Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Silent Service’ On Prime Video, About A Japanese Captain Who Mutinies While Commanding A Nuclear Submarine

In 2023, Amazon Studios made a feature film from the long-running manga The Silent Service. It seems that there was a plan all along to expand the film into a series, because less than three months after the film came out, it has been expanded into an eight-episode series.

THE SILENT SERVICE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A lingering shot of dark water. Then we see the wake of a submarine near the surface. As we zoom in on it, a graphic shows it as “JMSDF Diesel-Electric Sub YAMANAMI.”

The Gist: The sub’s captain, Shiro Kaieda (Takao Osawa), is listening to classical music when one of his officers tells him that they’re almost at their destination. Kaieda sighs and wonders why, with the world mostly covered in water, humans have to fight on the little land they have.

Meanwhile, on the sub Tatsunami, CO Hiroshi Fukamachi (Hiroshi Tamaki) is alerted to the fact that the Yamanami is coming close to an unknown US sub, and seems to be heading straight towards the ocean floor. The crew hears the Yamanami colliding with the unknown sub, then being crushed by the water pressure as it sinks. Kaieda and the members of the crew are presumed to be dead.

But Fukamachi, who was Kaieda’s XO before he got his own command, has his doubts. He knows what Kaieda is capable of when it comes to saving his vessel, and he wouldn’t just be helpless as the Yamanami sank and got crushed. With the help of his crew, Fukamachi listens to the recordings of the sound signatures they captured of the collision, which is when they heard the Yamanami surfacing and the hatch being opened before the collision happened.

In the meantime, the prime minister calls in Chief Cabinet Secretary Wataru Unabara (Yôsuke Eguchi) to have him be briefed on the Seabat project. It’s a secret nuclear submarine that Japan has been developing with the U.S. Technically part of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, Kaieda and his crew were ordered to sink the Yamanami and operate the Seabat while they are all presumed to be dead.

Kaieda and his crew board the Seabat, with U.S. Pacific Fleet Captain David Ryan (Jeffrey Rowe) on board as an observer. The first mission is a rendezvous with other subs in the Seventh Fleet, commanded by Admiral Logan Steiger (Aleks Paunovic). But as Kaieda gets closer to the other US subs, he goes rogue and fires an acoustic torpedo towards the sub directly in front of them, with the purpose of scrambling their sensors. Ryan attempts to detain Kaieda for mutiny, but the Kaieda’s crew refuses to take Ryan’s orders.

It seems that Kaieda and his crew have planned this all along. Fukamachi and the Tatsumami crew are tasked with finding and intercepting the Seabat. But Kaieda seems to be one step ahead of everybody, and when he actually surfaces under a US patrol plane, the captain’s bold plan starts to become apparent.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Silent Service, based on the long-running manga written by Kaiji Kawaguchi, was released as a feature film in 2023. This series takes footage from that film and expands on the story over eight episodes. The first episode did bring to mind the Gene Hackman/Denzel Washington film Crimson Tide.

Our Take: There is a plot to The Silent Service, though the first episode takes its sweet time to get to something that indicates what it might be. It involves Kaieda essentially taking the Seabat and making it into its own sovereign entity, battling the US naval forces and trying to find some sort of truce with both the US and Japan.

Why he’s doing that, we’re not sure. The only clue we get is when he again bemoans how people keep fighting each other on land despite most of the earth being covered in water. Perhaps he figures that staying in the ocean is the solution to creating a peaceful society. Again, it’s a bit of a mystery.

But what we do know about Kaieda, from Fukamachi’s flashback to when he was Kaieda’s XO, is that Kaieda is capable of anything; he had no compunction with sealing off a crewmember in a compromised section of the sub in order to save the vessel. We also know that a nuclear sub, with the ability to stay below the surface almost indefinitely, avoid detection and carry nuclear missiles, is an ideal vessel for Kaieda to carry out his plan.

Our guess is that the expanded footage will examine Fukamachi’s time with Kaieda in order to give some background on just why he’s doing what he’s doing. But any deep psychological dive (pun intended) into what any of the characters are doing is not something we’re really going to expect from this show. More than anything, it’s about battle scenes and discussions about our violent society.

There’s not a whole lot of nuance on this show, whether it’s from the acting, the dialogue or the storyline. But it sure as heck looks great, and the character of Kaieda has the potential to be a very interesting one to examine, even if we’re not going to get that much of a backstory on him.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: A missile from the US patrol plane speeds its way towards the Seabat, given that Admiral Steiger has determined it is now an enemy vessel.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to the visual effects team for the show, because the underwater scenes, as well as the scenes inside the various subs, are top notch.

Most Pilot-y Line: The line deliveries of the American characters are extraordinarily stiff, which might be more of a director’s issue than an actor’s issue. But it also is one of the reasons why the show itself isn’t particularly nuanced.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Like we said, The Silent Service looks great, and the premise of the series has potential to be interesting. We’re just not sure how the premise can play out over eight episodes without any kind of depth in any of the characters around Kaieda.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.