WMG / Azur Lane

You Have Been Warned: Beware of unmarked spoilers!

Kaga and Akagi were cloned.

• According to Crimson Echoes, Kaga and Akagi appear to have survived Battle of Midway in a very Disney Death manner, mentioning they're just waking up from repairs, but also note they're missing Amagi's heirlooms — this could also be interpreted as the originals did sink, along with the brooches, which is why the new clones are missing said heirlooms.
  • Cubes and related stuff was said to be given by the Sirens, it might stand to reason that the presumably Siren-aligned "Master" that story Akagi serves might possess similar tech, allowing such a thing.

Piggybacking on the previous WMG, the Kaga and Akagi we have in our docks were salvaged at Midway.

• This would explain why at the end in Crimson Echoes Kaga mentions they're missing Amagi's heirlooms, because the ones in our docks have theirs.
• Furthermore, the Akagi questline mentions that following Midway, she chose to follow the commander, instead of the sirens, and that another one of her exists, further cementing the idea that Story Akagi is actually a clone, possibly of Playable Akagi, and was cloned by the Master, following their loss at Midway.
• It also explains why you can only get them as drops.

The Key is actually USS Enterprise (NCC-1701).

• Several flashbacks have her asking her commander about the civilizations of other stars, and expressing excitement at the prospect of meeting them. While this could make her the Space Shuttle Enterprise, but the space shuttle is unarmed and unable to carry other craft, while the USS Enterprise is armed and can carry shuttle craft, meaning it could potentially also carry warplanes.
  • Jossed according to the Operation Siren Record Files. She was created due to an interaction between the hull of CVN-65, its new Wisdom Cube power generators (which replaced the ship's original nuclear reactors by the USN in order to test the usage of the cube in naval ops), and the anchor from CV-6.

Kaga will betray Akagi.

• The ending of Ink-Stained Steel Sakura can be interpreted as Kaga directly asking the player what would you do in their situation, following a conversation between Kaga and Akagi about acquiring power to crush not only Enterprise but also their current allies, the Sirens.
  • And the catalyst will be an encounter with Amagi, reminding her that she was supposed to help Akagi, but not like this.

Sandy in the anime

• She got surprise attacked in episode 2 specifically so she couldn't run interference. That and near the end she will appear with her refit to get her own awesome moment (may or may not come with a big concert)
  • Jossed. No big Sandy comeback occurs.

Where's the Commander in the anime?

• Based on Yorktown's condition, let's toss one into the theory pool. He went down with her ship.
• I'd rather have him/her appear during the end of anime in order to unify the various factions for more effective command, just like how a Commander is in-game. The current situation is now splitted between Azur Lane and Crimson Axis, and without someone with prestige to keep things in check, they will always be in a constant state of conflict and the Siren will just appear and mop everything up. I also would like to believe a commander will be a Big Damn Heroes or even a Knight in Shining Armor that comes to deliver Enterprise her much needed salvation. Just my own theory, but I believe this could be a new path to the anime, but I am not the director, so yeah, I can only make assumption.
• Jossed. The director confirmed there'd be no Commander in the anime.
• The Commander might appear in the anime, at least, starting from season 2 should such a thing be possible. The shipgirls exactly mentioned about someone who stands at the top and can control all factions, just like what I said above.

The recent japanese ship strength (if not also the strength of them in Late world stages) being so high is related to use of the Watasumi

• The first event where the first "much stronger than historically" ships appeared was the one that introduced that.
• Suruga was an early test case on whole sale manifesting while boosting existing ships' manifestation is easier.
• Kii was a more improved 'from nothing' manifestation.
• Shinano's manifestation as a full on armored carrier as opposed to a terribly makeshift one like in history is a clear use of the relic to better manifest her.
• By the same manner, since the Iron Blood have it, it's safe to say there'll be an increase in strong ironblood units. The Inverted Orthant units are likely from that.

Related to above, The Watasumi is a rare relic that enables history-less manifestation in an alternate method compared to "bluepoint" ships (in-universe name for Prototype ships), and one able to be used on pre-existing ship concepts

it's been revealed that if one could fabricate history for a ship concept, one could manifest it. The relic seems able to do the same but with greater ease compared to those associated with prototypes. And its power seems to include "manipulating a ship's actual history", enabling said ships to manifest stronger than their history should suggest.

The anime takes place in an alternate timeline

• Given that the Sirens keep mentioning changing history many times, it's possible the anime is one of those alternate timelines, taking place prior or after the game events.

The Commander is a Siren

• Due to the fact that the whole of the world is a simulation run by the Sirens and the members of Azur Lane are the primary purpose of the simulation they would want a way to control the variable. In any experiment you want to make sure that you have a way to completely control all of the variables in case something needs to be changed. It also explains how the Commander is able to perfectly understand and gain affection with so many different personalities, as the Commander would be able to try as many ways as they wanted.
  • According to Khorovod of Dawn's Rime, the Commander is a special human with strongest affinity to Wisdom Cubes for whatever reasons.
  • Jossed, see below.
• Or Commander is just a human, totally normal human, if not a bit of naval history buff or a nerd. Shipgirls, when manifesting as human, would often accumulate their experience as well as their crews' as a whole to form their personalities, and the Commander is simply too good at history.
  • Confirmed, the Commander has been outright stated to be a human, albeit a special one.

The Sirens and Shipgirls, at least the ones within the Azur Lane faction, are two sides of the same coin.

• In the text for the Japanese version and in Japanese voiced dialog, the term "Siren" is written and pronounced "Sei-reen / セイレーン" instead of "Sai-reen / サイレーン". If we were to muck with the kana a bit, we could take the "セイ" in "セイレーン", interpret that as the on'yomi reading of 青, which is the kanji for "blue", and you get "青レーン" or "Blue Lane". It doesn't take much of a leap to go from "Blue Lane" to "Azur Lane".
  • Partially Confirmed: In the event Parallel Superimposition, dialogue between Dr. Anzeel (creator of the KAN-SEN, aka shipgirls) and Dr. Aoste (creator and "Magister" of the Anti-X/Antiochus faction, which would go on to be known as the Sirens and the Arbiters) explains that the Antiochus were to be considered complimentary to the shipgirls, their joint goal being to protect humanity from an existential threat posed by extraterrestrial Mechanical Abomination invaders which would otherwise inflict a Curb-Stomp Battle on Earth's united 21st century militaries. (As we saw in earlier events, this tragedy came to pass and humanity was destroyed by the Leviathans described in Dreamwaker's Butterfly.) In the course of their discussion with the Commander, Dr. Anzeel and Dr. Aoste elaborate by explaining that while each of Anzeel's shipgirls was a unique fully-individualized consciousness bestowed upon a historic hull pattern from Wisdom Cubes, with a full range of emotions and aspirations; the Antiochus were more like terminals connected to supercomputers that were then granted intelligence and combat aptitude by Wisdom Cubes, with each Antiochus being able to digitally clone their consciousness to new bodies in the event of their destruction or if they were to become corrupted/rebellious.
    
    The Antiochus were supposedly the next evolution in warfare, complimenting while also surpassing Anzeel's shipgirls the same way shipgirls would surpass mass-production manned naval vessels. A combat exercise held towards the end of Parallel Superimposition shows this in full effect, as the Arbiter Devil XV is able to buff KAN-SEN with her fleet of electronic warfare drones before she turns hostile on the Commander and his task-force of Yorktown II, Hornet II, Northampton II, Hamman II, Langley II, and Memphis. Devil XV uses her EW drones and her ability to churn out legions of mass-production autonomous warships to launch a withering onslaught against our heroes before Helena META and Memphis META (who was in disguise as Memphis all along, and almost tipped her hand earlier leading savvy players to notice something was "off" with her behavior) save the Commander in a Big Damn Heroes moment.
    
    Whether or not the Japanese wordplay was intentional was not confirmed, but there is now a canonical link established between the origin of the KAN-SEN and the Sirens by their very creators themselves.

The Royal Indian Navy will be the next country to have its navy featured as shipgirls

• Out of all navies not yet introduced to the game, the British Raj is probably the largest one to not be featured, which would lead to it being (probably) naturally the next one to appear.

As soon as the Crimson Axis has been defeated, the Northern Parliament will betray Azur Lane.

• Keeping in line with the correspondence to real life events regarding World War II, the Northern Parlament is likely to completely dissolve their alliance with Azur Lane the moment the Crimson Axis are out of the picture and start a war of their own against them of a completely different nature. This is already somewhat hinted towards in the game, considering that they, like the Crimson Axis, also use siren technology, and seem to only be allied to the Azur Lane by convenience, much like the real-life Soviets were to the Allies. As to this, the Northern Parlament might serve as an ace in the sleeve for the sirens to use if the Crimson Axis should fail them, although it is very likely said conflict will take a very different form compared to the one currently presented in the game, representing the cold war. A possible Sequel Hook, perhaps?

The Azur Lane version of Earth takes place in the same universe as Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

• Why are shipgirls so much more powerful than their real ship counterparts? Well, there's the factor of the Wisdom/Soul Cubes, yes, but maybe it's Spiral Power. Spiral Power is most amplified in a bipedal humanoid form, so turning a ship into a humanoid girl maximizes their capacity to generate and utilize Spiral Power. The Quick Finishers look rather like Core Drills (the key Simon uses to power Lagann), and the cubes themselves come from the Sirens. The Anti-Spirals also utilized a cube-like structure (or rather, their Mugenns degenerated into thousands of cubes). Maybe the Sirens (themselves a spiral race, making use of the bipedal human form) are utilizing the constituent cubes of fallen Anti-Spirals to power up shipgirls in the hopes that they will eventually be strong enough to rebel against the tyranny of the Anti-Spirals.

Azur Lane and Strike Witches are connected.

• It's very coincidental that the Kansen and Sirens share some similarities with the Neuroi, most prominent example is their power core. What if the Neuroi/Witch war continues and the Neuroi grew desperate into defeating their enemy that they attempt to create Witches of their own, thus the Kansen are born. It's the reason why they chose female forms for the Kansen because of belief that women are superior. They're trying to find out what makes the Witches tick until their own creations start to turn against them.

Enterprise (Ashes) and Takao (Ember) came from various timelines where their Commanders got killed in every ones.

• My theory is that Ashes and Ember started out like our normal Enterprise and Takao, and over time came to love their Commander, just like any other girls in the naval base. And then they got killed by unknown force. Overcome with grief, they seek out Sirens to travel to another timeline to meet the Commander, but the cycle repeated. At our current state, they decided that the Commander, from someone they once loved and adored, now is a target to be taken down or to be ignored, lest their hearts get broken over and over again. Ashes chose to ignore the Commander but nevertheless wanted to check if the current Commander is the same as the one she knew, while Ember went to a more extreme route: to assassinate the Commander by any mean. —VuLinhAssassin
  • Jossed by Tower of Transcendence. In the CN script, Scharnhorst META says the Commander's existence in their unique timeline is a possible alternative to the Ashes locating the Creator and the Magister to stop Observer Zero.

There may be in-story representations of YongShi and BiliBili coming down the line.

• Khorovod of Dawn's Rime had representations of Manjuu (Dr Anzeel/Anjuu) and Yostar (Dr Aoste/Osta) as in-story characters.

The next VTuber collab may involve Nijisanji talents

• During the English server's 3rd Annivesary stream, a Yongshi employee taking a break from work had a wallpaper on their second monitor featuring Toko Inui and two other Nijisanji livers.

The Commander is a backup of John Archer mentioned in the Operation Siren Record Files.

In Divergent Chessboard, Observer Alpha mentions that her production speed can meet all experiment demands as long as the Sirens have a "backup of the Original". In Khorovod of Dawn's Rime, the Commander experiences a memory where he apparently finds Dr. Anzeel as NY Harbor is being attacked, and his CN dialogue says her Kansen will definitely come back to save her. Combined with John Archer's presence in the Operation Siren Record Files (especially his involvement in Project Dusk and his interactions with Code G), it's strongly implied that a link exists between the Commander and John Archer.

My hypothesis is that John Archer uploaded his data for Dr. Aoste's "Laplace's Demon" project (the system that allows the Sirens to run simulations towards evolving Kansen and eventually making them able to combat the Leviathan threat) before going to Dr. Anzeel in NY Harbor.

• More likely, he's just this timeline's version of John Archer.

Possible Crossover Collabs

• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid:
• Date A Live:
• Love Live!: Since Azur Lane has two Idol-based events and one collab for The Idolmaster, it's a no-brainer that another Idol series would be next.
• Zombieland Saga: Same with Love Live!.
• Black★Rock Shooter:
• Show by Rock!!:
• Sword Art Online:
• Senran Kagura:
  • collab was announced in the 6th anniversary livestream
• Muv-Luv:
• Symphogear

The "main" story are the echoes that Shinano speaks of.

• As Shinano stated, echoes are replays of history that happen over and over with various settings tweaked by the sirens. We're actually playing those echoes. The events are where we're placed in the time line.

Certain Sirens Will Perform a Heel–Face Turn

• Purity will become a Literal Split Personality from Purifier, and Observer Alpha will be the reason why: Her hidden scene at the end of Tower of Transcendence will turn out to have foreshadowed that she couldn’t bring herself to wipe Purity from the network, and the experience shook her to her core by causing her to realize that all it takes for an Elite Siren to be Deader than Dead is for someone to decide she isn’t useful anymore and just wipe her.