The Silent Service

While a lot of reviews mention accuracy of props and cgi showing ships looking the same, you need to remember that this is a drama and a great 'what-if' scenario.

What's gripping is how a single submariner is attempting to make an upset in global power.

You will wonder if this is a mad attempt or an objective to meet a particular outcome.

The strategy is always one step ahead played with some great finesse.

It's a drama, so it's going to be slow but not boring.

Unlike most of the other so called good junk out there where they dive into each persons character and history just to drag out the 40 mins, this just touches lightly and is relevant to the situation.

There was no overacting and extra melodrama, or overtalked gender issues or communal suppression etc which was a relief!

Many serials I've used the forward button to skip this and finally it's 10 mins.

However this didn't let hit the forward button, which speaks for itself.

If you read novels or books then watch this.

Great plot not predictable you will keep wondering what's the next move and how will he succeed in his final objective.

This is one of the most absurd shows I've ever watched. The depiction of Naval warfare, specifically subsurface warfare, is entirely inept. The characterizations are all one-dimensional with absolutely no depth. Behaviors and motivations are driven by the laziest of possible writing styles:characters doing things because the story has to happen. And then there's the plot, which is so mind bogglingly absurd that it sits squarely in "Sharknado" territory. While this show keeps much of the source Manga's story elements intact, it injects massive piles of bizarre and unnecessary nonsense, purely for extra drama.

One of the biggest problems with this show is that it attempts to maintain a lot of Japanese manga and anime tropes that simply do not work in live-action. The second major problem is the technical representation of sub operations and naval warfare is just silly. The events in this show depend on the entire US Navy being completely incompetent and essentially acting like the silliest Japanese depictions of American military stereotypes. The number of times the "Sea Bat" submarine would have been sunk, through the insane incompetence (in real life) of its own commanding officer, is too lengthy to list. It's the equivalent of watching a badly choreographed slow-motion fight scene where enemies stand around waiting for their turn to get beat-up by the protagonist, all while they miss every opportunity to land a hit. Meanwhile, said protagonist is clearly a completely inept fighter. It's really, truly, stupid, and all of this is surrounded by overblown melodramatic music. You get the sense that the show runners think they're doing something brilliant, but in reality it's cringe inducing in its ridiculousness.

And then there's the acting: I suspect the actors were smarter than the writers and directors, because the entire cast seems simultaneously bored or embarrassed by the scripts and dialogue. This goes for both Japanese and non-Japanese cast members. The writers give the actors absolutely nothing to work with beyond paper-thin cliched dialogue. You're left with no reason to care about a single character... and the actors seem to know this. It's really, really painful to watch as the actors try and scratch out something of a performance for characters that have no depth or rational motivations.

By the time the show wraps, you're left annoyed that you wasted time watching this nonsense. It fails on every level: as a manga adaptation, as a military themed thriller, as a drama, the entire thing is just a hot mess that's absolutely not worth watching.

Based on an antique manga, this drivel from Amazon is a big waste of time.

Given the budget they had a great opportunity to produce something on the scale of "Hunt for Red October" meets "Tora Tora Tora". Instead what we have is daytime soap with enough dull dialogue to put an elephant to sleep. Besides protagonist and the antagonist are shown as superhuman all knowing people who get all the right coincidences as they need.

The action scene, if you call them that; are a snooze fest and demonstrate a clear lack of military knowledge and tactical understanding on part of the director.

Overall I'd give zero rating if I could.

I like the series. However, there are technical issues, which I will get into later on.

First, I like the character Capt. Kaieda. His extremely calm and determined commanding style is reminiscent of Admiral Thrawn in the Star Wars universe. Thus gives great satisfaction to viewer following him.

The incident which caused the political crisis is very well processed in this title. Although the idealist visions of the Kaieda are a bit of a long shot, I guess the viewer should take it as a sci-fi title for better immersion.

I especially liked the balance expressed between nations, the frustration of the JMSDF as being a defensive force possessing weapons but their limits in making use of them is very well portrayed. On the other hand, the ease of using the force on the USN side and its aggressive attitude, especially arrogance of the president is very well presented. Even though some American commenters expressed their discomfort of witnessing USA being arrogant and being so "bullyish" against other nations, I have to disagree. This is a cold hard fact that is put on the screen American citizens must confront IMO. I can agree that the overly flamboyant and condescending attitude of US officers is a bit off the charts but, there is a merit nevertheless, a straw will show which way the wind blows at the end of the day.

Now, with the critics, I have only critics in the technical part of the series as it seems they did not consult a Navy veteran or a specialist in any way so here it goes:

1- Vessels in this series do not employ decoys of any sort although this is the number one countermeasure against a torpedo. See the movie "Crimson Tide" and understand how it is effective. Captain Kaieda employs bubble masking several times but this is usually used to disrupt sonar signature rather than a countermeasure for an incoming torpedo.

2- Vessels in this series move at extreme speeds underwater. Especially torpedoes, they move like a rocket underwater ...? Ok unless you are a Russian submarine and firing a shkwal torpedo to a surface vessel, this is not realistic in any way.

3- Torpedoes seem to be never homing but fired as more like a lance. The real power of the torpedo is not in its speed but in its stubborn homing capability.

4- Here once the torpedo misses a submarine it seems to keep going away, in a straight line. That is funny, a torpedo never goes in a straight line after it misses its target, it immediately commences a circular search pattern until it detects the submarine again.

5- A submarine can never get so close to a carrier in RL. Once it is detected, screens will move on to intercept it and detection for a submarine is usually means death in RL.

6- Having said that, a submarine's real power is in its stealthiness. This seems to be never the case in these series, vessels there never have difficulty in detecting submarines, or torpedoes, albeit this is not true. When you are detected, it is mostly game over in RL.

7- Carriers and its screens never employ helicopters in this series, they seem to rely on sonars and other means to detect submarines. However ASW Helicopters are always in the air in RL if there is a submarine threat in the region. They deploy sonar buoys and once a submarine is detected they immediately release an airborne torpedo on top of it. Helicopters are very effective because they are above the sea water not touching it, since they do not emit any vibrations into the water, submarines cannot detect them or when they do, it is usually too late.

8- Carriers and their screens seem to rely on rockets above else. Hitting a ship with a rocket is not that easy unless you fill the air with swarms of missiles. Once anti-missile rockets do their jobs, if any missiles are going by, then the phalanx (CIWS) systems finish the rest of them. Each ship has one or two as the last line of defense, and cross-firing 4.500 rounds/min. CIWS systems are quite effective.

9- When a ship is hit with a torpedo, (not on the side but usually beneath it) the air bubble generated by the explosion lifts the ship above the water and breaks its belly. This is why torpedoes are powerful, and how a one-hit usually sinks a ship. Here they hit like a regular rockets and it doesn't cause such catastrophic damage to the vessels which is not that realistic.

10 - Fleet Screens in the series do not seem to be fond of ASROC (Anti-submarine rocket) though this is the first and foremost the most effective weapon in the ASW. In the series, destroyers usually fire a hedgehog system which is more or less like a "Navy" mortar firing forward and saturating the fore space of the destroyer with straight-line diving impact-detonated explosive shells. But this is WW2 technology. Hedgehog replaced the primitive depth charges in 1942, and now ASROC replaced hedgehogs after 70's. With the ASROC, a homing torpedo is carried to a maximum distance via a rocket before entering the sea and propelling itself to the target. This saves a lot of time and limits the time of the submarine to react to it.

11- A submarine can never survive a direct torpedo hit.

12- A nuclear sub can never be as small as SEA-BAT portrayed in the series. This is a diesel submarine.

All in all, I enjoyed the series. The concept and message behind it saves the day. Technical failures did not totally ruin the experience albeit it would be perfect if the producers just did their homework and studied other titles like "Crimson tide", "the hunt for Red October", even games like "Silent hunter", "Cold waters", etc. The outcome might have been golden.

Confusing and frequently slow made watching the series difficult to finish. 8 episodes took me maybe 12-15 different viewing times due to the pacing.

AFAIK, it was originally a manga series with an anime version and now this. Don't know anything about Japanese manga, anime, etc, but this series appears to be close translation of a successful comic book source with JV screenwriters without any military consultants, a decent budget, making visuals a priority over substance, character interaction, and logical plot development.

Who would really enjoy this movie? Maybe 10-12 year old boys if they skip most of the political stuff. Americans were obviously not the target audience given the preponderance of stupid and simple Americans.

5 stars for some interesting story ideas, special effects, and many nice visuals. If you demand realism, skip this movie.