Enterprise is having a bad day.
I mean, everyone’s kind of having a bad
day today, what with being caught in a sea full of crumbling ice
mountains and ever more shattered-window holes in the sky just sort
of leaking reality out into an infinite star field, but Enterprise’s
day in particular seems kind of terrible especially since she’s
spending a good deal of it not really being herself. I guess Kaga
might have her beat, depending on how you look at it…
In general, Azur Lane episodes seem to
have a pretty good formula. In the first half, we get all the
talking the characters want to do, while in the second half we get a
big fight. It works fairly well, and this episode largely sticks to
it. Some of the important talking in the first half is Enterprise,
in some sort of spirit realm, encountering masked children that would
seem to be representations of Akagi and Kaga alongside some sort of
echo of Amagi – not weird, faceless Amagi this time, but real
Amagi. She gives us some vague cryptic talk about the Other Memory
that shipgirls have in the Azur Lane setting and strongly implies the
multi-timeline nature of the property, while likening herself and
Enterprise. Enterprise doesn’t seem to get it, and frankly neither
does the audience yet. The meeting with Amagi is obviously important
to the ongoing plot, but right now we don’t have the pieces to put
together its full significance or what the payoff is going to be;
right now it’s more of that essential cryptic talk.
On the other side, we have the Sakura
forces and their recovery, or lack thereof. Kaga survived her brush
with Enterprise, though in no fit state but all appearances to begin
with are that Akagi wasn’t so lucky. She seems to have been scooped
up by Observer (now joined by fellow Siren Tester) and apparently
still has a part to play, but the Sakura Empire doesn’t know that
yet. Their leader is missing presumed dead, Siren secret weapons are
seemingly disabled, and most of their remaining forces aren’t in a
good shape, so pulling out of the conflict is a natural choice for
the Sakura forces even if it’s not one that can be made lightly.
We also get another meeting between
Javelin, Laffey, and Ayanami. Coming across each other in the middle
of the weird ice trenches, they try to talk out their differences
only for Ayanami’s Sakura Destroyer buddies to come to her “rescue”
and Belfast to show up for the Azur Lane girls. While pulling them
out of the fire, Belfast also tells them to stay true to their
convictions, so to speak. That they’re ‘made to fight, not to
destroy’. Essentially, she gives them the go-ahead to continue
attempting to befriend Ayanami. I think overall, this is about where
the Destroyer arc hit a turnover point. It still started from
nothing with no reason, but the motivations have been consistent and
followed through enough that even if I realize I don’t logically know
why they want what they want, I believe they want it enough to be
invested in seeing them get there.
Thus, our fight of the episode begins.
The Azur Lane forces don’t want to allow the Sakura Empire, having
displayed such dark power as they did setting the stage for this
battle, escape. Escape, meanwhile, is exactly the Sakura Empire’s
plan. With Kaga out of the action, the Fifth Carrier Division,
Zuikaku and Shoukaku, offer to act as rear guard. It’s not spelled
out as such, but this is basically a suicide mission, acting as a
decoy so the rest of the Sakura forces can escape. Ayanami,
meanwhile, isn’t comfortable with just about anything anymore, and
it’s pretty clear we’ll be getting more out of her (This episode,
actually)
Zuikaku and Shoukaku actually do quite
well for themselves until Gold Eyes Enterprise shows up. I’m going
to refer to her as such (or a similar term) pedantically, because
it’s important to make a distinction between the ‘states’ current
Enterprise can exist in and Golden Eyes isn’t exactly Ash. Golden
Eyes is… just as overpowered as we’d expect from her performance
against Akagi in the previous episode. She also seems to be having
weird visions of interactions with the Sirens, shared with Enterprise
proper, but that’s for another day. Right now, we’re more concerned
with her carpet bombing the dimension without lifting a finger and
instantly putting the Fifth Carrier Division not totally down, but
certainly down for the fight. Though they’re able to momentarily
snap Golden Eyes back to Enterprise with a desperation attack, but
another plane comes in with just the bomb to annihilate the pair.
Which is, of course, when Ayanami shows
up. She shows off her best anime fighting tropes like spinning leaps
and using falling debris as jumping points, in order to strike down
the plane and save her friends. She ends up falling straight towards
one of those shattered space rifts, only for Javelin and Laffey to
leap into action (literally) anchoring to one of the icebergs while
jumping off to catch her.
We cut the episode on their successful
attempt, and now have an interesting situation. As of this episode,
the Sakura Empire is badly fragmented. Akagi is a pawn in the hands
of the Sirens. Kaga and the orthodox Sakura technically follow
Akagi, but especially now they have their doubts and their limits,
and can’t be expected to remain loyal when the Sirens step up.
Meanwhile, Ayanami and the Fifth Carrier Division, respected fighters
of the Sakura Empire (unlike Akashi) are at least prisoners of war,
and more likely defectors in the face of whatever Enterprise really
learned from her visit with Amagi and time as Golden Eyes. In the
game lore, Zuikaku does lead a Sakura rebellion against Akagi, Kaga,
and their Siren masters so I suspect we’ll be following (in an
extremely rough sense) that plot for at least some of our remaining
four episodes.
We also need to address Project Orochi.
Apparently, as the Sirens reckon it, it’s pretty much ready thanks
to Enterprise/Golden Eyes and the Black Cube, so handling that is
probably going to be a big part of the climax. Add in the dichotomy
of Enterprise and Golden Eyes and fact, when she takes charge in the
real world, Enterprise doesn’t seem to be in a good state and we’ve
got the material for both downtime and active time in what we’ve got
left. The show could very much still come out with a major twist in
the time remaining, but if it doesn’t, then it’s on course to be
overall very solid with some good character, some good action, and a
few blemishes but nothing really too bad. All the show needs to do
is keep doing what it’s doing.
On that topic, though, one last note I
wanted to make was about the fanservice. In the first half of the
show there was a lot of it, but with the exception of Fanservice: The
Episode (Episode 6) it was well handled by being quick and typically
part of fluid motions. I could have done with less, or even without,
but it was what it was. Was there some kind of directorial coup
during the long break? Because the show that had trouble going two
scenes without a panty shot has now gone basically two episodes.
Mind you, I’m not complaining, I just find it kind of curious that
the fanservice element just sort of dropped out. Like Episode 6
happened and they said “You know what? I think we met our quota”
and just focused on delivering solid plot and action for the second
half rather than looking for upskirt opportunities. Actually,
thinking about it that way, I may be a little warmer to the change
than simply not minding it…
In any case, I’ll see you all next
week, where hopefully we’ll start to break down just how bad
Enterprise’s day really was and perhaps even some of what the Sirens
intend…
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-7/