Eighty-one years ago on this date, USS Baltimore was launched from her building yard in Massachusetts, and thus it’s an appopriate day to take a look at this figure of Baltimore from Azur Lane. Since her introduction she’s become one of the more popular Eagle Union characters, with five additional skins beyond her base design and at least four more figures in the pipeline. She’s one of my favorite characters, certainly amongst my top five – St. Louis, Enterprise, New Jersey, and Reno being the others, though the newly-introduced USS Kearsarge might make an argument to displace someone. That someone won’t be Baltimore, though; I’ve loved this character since she came out, and I’m ecstatic she’s getting so many figures.
Baltimore is portrayed in Azur Lane as an outwardly-confident tomboy, skilled in a variety of sports and possessing a strong sense of justice and righteousness. However, she’s easily flustered when teased and is embarrassed when showing off her feminine qualities. Gameplay-wise, she’s one of the better heavy cruisers in the game, but many gold-quality ships have since been power-crept by super-rare ships. That’s a bit unfortunate but most of Azur Lane’s content is easy enough that you can use almost any ship and expect to win.
This figure is manufactured by Alter and was released in January 2023. She’s sculpted in 1/7 scale and stands about 25 centimeters in height. She’s basically ready for display right out of the box with minimal needed setup time. Admittedly that’s mainly due to this being the Light Armed version, which lacks Baltimore’s “rigging” – that is, the array of ship hulls and turrets that flank most shipgirls.
Baltimore is depicted in her base design, where her confidence shows through in her pose and facial expression. She’s flashing a cocky smile with one gloved hand stretched out while her jacket billows out behind her.
Each of the factions that comprise Azur Lane’s world have seen their visual themes evolve since the game’s launch. Initially the Eagle Union characters simply had designs modeled after military uniforms. Recent Eagle Union characters have gone for a more contemporary look mixed with high-tech styling, and Baltimore is an early example of this design shift. She’s wearing a big jacket – a common article of clothing amongst Eagle Union characters, but somewhat unusually she’s wearing it normally, while many of her compatriots wear their jackets off of their shoulders.
She’s also wearing a revealing leotard that shows off her toned abdominal muscles and a fair amount of underboob. I have to admit I’m not as fond of the white flap hanging over her groin but otherwise I love her outfit.
Baltimore’s backside is hidden by her jacket under normal viewing conditions but we can see that her leotard has a thong back. There’s also a peculiar metallic contraption placed on her lower back, and one can only speculate as to what it’s for.
She’s wearing black thigh-highs with some fancy armored boots. The sid
As is expected for a figure from Alter, detailing is superb. Her clothing is emblazoned with her name and hull number, and also the “USS” ship prefix, although I don’t think the United States actually exists in the Azur Lane universe.
Being that St. Louis and Baltimore are two of my favorite characters in the game, and that I’ve been playing Azur Lane since the global server was released, I’m really happy that Alter chose to make figures of both. Baltimore looks amazing; it’s fantastic seeing her in three-dimensional form, and the fact that she’s getting at least four more superb figures is thrilling.
A pretty figure, nicely photographed! Enjoyed the comments; agree with you that the pseudo-loin cloth looks kind of strange with the rest of her outfit. Never tried Azur Lane the game, but I do remember the anime was very strange.
Thank you very much! Ahahaha yeah, the anime was … incredibly weird. Apart from the budget and production issues, I guess it’s difficult to figure out whether to focus on the dramatic aspects of war, the relationships between the characters, or the fanservice aspects, and the anime didn’t really quite get any of it right. I think the follow up anime Slow Ahead was more enjoyable. I’m not actually sure if any gacha game has had a decent adaptation, actually (I heard the Girls Frontline anime was very bad, which is a shame).
I haven’t played Girls Frontline, but I didn’t find the anime terrible, though it didn’t hold my interest in a busy season, I did watch four or five episodes. Of course, for all I know, it may have failed completely to live up to the game. What I liked about it was that the characters were definitely portrayed as robots (kill them, they can restore from backup) and some of the action scenes were entertaining. What I didn’t like was that the action scenes could have been better with either more realism and detail, or more over-the-top excess,, and, crucially that none of the characters really stood out for me. I do remember trying to figure out what possible justification might exist in a real world for pretty-girl robot soldiers with human-like personalities. My head-canon then became “okay, the civilization was in a long desperate war so after they used up all the combat robots they had to press the companion androids and sexbots and what not into the fight – so they just uploaded new programming into their heads as soldiers. I was pleased that what little I could glean of the storyline actually kind of supported that speculation to some degree…. Regarding other games to anime, I think Princess Connect was kind of entertaining in a slice of life sort of way, KanneColle the anime seemed to have a bit more coherent story than Azure Lane, although the visuals were not as impressive, and the story wasn’t that thrilling..
Ah, okay; that’s promising at least, since I downloaded the fansubs as the show was airing but didn’t spend a lot of time watching them. I’m excited to play Girls Frontline 2 so I had thought about giving the anime a chance since I don’t know a lot about the characters. It doesn’t sound like they went into any great depth though, which doesn’t surprise me too much. There are a lot of people who want an anime adaptation of the gacha game I primarily play (Epic Seven) but I feel like it would run into a lot of the same issues that the Azur Lane and GFL anime ran into. It does feel like slice of life is the best way to go, if the setting allows; Azur Lane Slow Ahead took that route and I think it worked way better than the first anime did, at least in terms of entertainment. There certainly wasn’t really a coherent storyline or anything though, so it probably wouldn’t have a lot of interest to people who weren’t already playing the game.
So much Azure Lane figures lately but I think Nikke will take over. Will you be getting any Nikke?
Yeah, I definitely will; for some reason I don’t play Nikke myself but I feel like I really should. I was hoping that Max Factory would show a painted version of Volume at Wonder Festival this weekend but I don’t think they showed her at all, which is a huge shame. I was also hoping to see Modernia, since they announced her a little while back.
I played a little at release. I am generally lucky playing getcha games and able to have good progress without spending money. Not with Nikke, I got stuck pretty early on.