Uncoalesced a-plane GaN epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELO) structures have been synthesized along two mask stripe orientations on a-plane GaN template by MOCVD. The morphology of two ELO GaN structures is performed by Scanning electronic microscopy. The anisotropy of crystalline quality and stress are investigated by micro-Raman spectroscopy. According to the Raman mapping spectra, the variations on the intensity, peak shift and the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of GaN E2 (high) peak indicate that the crystalline quality improvement occurs in the window region of the GaN stripes along [0001], which is caused by the dislocations bending towards the sidewalls. Conversely, the wing regions have better quality with less stress as the dislocations propagated upwards when the GaN stripes are along []. Spatial cathodoluminescence mapping results further support the explanation for the different dislocation growth mechanisms in the ELO processes with two different mask stripe orientations.