Welcome back Azur Lane. We missed you.
The week of break seems to have done a world of good in terms of
getting the animation quality under control, getting us a big
action-heavy episode with few if any of the derpy zoom-out shots and,
as if to try to balance out episode 6, basically no extra fanservice
slipped in. The result is an episode that feels a little story-light
but that does properly represent a turning point and a solid
beginning for the second half of the show.
Confusingly, the episode begins with a
cut to a conflict in some netherworld with a golden-eyed Enterprise
looking particularly badass, with no rhyme or reason to what’s going
on. Fortunately enough, this seems to be a flash-forward, showing us
what’s going to happen closer to the end of the episode. Why? Not
sure, but I do have to question it since the “decisive battle”
everyone is sailing for at the start of this episode doesn’t get a
lot of buildup. We’ve known for a while that the Sakura Empire and
Azur Lane are at war, but there hasn’t been a great sense of the flow
of the macro-scale conflict. I mean, last we saw, everybody was at
home and when we pick up again they’re expecting not just any fight
but a particular fight. Continuity? What’s that? It isn’t a huge
issue, but I think we could have used some War Room time before the
opening song rather than a glimpse of what we’re going to see again
soon enough.
All the same, the setup continues with
both the Sakura and Azur Lane forces wondering what’s going to happen
in the upcoming fight. Akagi, however, has a secret siren-granted
weapon to fire off before the party really starts, summoning a storm
and dragging the fight into an alternate dimension with a whirlpool
in the sky. In game, this would probably be called a “Mirror Sea”,
a sort of Siren pocket dimension that’s seen in a lot of the events,
but here nobody seems to know what it is. The Azur Lane fights off
some Siren chaff, and then the Sakura forces arrive to make it a drag
out fight.
The action in the Mirror Sea takes up
most of the episode with Kaga fighting Enterprise while riding planes
around for a dogfight (an act that prompts Zuikaku to imitate the
audience and wonder whether that’s really something carriers do now),
Belfast squaring off against Akagi with the latter doing her best
impression of Gilgamesh from the fate series, and… you know what,
that’s actually the extent of the big conflicts. Most of the other
ships are just kind of there. In addition to having basically no
fanservice, this episode also has basically no focus on the lower
deck, so we don’t (yet) see Javelin and Laffey actually coming across
Aynami and paying off on that track.
Instead, this whole episode really does
belong to the carriers, and a hugely flashy moment that’s probably
worth a lot more if you know your game lore. Kaga actually strikes
down Enterprise (and Akagi does a number on Belfast) and she sinks
into the depths with the black cube… only to receive another vision
of Ash in a ruined world, in this case taking care of some slain
sirens, closing their eyes. Enterprise opens her own eyes, which are
now shining gold, and explodes from the depths of the water in a
pillar of golden light. She takes out Kaga and then the golden light
slowly expands to engulf just about everything.
Cut to Observer doing what else, observing. And, I suppose, cryptically commenting on her observations. It seems that Enterprise has awakened and is “once again” the key. And with that we take a huge swerve in the direction of the game lore, where the Sirens are largely concerned with “Awakening”, Enterprise (as Ash) has been important in previous cycles, and the Key? That title has been assigned to the Commander. So we’re clearly not in the same Timespace, but at least we’re more clearly than before in the same multiverse. On its own, this also serves the standard cryptic talk purpose, setting up a conflict going forward.
Awakened Enterprise then goes against
Akagi. Akagi does her magic ultimate summon (a giant red fire dragon
like Kaga had the fox carrier in episode one. And also about as
cool), but just gets shot to death in an instant by the silently
meanacing Awakened Enterprise. Right after doing it, Enterprise
returns to herself, actually tries to reach out for a falling Akagi,
and is forced to admit that yes, she does fear the ocean as Akagi
vanishes to the depths.
We, um, seem to have killed off our
active villains. Show? Show, where do we go from here?
Honestly, I’m not sure I gave this show
enough credit at the start. I thought, twelve episodes, starting the
way they did with the foxes front and center, they were barely going
to handle the Sirens as alien invaders, and not really going to
address the multi-dimension, multi-timeline main plot in which Akagi
and Kaga are just pawns. Now, though? They’re pretty much locking
themselves in to going deep on the sirens, and they have essentially
the second half of the show to do it. The major players have been
heavily developed as-is and some mortal stakes set, but this did just
to a great job of cutting off any threat of the Sakura Empire lasting
as prime baddies into the final episodes.
This despite the fact that we’re
clearly not quite done with Akagi. Her demise was pretty solid, but
in the games she dies historically at Midway only to be resurrected
by her Siren masters and return to torment, um, mostly Zuikaku
actually as the Sakura forces split between Siren and Human aligned
sub-factions. And here seems to be no different. In a post credits
stinger, Akagi awakens in a strange place, seeing a vision of her
beloved sister Amagi. Only when Amagi turns to face Akagi, she has
no face and a distorted voice tells Akagi that this isn’t the end.
No word on Kaga (though it would suck to off her here after the
development she started to get as her own person in Episode 6), but
Akagi at least will be coming back from that kill shot. The big
question, I suppose, is exactly what kind of state she comes back in,
running the gamut from “miraculous survival turns death into major
injury” to “Ascended as a new monstrous force.”
The other question going forward, aside
from what we do with resurrected Akagi, is how we handle Enterprise
from here on. We now know she has a super mode that’s far and away
beyond anything else on the field, and even if her robotic affect in
it indicates that it’s not something she’s going to be tapping into
all the time, it’s there. Akagi and Kaga were the most threatening
foes Enterprise had in this show, since Observer seems disinclined to
fight, and after putting up a very good showing in the first phase of
the fight this episode, they both went down like chumps
post-Awakening.
Challenging an overpowered character is always an issue that needs to be addressed with care. Azur Lane, right now, does have the tools to do it. While Awakening has catapulted Enterprise into a new space in terms of her ability to kick ass, she was a powerful champion right from her first appearance, and the show was smart to write Enterprise so that, in a lot of ways, she was her own worst enemy.
I feel like where we go from here has
to, to an extent, double down on that. Belfast has helped Enterprise
overcome her most obvious self-destructive behaviors, but the
Awakening interactions aren’t going to leave her exactly
psychologically well either. Especially with how different she was
in her golden-eyed state, I don’t think Enterprise’s fear of the
ocean is going to be quelled by the fact that she can shoot her
enemies to death. Nor should it be, since the Sirens still obviously
have cards to play.
Speaking of which, now is probably the
time when the Sirens need to start playing their hand more
aggressively. Observer made an impact of sorts in Episode 4 but the
fighting-type elite Sirens like Purifier and Tester have so far not
really been addressed, and I’m looking forward to them coming out of
the woodwork (especially Purifier) along with Akagi 2.0 and however
the so-far static Project Orochi advances. I just hope that next
week has a little better continuity, and actually handles the
denouement from this battle before leaping into the next topic.
Enterprise “Owari da” Count: 1
(Really? Not even for killing Akagi? This is gonna be stuck on the
one that blew up in her face, isn’t it?)
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-6/