Azur Lane revealed it's doing a collab with The Idolmaster, propulsing both franchises in Twitter trends in Japan and beyond, as fans imagine how the crossover will turn out.

The collab was announced in the Azur Lane June 22 live stream, and more details are coming in July. This is iconic seeing Azur Lane is one of the many games that probably wouldn't exist if not for Bandai Namco's Idolmaster, celebrating its 16th anniversary in 2021 as one of the longest running idol franchises, precursing Love Live and others.

Idolmaster x Azur Lane collab, predictions

While Yostar will only reveal specific details on the collab in mid-July in another live stream, we can expect the event to mainly consist of 765 Production Idolmaster characters becoming playable. Seeing the collab is specifically with "Idolmaster", the original game. Though it's still possible we might see characters from Cinderella Girls, Million Live!, or Shiny Colors.

Over on Twitter, Japanese fans are also making memes and jokes in how both franchises are already connected through T.M Revolution: With the Idolmaster figure using his iconic Hot Limit costume, and how he cosplayed Entreprise for the Azur Lane 3rd anniversary CM:

Moreover, Azur Lane is one of the many Chinese developed, Japanese stylized games with characters heavily inspired from anime archetypes and other popular characters. In particular, several Azur Lane ship girls have the same seiyuu as multiple Idolmaster characters. It's likely some Azur Lane girls will get new skins or events based on Idolmaster characters voiced by the same seiyuu.

Azur Lane and Idolmaster - Same seiyuu characters list

There are over a dozen seiyuu appearing both in Azur Lane and Idolmaster. We can guess some of the possible skins combinations by taking a look at some of the most popular characters in Idolmaster:

  • Ayaka Fukuhara = Shibuya Rin, voices Scharnhorst, Bismarck, U-556 in Azur lane
  • Nozomi Yamamoto = Jougasaki Rika, voices Hornet, Akatsuki, Wichita in Azur Lane
  • Manami Numakura = Ganaha Hibiki, voices Dorsetshire, Surcouf in Azur Lane
  • Reina Ueda = Kosaka Umi, voices Emile Bertin, Izumo in Azur Lane
  • Rie Kugimiya = Minase Iori , voices Formidable, Vampire in Azur Lane
  • Sayuri Hara = Honda Mio, voices Z36 in Azur Lane
  • Chiaki Takahashi = Azusa Miura, voices Houshou in Azur Lane
  • Marie Miyake = Abe Nana, voices Ning Hai, Avrora in Azur Lane
  • M.A.O = Sagisawa Fumika, voices Fubuki, Nicholas in Azur Lane

Personally speaking, I'm expecting at least half of this character list to make it into Azur Lane. Those from the original game Most notably seeing that's what was announced for now. We'll know for sure in July.

Bandai Namco is currently working on a brand new Idolmaster game for PS4 and PC (Steam) titled Idolmaster Starlit Season and releasing on October 14, 2021 in Japan.