Azur Lane Ep 1 Fan Service Review

 Hello readers! its been quite some time, and I’m glad to be back here reviewing one of my favorite mobile games that has turned into an anime in such a short amount of time. I do apologize for such a late review, I meant to post this at least by the weekend but stuff happens/too many video games. Anyway let’s get right into it, for those of you that are not familiar with the series, Azur Lane is a mobile gacha game made by a Chinese company named Yostar. Funny enough, the Chinese version of the game suffers from censorship, and like the game, that’s also the case with the airing in china. Thank goodness for the superior Japanese version right? For those of you that are familiar with Azur Lane, I’m sure you have heard of this being a knock off of KanColle, Let me just say that while Kantai Collection was the first of its kind, it didn’t really push the envelope, as well as it didn’t cater to its fan base in the West. Azur Lane for me, does everything right that KanColle doesn’t. Well anyways back on topic, let’s get this review started shall we?

So basically we have four factions. Eagle Union, Royal Navy, Iron Blood, and Sakura Empire. Like WW2, we have other nations fighting for their homeland and what have you, except there are alien-like beings called Sirens, and the ships in this series are all girls with ship parts. Now that we have cleared things up, lets get into the main highlight of the series… the boats!

Here we have Avora in all her glory, unfortunately, she’s the only Russian ship in the series, which makes her all the more precious. 

Then we have one of only two repair ships in this series (who’s also the lesser used one, at least for me) Vestal, she’s got the whole nun thing going on if that’s your thing.  

Then one of the main MC’s herself, Enty. She’s a force to be reckoned with, and a OP ship in the game. Now on to the opening. Here we see only just a handful of ships that have yet to come.

We have over 20 ships alone in this opening. Obviously that doesn’t compare to the hundreds of ships that the series has. Sadly not all of them well make it into this anime, but at least they’ll introduce the majority of ship girls. I’m glad to see Nagato and Sheffield will be in this adaptation, seeing as they are only using mainly the first year ships from the game. Also excited to see Yamashiro service. when we get there, she’s got some nice side boob action going on. Over here in the main port we see a handful of the other ships, and just how visually nice this show is. Seriously, this looks great. Hopefully it stays like this. 

Here, we have my favorite Japanese Destroyer, from the starter squad, Ayanami. It seems like she’s undercover for a mission, and unfortunately, like WW2, the Sakura empire and Iron Blood are the bad guys, while Eagle and Royal are the good guys. I heard that in Kantai, it was the opposite. That’s kinda interesting.    

Here is top heavy carrier Illustrious and smol  carrier Unicorn. Yes, illustrious is a lady of nobility, but that doesn’t mean she won’t pamper you if needed.

Javelin shows up and finds unicorn in dismay, she then offers to help. Then we get introduced to my second favorite starter squad Laffy, she’s the one I picked when you start the game. It’s between her Z23 and Javelin. so I chose sleepy loli because why not? After asking Laffy if she has seen Unicorn’s plushie or not, Laffy decides to join them to help out.

Afterwards they find the plushie with Ayanami but before they can give her their gratitude, a plane like thing flies overhead and she disappears along with it. Like a ninja i guess.

And here we have two of the main baddies from Sakura Empire, Akagi and Kaga. For some reason, Akagi is very much into the idea of incest, non-blood-related of course but Kaga doesn’t swing that way. Akagi is also one of three major crazy boats in the series, I doubt we’ll see the other ones but I can’t say for sure. 

So then it happens, the big attack that no one saw coming, or maybe they thought that they wouldn’t bother attacking seeing as they have the great Enty on their side. Either way, it’s interesting to see how the gear for them works, they come from their respective ships that they are based off of, then the ships shatter into the wisdom cubes that us players have spent hundreds upon hundreds of time trying to get our most desired ship, its good to see that they didn’t go to waste. 

Here’s where the action starts. Here you’ll see plenty of still shots that are needed in order to save some budget. Its kinda funny to see how such things like shooting and air planes work in the anime compared to the game. Also, i didn’t even know that there was a shot of Javelin’s butt in the action sequence, guess it was because everything was happening so fast. 

Yeah, i’m pretty sure you can just jump onto a ship to avoid torpedoes, I guess I forgot that was a thing in the game, lol. So just before the big bad wolf (which is also in the game, I must’ve forgotten. ) gets to do the astral finish on Unicorn, We have the one, and only… Chad Enterprise to save the day!

I guess it should come as no surprise that Enty is just too OP, she clears the whole thing up like it was just a crash course, either that or she’s just a top 500 Hanzo main. Pretty cool to see that she uses her bow to fight. Actually, a good chunk of the boats in Azur Lane have a weapon of some kind, you just don’t see them in action because its a simple mobile game.  

Support arrives (finally) and the Foxes take note of it and decide to do the cliche “we’ll let you go for now..” shtick. Overall, I like the pacing that the show has. It also went out of it’s way to show the diverse cast of boats that the game has. It might not come as a surprise that not every ship will get its own type of screen time, at most you’ll be lucky enough just to see em in the background or hear a line or two from them, kinda like how this episode was. But with a series that has over 300 ships, (at least in the EN version) it shouldn’t be too much of a shocker. But hey, at least they’ll try, we can expect great characters coming to life with this adaptation and plenty of fan service seeing as the nature of this game is geared towards it. We may just get a mix of both action and fan service for this series, but I’m fine with it. Personally this show is already better then KanColle so far. But that may be because I didn’t get to experience the characters like i did with Azur Lane. Still i digress, overall this already is a #1 for me, just like Sandy. I was pretty upset that while Sims was there, my favorite Hammann was nowhere to be found, that was until  the ending credits rolled in.  

And finally here we are in the ending credits which is a simple but nice outro that shows some of the cast sitting down enjoying lunch together, we also get to see the other ships that have yet to come, including my favorite Hammann!!! I’m also glad to see the three dogoos here as well including my favorite Yukikaze, and Yuudachi, who has some serious under action going on. Overall I have high expectations from this anime. Do I think there will be nudity? I kinda doubt it, I mean sure they have characters wearing revealing like outfits and wearing thong’s and even some nip slip in some rare instances but at last, it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll go that route. But I could be wrong. There’s no way of knowing for certain right now. Anyway, sorry for the late ass review. I’m still kinda new at this, and now I gotta watch episode two. Until next time, see ya.

Shout-outs to Anon, Ares02 and Kaykay for helping me out with some of the media for this review, and to them and the rest of the fapservice staff for their assistance in putting together this review.