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.
