The Silent Service

Those who have criticised this drama clearly missed the point.

This is an intelligent and thoughtful drama which addresses the current balance of power in the world. That the American projection of influence is not necessarily in the interest of its allies, especially Japan, and including perhaps South Korea and Taiwan.

I found it refreshing to have an alternative view, and would encourage those fans of American military might to consider how others view this.

I was totally involved in the arguments and the standard of acting, especially from the Japanese characters was excellent. It does suffer a little in that the American characters are a little two dimensional.

It is a slow burn, but well worth the watch!

It is interesting as it pits the US against Japan. Japanese Captain Kaieda is brilliant in navigation and tactics and has managed to steal a top secret US-Japanese nuclear submarine, the Sea Bat, and has declared he is the leader of the independent nation of Yamato. That raises concerns for Japan, and also irritates the Americans. The 7th Fleet is mobilized to track down the submarine. A Japanese Captain, Kukamachi is sent to intercept the Sea Bat in a diesel powered submarine. It becomes an interesting game of cat and mouse, and Kaieda uses some very interesting tactics. Episode 5 is perhaps the most important and also shows the flaws in the series. The US considers Kaieda a terrorist, and naturally America never negotiates with a terrorist. So the Sea Bat is to be hunted down and destroyed, which is not what Japan wants to happen, and this results in a rift, and also Presidential testosterone is on display, and the US comes across as a bully. As part of the effort to track down and destroy the Sea Bat, the 3rd fleet also joins forces and the Sea Bat easily sinks one of the US nuclear carriers. The CGI isn't terrible, but they have both US carriers identical, down to the arrangement of aircraft on the decks. That seems sloppy. Also, as they follow ships and submarines by sonar, the sonar scope shows identifications of the ships like would be seen on air control radar at an airport. That seems unlikely. It seems to be set up for another season.

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.

Wrong USN/JMSDF uniforms, wrong shirts, wrong insignia, wrong hair length, wrong rank structure, far too many women in positions of power, disrespectful JMSDF enlisted personnel, wrong submarine, wrong plot, wrong writing, wrong physics, wrong drydock, wrong, wrong.

There are fine Japanese and American actors - fine producers - fine set builders and costume professionals - why were none of them hired for this disaster? Where was the technical advisor - wait - there is no way there was a technical advisor.

How is this production of wrong even possible.

Never allow any of these people to work in entertainment - ever again!

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.