the choice to not include a Commander
character may have been a good one. The way the show is written and
shots are framed bears a strong resemblance to a Harem show. The
fanservice is there, the lighter beats are there… but the Harem MC
isn’t there, so we get to skip all the required beats to make a harem
work (there are a lot of them) and get to replace them with at least
some extra character study.
Most of that time is devoted to
Enterprise. There were shades of it last episode, but this episode
really hammers home that her approach to life and war isn’t healthy,
and while the episode does discuss her situation, the show is also
smart enough to show us, through visual means, what she’s going
through and how she’s approaching her existence in a problematic
manner. For instance, the first few scenes see her in her room and
the look of it supports the idea that she’s not taking care of
herself – it’s a darkened space (though she was sleeping), with few
if any personal touches and the strewn evidence of past and upcoming
meals in the form of canned and boxed rations. This contrasts with
other scenes we get to view showing the b-cast girls (mostly Javelin
and Laffey plus extras) having a little rest and recreation in the
cafeteria. Enterprise’s spartan lifestyle isn’t just unhappy in its
own right, it’s abjectly unnecessary, and juxtaposed with the lighter
experience of the other girls it’s obvious to the viewer that this is
the case without the need to discuss the topic to death.
That’s not to say it doesn’t get
discussed, or that it shouldn’t; Enterprise needs to be told, even
multiple times, to stop running herself into the ground and she
properly does get told. Because a problem with the fleet’s mighty
champion is also a problem for the fleet as a whole, the other
characters also need to discuss the topic and they do. It’s just
nice that more is done through subtle means; I think we’ve all run
into a work of media that talks and talks about a topic, informing
without displaying, and it’s good that Azur Lane doesn’t look to be
falling into that trap.
I think that’s also a big part of
what’s good about the “Beach Episode” segment. There’s something
very silly about it; it’s not just that we’re getting a beach episode
at all, the tone of the show shifts drastically to become more
cartoonish. For instance, San Diego gets attacked by a giant shark
and is in anything but real danger; the entire sequence is handled in
a comedy where she holds the thing’s jaws open in a panic and we turn
away before she (with Saratoga’s help) actually gets out of there and
Sandy is playing in the water with everyone else like nothing
happened the next time we see them. Why go so far as to move us into
a no-stakes comedy anime? Because when Enterprise enters the scene,
she still spends her time brooding.
Led to the beach by Unicorn and
Belfast, Enterprise chooses to not engage with the silly play,
instead standing sentinel, gazing out to sea with deep concern If we
treated the beach sequence with the same tone and stakes as the rest
of the show (which is fairly “realistic” in terms of actions
having consequences), even with the activities there being totally
‘light’, there might be an impulse to agree with Enterprise when she
answers Belfast that the sea represents danger. We’d follow her gaze
out to where warships wait to see battle and probably look on the fun
times that Unicorn and the others were having as somehow fragile, the
way Enterprise seems to. Because our view on the beach activities,
though, set a different expectation of stakes in the universe,
Enterprise’s world view is put in harsher relief, and it’s more
difficult to ‘agree’ with her on an emotional level, creating the
impression that she’s emotionally damaged rather than risking
creating the impression that she’s the properly paranoid or anything
like that.
Speaking of Enterprise’s emotional
damage (Rather than her still persistent hull damage), we met a
fairly interesting character this episode: Yorktown. Historically
speaking, USS Yorktown was the lead ship of the Yorktown class (which
also contains Hornet and Enterprise) – effectively Enterprise’s
‘big sister’ – and was the first ship of the class to sink, being
heavily damaged in the battle of Midway and finished off (along with
Hammann, another ship with a speaking role in Azur Lane, who tried to
protect her) by a Japanese submarine. Yorktown’s sinking is one of
the last events to occur in the game’s abortive story mode cutscenes
and is treated basically historically. Should you obtain a copy for
yourself, she’s a very refined but also melancholy lady – but still
more than capable of fighting in your fleets. The anime, being its
own product and having an only tenuous relationship to anything
historical, goes a very different route with Yorktown: without
specifying a particular reason or condition, she appears to be a
sickly character, perhaps even confined to her bed. We get a
flashback to Enterprise visiting with her at the start of the
episode, and when the Repair Ship Vestal arrives at base, Hammann and
Hornet ask after Yorktown’s condition to a response that indicates
both that it’s not good and that “not good” is normal.
It’s a curious choice. While
Enterprise would seem to carry some guilt regarding Yorktown in the
source material it’s kind of downplayed since Yorktown’s demise is
either at the end of the story we have or else part of the nebulous
“History and memory of the shipgirls but it never actually happened
to them exactly” domain. Either way, it’s not a huge part of
Enterprise’s character nor of the story. And in any case, having
Yorktown as the “Ill Girl” would seem to keep her out of the
overall action when her fans would probably like to see her fight
while not being true to her character or her history. But, thinking
about it, I’d like to speculate a reason why that might have been
done, and leave that speculation here to see if I’m right farther
down the line. In the game Azur Lane there is one ship who plays the
“chronic illness” trope, and she’s actually a huge fan favorite:
Amagi. Amagi also happens to be a mentor or big sister figure for
our current main villains, Akagi and Kaga; it’s fairly safe to say
that if and when she appears, it won’t just be as a background extra.
I think that having Yorktown largely bedridden with illness will, in
addition to providing a delivery mechanism for Yorktown-related
sorrow and guilt without actually killing her off, serve to create a
parallel between Enterprise and her foes once Amagi is introduced,
either for the audience to see them as not so different after all, or
even as an a shared experience over which Enterprise and the First
Carrier Division can find common ground if and when the time comes to
face the Sirens as the main enemy rather than focusing on the
conflict between the Azur Lane and the Red Axis.
Speaking of that “if”, the pacing
of the show so far is interesting. We’re three episodes in, and the
villains apparent, the Red Axis, have only an extremely shaky
motivation for their villainy and given the events here in Episode 3
don’t even have that much of a presence. It’s clear that we’re not
turning to Slice of Life; there’s still a lot of stock placed in
combat and conflict, including in the ending portions of the episode
where we find Ning Hai and Ping Hai, critically injured, and see
Enterprise crippled though she is throw herself against a Siren
production ship. We seem to be leaving a lot of room, so that it’s
believable the show might never go past the Ironblood and Sakura
Empire as our foes, since they need more development as an enemy and
we’re taking our time about doing development in general.
However, the Sirens are at the same
time being kept in perspective. The active enemies this episode,
after the cliffhanger from the previous episode is defused, are
Sirens and not strictly Red Axis. Meanwhile, the Axis characters are
already being regarded in a more friendly fashion than you might want
to if we were going to have them serve as the main enemy for the
entirety of the show; we see Ayanami already starting to doubt hard
faction lines from her fairly weak interactions with Laffey and
Javelin while Z23’s appearance is played more for humor than for
drama. Her Ironblood compatriot, Prinz Eugen, talks fairly
pleasantly with the Royal Navy even if they’re currently enemies.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, when the Azur Lane anime already feels at least somewhat smart for its treatment of Enterprise and her issues, that the weakness of the Red Axis’s apparent motive for attacking the Azur Lane and starting this war isn’t actually an accident or a case of sloppy writing, but is instead a precursor for, like the game largely does, exploring the Axis factions in their own right rather than simply as antagonists. We don’t know, currently, what the anime is doing in terms of a contained story; the conflict we have right now is open-ended and open to acceptance of the “war never changes” statement that was repeated through the first two episodes. Which, given the treatment of Enterprise, isn’t where I think the show ultimately wants to go. There’s a lot of material here that could be very strong if it’s being used to plant the seeds for things that will only be harvested late in the show, but that will stand as significant weaknesses if left as-is. While I think, with the way this episode ended teaming up Belfast and Enterprise honestly, we’ll still be focused on them going forward, I feel like there’s room for an episode more fully focused on Ayanami, Akagi, and Kaga, and that when we get something like that, we’ll know a lot more about what this anime is doing.
I wasn’t sure what to expect starting
the show. As I discussed in the lore roundup, there was strong
material to work with, but on the other hand the anime didn’t seem to
want to use it, and I think a number of viewers would have been
pleased with a show that didn’t get a lot of effort thrown at
anything other than the fanservice, so there was the threat of a
failure state like that. Now, I’m convinced the writers had some
significant intelligence and effort, and I’m fairly eager to see what
they do with the rest of the run.
Enterprise “Owari da” Count: 1
Game Lore: https://harperanimereviews.com/how-much-lore-does-it-take-to-justify-cute-ship-girls-a-prelude-to-azur-lane/
Previous Episode: https://harperanimereviews.com/seasonal-selection-azur-lane-episode-2/