Azur Lane, Episode 11: A War to Span Every Ocean

The Sirens attack the ships of Azur Lane and the Red Axis as Kaga fights against her sister ships for her own personal reasons.

Episode 11 – “MONSTER – A War to Span Every Ocean”

Hmm.

Azur Lane is back! It’s been three months. Do you remember what’s been going on? Let me do a quick scan… and I’m all caught up. This is the end game of the season. The Ayanami Friendship Project has successfully concluded. The Elegant Enterprise Project needs a bit more polishing, but that polishing will happen in the middle of a battle. If Enterprise has one moment of not recklessly breaking herself to fight one opponent, Belfast’s job will have done her job too. Delegation is a leadership skill, Enterprise. You should check into that.

The unresolved issues of Azur Lane deal with those Sirens, their pesky Black Cube, and Kaga’s unhealthy relationship with Akagi. The Black Cube ties into Akagi’s state of unliving, so I’m sure that will resolve itself by the end of the next episode. The nature of the Black Cube will leave some romantic mystery afterward because the Azur Lane game hasn’t fully explained what the Sirens do with all the data and extra-dimensional spaces. It’s fun to keep that stuff vague so fans can let their imaginations run wild.

However, Azur Lane needs to wrap up that big tangled ball of sisterly love between Kaga, Akagi, and the deceased Amagi. Last episode, Amagi’s specter argued that an exact copy of a person really is that person. I wrote that the paradox resolves itself when an observer is aware of that facsimile’s nature. There will always be a dialectic between objective and subjective reality if more than one person exists. Whoever is playing Amagi gave the game away to Kaga. Kaga took the desperate action the Sirens maneuvered her into so she could somehow bring Akagi back to life. Kaga’s hope is that Akagi didn’t really die, but she won’t know that until the Sirens get their way in defeating Azur Lane and the Red Axis. The emotions are going to be raw in Azur Lane‘s season finale.

Heh.

Three months later and Azur Lane flashes back to the ancient past. Amagi is the big sister both Kaga and Akagi loved, but Akagi was more attached to her than Kaga. I can feel my chest get heavier thinking of the petty jealousies and wistfulness turning into neuroses.

Back to the present day Azur Lane, the Royal Maids are fighting standard Siren ships. That hammerhead Purifier is annoying. Enterprise can dodge, but Purifier can’t. These Sirens are tough. This fight was just to draw all the navies out to sea. Can’t that Black Cube collect data while the ship girls are lounging on the beach or taking a bath? So violent. I still see Gilgamesh from Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works (or Keijo!!!!!!!!) when the Sirens move their ships and planes around.

Ha. Enterprise lectures Belfast for being reckless. She’s learning! Ho. Belfast likens Enterprise to her knight in shining armor, but Enterprise rebuffs that. She’s American! Hee. Norfolk and Edinburgh have a giggle at this exchange.

There’s a fourth Siren in Azur Lane? Who’s that? It looks like there are two Testers. Oh. There are many Testers! The Sirens keep collecting battle data from the ship girls and then store it in Orochi. Huh? Akagi is back? Not the real Akagi, though. Uh, did Orochi just launch an ICBM? That’s not good. Oh, we haven’t seen a U-Boat girl before. The Dace submarine girl better be careful!

Azur Lane learned that the Orochi launched to sea. Time for a decisive battle! The Iron Blood doesn’t like this Siren betrayal either. Prinz Eugen is going to do something. She asks a good question — what if the Sirens had similar intrusions in the other fleets? Looking at Enterprise… Her relationship dynamic with Yorktown was very similar to Akagi and Amagi.

The Sakura Empire convince themselves to attack the Orochi too. Now it feels like the Azur Lane game. All the fleets are united, if not coordinating, against the Sirens and their big Orochi ship. Zuikaku wants to fight hard enough to grab Kaga and slap her until she wakes up. Good plan!

Oops. Kaga could tell the difference with her Akagi when she snuggled the impostor’s breasts. The Amagi impostor inhabited the Akagi shell. Is Akagi dead or alive? Kaga hopes she’s alive somewhere so she can take back her body. Orochi can probably mimic lots of other ships. That’s the insinuation since the Sirens claimed that Orochi was going to be the Ark of all the ship girls’ “wills.”

Azur Lane is some deep psychological drama, not just ship waifus going pew-pew at each other. Kaga worries that Akagi only loves her because she has retrofitted parts of Amagi on her. Kaga has attachment and abandonment issues tied to Akagi because of that. There’s that Ship of Theseus paradox again. Why are Sirens so philosophical? Ooh. Akagi twitched. She was only “mostly dead!”

Time to fight. Javelin and Laffey make sure Ayanami is okay in fighting one of her sister boats. U-chan will help too! Okay, it’s also time to see whether Azur Lane used that three months of postponement properly. Whoops. Ayanami’s destroyer friends used too much hairspray. Fine. That was the only cut that reminded me of the production issues from last year.

That’s a lot of Tester Sirens. Are they just clones, identical sisters, or what? This is disappointing. Kaga will fight on the Orochi’s side against Azur Lane and the others, but it’s more like a resigned feeling of having no other choice. These flashbacks with Amagi give me hope she can break out of the Siren simulation, but I think Enterprise will be involved with that somehow.

Everybody’s fighting now. Red Axis, Sakura Empire, and Azur Lane Alliance. Thank goodness we get some sexy shots of Prinz Eugen again before the end of the season. I still love the metallic sounds of the ship girls transforming. Fun. Unicorn blew up something. Ayanami will fight to save everyone and smack some sense into Kaga. Zuikaku had first dibs, though. Ooh, the big reveal. Amagi is with Akagi, the supposedly dead ship girls. And the bigger reveal — a tactical nuclear missile! Akagi does not have the look of a sane person right now. Next time, real war!