NoaIzumiAnime Review: Silent Service
February 20th 2009 11:44
The Seabat, a nuclear submarine whose building was a joint project of the United States and Japan. Part of the US Navy, but with a Japanese crew, the captain has his own plans for the boat. Renaming it the Yamato, he declares the submarine to be an independent nation, and brings Japan and America to the brink of war.
It’s Fleet Week at Anime Bottle! The next three postings will be about animes with a naval theme, all centered around submarine action.
Based on a long-running manga, Silent Service is a solid, if jingoistic, military drama and recommended for navy and submarine buffs. The action is very nicely done, and the plot is complex and intriguing. The fight sequences, involving both submarines and surface ships, are fairly realistic, and interspersed with political jousting over the international incident that the hijacking of the Seabat has caused.
It’s in the actions of the characters that realism starts to break down. First of all, we’re asked to believe that an entire submarine crew would fake their deaths and abandon their families in order to keep the secret of Japan’s first nuclear submarine. Later, it’s revealed that at least a hundred American and Japanese naval officers and government officials know about the Seabat project. All those people know about the real truth about happened to those men who were thought to have in what appeared to be Japan’s worst maritime accident since WWII, and no one leaked, on purpose or accidentally? It’s a little hard to swallow.
The Americans in the movie are arrogant and hot-headed. The American naval officers are consistently over-confident in facing the rogue submarine, and the politicians are downright reckless. At one point in the film, the American President considers a full-scale invasion of Japan (over a submarine?). And in a scene or two, I couldn’t help but wonder if I saw just a touch of rascism. This is hardly the first anime to portray Americans as stereotypically ugly, but it is rarer among dramatic anime.
On the Japanese side, Silent Service is a Japanese nationalist’s wet dream. Not only do the Japanese finally stand up to the over-bearing Americans, the Yamato (named for the ancient name for the Japanese homeland) repeatedly humbles the US Seventh Fleet, going so far as to sink a number of ships, including the carrier USS Enterprise, coincidentally (?) bearing the same name as one of the most famous US aircraft carriers of the Pacific War.
Silent Silence also feels unfinished. It ends at a good stopping point, but leaves a lot of dangling threads. The reason for this is that the original OVA run was six episodes, the first two of which were cut together for the Silent Service movie, and the last four remain unavailable outside of Japan. I do hope that changes at some point, because even with the unrealistic characters, it is a compelling story. The story, the action, and the price ($10) make this worth getting.
Extras: Character profiles, with video clips from the movie. Kinda thin.
Great moments: The part where the captain of the Yamato plays Mozart very loudly, allowing the US ships to hear him, and then slowly lowers the volume as he moves towards the Americans, fooling them into thinking that he’s not moving. I tend to doubt that would actually work in real life, but it’s still a cool tactic.
Summary: Military-political drama with a good amount of action. Do not watch if you’re American and easily offended. Grade: B plus
Age rating: 13 and up. Some non-bloody violence and death in a war context.
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