Azur Lane (碧蓝航线, Bìlán Hángxiàn)¹⁾, also called AzuRen (アズレン), BLHX, or Ship B (舰B),²⁾ is a Chinese mobile game that has Japanese elements and side-scrolling “shmup” gameplay. It's developed by Shanghai Manjuu and Xiamen Yongshi who published it on May 25, 2017.

The player assumes the role of the “commander” (指揮官, shikikan) who overlooks the “Azur Lane” coalition, which consists of five main factions who resemble those in World War II. The story has the German and Japanese factions breaking apart to form the “Crimson Axis” because of alien intervention, so we partake in a very loose interpretation of the United States' viewpoint in the Pacific War.

As the story progresses, it's revealed that the aliens, known as the “Sirens”, had convinced the two factions to break apart under the pretense that they knew best for mankind. However, the truth is that the Sirens already eradicated Earth and created this artificial world of sentient KAN-SENs they can play with in its place. For some reason, they take an observing role as all of this happens.

• Eagle Union (白鹰) - USS. Represents the United States.
• Royal Navy (皇家) - HMS. Represents the United Kingdom.
• Sakura Empire (重樱) - IJN. Represents Imperial Japan.
• Ironblood (铁血) - KMS. Represents Nazi Germany.
• Eastern Radiance (东煌) - ROC. Represents the Republic of China.
• North Union - SN. Represents the Soviet Union.
• Iris Libre - FFNF. Represents Free France.
• Vichya Dominion - MNF. Represents Vichy France.

On May 27, 2018, Yui Ishikawa, the USS Enterprise's voice actress, went to visit the developer's office in Shanghai for a live broadcast.³⁾ In this broadcast, she used “kanmusu” (艦娘) for Azur Lane's ship girls, which was an issue since DMM copyrighted this term for Kantai Collection and issued a vague warning for it.⁴⁾ Shortly after, Yostar asked Twitter to suggest a new term⁵⁾ and recieved over 1,000 submissions.⁶⁾

In the meantime, media outlets used “kansen shōjo” (艦船少女, lit. “warship maiden”) as an alternative. Then on September 13, 2018, Yostar announced that they'd use “KAN-SEN” from “kansen” (艦船, lit. “warship”) which doubled as a backronym for “Kinetic Artificial Navy, Self-regulative En-lore Node”,⁷⁾ meaning that the ships are artificial, mobile, sentient, and have personalities respective to their lore.

• Kantai Collection
• Girls Frontline

English links

• Azur Lane - The official English website.
  • @AzurLane_EN on Twitter
• Azur Lane Wiki [EN]

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