AKA: Anti-American Bullshit, the Movie

The flick starts off with a Japanese sub colliding with a Russian sub.  The Russian sub takes damage, but it’s the Japanese sub that begins to sink, eventually imploding.  This sparks an investigation as well as potential international tensions.

Enter Fukamachi, ace submariner and alleged hero of the story.  He takes the sonar data recorded from the Russian sub and runs off to analyze it, but not before the obvious discussion of what bigger role he plays in this.

He and Kaieda, the captain of the sunken Japanese ship, graduated tied for top of their class… or something similar to that.  They both scored the same number of kills in some kind of BS important exercise that probably means something in-world, but the audience has no freaking clue other than it probably means they’re good.  To be fair, the only thing that makes this worse than making the Keseel Run in less than 12 parsecs is that it’s not quotable.

Determined to prove there’s no way a captain as skilled as Kaieda could have died in an accident, he analyzes the tape and comes to a shocking conclusion: Kaieda surfaced before the collision to save the crew, then set the autopilot to deliberately crash into the Russian sub.  With this new revelation and the evidence to prove it, he sends Namba to get the word out.

They are surrounded by military police literally before they even start driving.  After a shootout that results in no casualties, Fukamachi’s superior proceeds to SPILL THE BEANS about the cover-up, making the dramatic tension of the last 15 minutes a complete waste of time.

As it turns out, Kaieda’s death was staged to allow him and his crew to work in secret as the crew of an experimental nuclear sub created as a joint venture between Japanese and American military minds.  The crew would officially be working for America as part of their 7th fleet.  I suppose the reason for the secrecy is that neither nation is supposed to know the sub even exists, but that’s still some BS reasoning.

Fast forward to moments before Kaieda’s crew are entrusted the nuclear sub, “Sea Bat.”  When the codename “Sea Bat” is revealed, the Americans chuckle as if it were some sort of joke.  Kaieda says it’s a fine code name because bats and submarines both use sonar.  I’m going to jump ahead about 40 minutes, where it’s revealed that the name “Sea Bat” is short for “Sea Battle.”  This revelation is apparently hilarious to the Americans, who think it’s an amazing joke.   Original Story: Kaiji Kawaguchi.  Written By: Sooji Yoshikawa.  I’m going to gamble and guess that this is plot-relevant, and I should blame Kawaguchi, not Yoshikawa, for this.  YOU ARE NOT CLEVER, KAWAGUCHI.  FUCK YOU.

Kaieda asks to do a final check of the Sea Bat.  During his check, he rejects the name Sea Bat, as well as American ownership of the vessel, carving the name “Yamato” on its hull.  We learn Kaieda’s plan soon enough: he turns the newly-named Yamato’s torpedoes at the 7th Fleet and flees, taking control of the nuclear sub (which we learn is stealth is hell, capable of insane depths, and has double the payload of a regular sub).  He later proclaims that, during his check, he replaced a number of warheads with nukes.

Captain David Ryan, who was on the Yamato, is easily captured by the crew and held prisoner at gunpoint.  He mostly serves as the American representative for Kaieda to spew his idealistic bullshit at.  It’s around this point in the film where he shows to Ryan that the Americans are willing to spit at their treaty with Japan and destroy the Yamato, even with Ryan onboard.  Ryan is visibly shocked when Kaieda’s words ring true, and depth charges are fired at the rogue vessel.  It’s at this point that I was determined I would start hating this film because IT ONLY MAKES FUCKING SENSE to sink a rogue vessel!  Clearly, the writer was trying to make a point about America being militaristic and untrusting, and they even talk about America being the “world’s police” multiple times.  I’m not trying to argue against that, but everything about how the theme is presented made me want to commit physical harm to whoever wrote it.  It only gets worse from here.

Meanwhile, in Japan a secret meeting is held regarding what should be done about the Yamato.  It is decided that they should do everything in their power to capture the Yamato and study it so Japan can make its own nuclear submarine.  Because that’s going to be what makes Japan a superpower.  Nuclear subs.  *sigh*

But here’s the important part: Japan is after the Yamato!  And you know what that means… Fukamachi vs. Kaieda!  Former rivals destined to meet in battle!

Over the next half hour, Kaieda and the Yamato manage to completely humiliate America’s fleets and their attempt to sink the sub.  In one such battle, he avoids three battleships’ attacks and sneaks up on the commanding ship, holding it hostage with its alleged nuclear torpedoes aimed straight at it.  It’s here that Fukamachi arrives, apparently being the only one smart enough to guess what direction Kaieda was headed.  Kaieda welcomes Fukamachi aboard, finally revealing his master plan: he declares the Yamato to be a sovereign nation, and his actions from here on out will unite the world as one nation.  Needless to say, this makes him sound fucking insane.  He does mention that the whole “getting food and ammo” snag will be taken care of by allying with Japan, but still.  Insane.  But as we learn throughout the rest of the film, EVERYONE acts exactly as Kaieda plans.  Fukamachi learns this lesson immediately when the American fleet ignores their treaty with Japan and attacks the Yamato, even if Fukamachi’s sub is in the way.

U.S. President Bennett takes advantage of the Yamato situation to push forward a plan to accuse Japan of breaking their treaty and building weapons of mass destruction, declare war against Japan, and eventually occupy it.  Despite this amazing flash of brilliance, it still sounds fucking retarded.

Things progress according to Kaieda’s and Bennett’s plans.  Japan, worried about the nuclear threat of Yamato, as well as the potential threat from Russia without America’s support, decides to ally with Yamato.  Bennett somehow manages to become Congress and spontaneously declares war against Japan right in the middle of negotiations.  Later, an American fleet finally achieves its first victory by defeating a Japanese defensive escort for the Yamato that REFUSED TO FIGHT BACK.  The Yamato comes to its aid and fires torpedoes at the fleet, destroying it.  Apparently, the number of torpedoes used in the engagement is supposed to give the impression that the remaining torpedoes on the Yamato are nukes.  Whatever.

The movie ends with what I assume is a dream sequence, in which Fukamachi shouts at Kaieda, asking how far he’s willing to go to achieve his insane goals.  That’s right.  It ends right there.  The rivals crossed paths literally once in the entire film, and they never fought.

After some research, I learned that this was a TV special, followed by an OVA (that was never translated).  Oh, and it was based on a 30+ volume manga.   I have to seriously question why U.S. Manga Corps / Central Park Media kept licensing these cocktease movies.

The bulk of the movie is boring as fuck.  It’s mostly politics, which isn’t automatically bad, but it’s presented just so terribly.  The best political stories are the ones that make you think they could really happen.  The things that happen is this film range in plausibility from “that could happen, but never in this situation,” to “are you fucking kidding me?”

If this were a race against time following Fukamachi and his attempt to hunt down Kaieda before the Americans get to him, I’m fully onboard.  What we got was bullshit.  It was all Americans being dicks and Kaieda being a brilliant genius.  It’s like Code Geass with submarines if Lelouch always won and never needed to use his Geass.  And there were no women.  Seriously, I don’t even remember seeing a female even as part of a crowd.

It seriously pisses me off how calm and collected Kaieda is at all times.  There’s literally nothing that challenges him.  That’s just boring writing.

Suspense: 2
It started out promising.  It had a decent enough premise, to be sure.  But the presentation… oh gawd the presentation.  All the best characters are shoved aside in favor of a bunch of dicks!  But that’s neither here nor there.  In the first half of the movie, you legit don’t know the Yamato crew’s motivations, and you’re wondering how the powers-that-be are going to respond.  And if you’re like me or anyone else that likes entertainment, you want to see more of Fukamachi’s crew and how they fare against the seemingly unstoppable Kaieda.  Well, once we hit the halfway point, it just gets predictable and repetitive, and there’s no Fukamachi.

Pleasure Rating: Clockwork Orange’d
The first half of the movie lulled me into a false sense of security.  Looks promising.  Seen this kind of story before, but let’s see where it goes with this… But then it quickly devolves into a sea of anti-Americanism, boring political “drama,” and entirely too much focus on characters no one gives a damn about.  Kaieda is calm and perfect and has a plan everyone follows.  He has no character.  He’s a plot device.  Every American captain he goes up against is “There’s no way that single Jap is going to win against our superior might!”  Fukamachi?  He has character, and he hangs around Namba.  Let’s make him sound important but get rid of his role for a full hour!  I wanted to bang my head against something really hard, this movie was so gratingly frustrating.

Rewatcha-: NO.

Music: There was music?

Marketability: How the hell did this run for over 30 volumes?  Unless every chapter came with a full color page of Namba, there’s no reason this should have gone on that long.

If you want political drama, suspense, intrigue, and a nuclear submarine commander that declares his crew an independent nation, do yourself a favor and watch a little-known ABC show called Last Resort.  It suffers from serious mood whiplash and has some really crummy acting, but at least it has random-ass love scenes with a sexy reporter, and I think one of the island characters is a transvestite.  It’s closer to being anime than this piece of shit.  By the way, the back of the VHS box for Silent Service has this printed on it: “***1/2 ‘SILENT SERVICE is one heck of a great movie.  A must see!’ –Protoculture Addicts”  Not only is that one of the most generic review lines possible, but it only scored 3 and a half stars after that glowing recommendation.  Protoculture, if by any chance you read this, I demand you immediately surrender a copy of that full review to me, so that I might know which reviewer to seek out and spit upon his or her face.

In case you were wondering, yes, I do swear more when I’m legit pissed off at something.  I’m not sure if this is worse than Roots Search.  While Roots Search was pathetically bad, Silent Service was actually produced pretty well… it was just painfully obvious what kind of agenda it had in mind, portrayed completely unrealistic events as if they were realistic, and was frustratingly boring.

I guess the distinction is that Silent Service disgusted me, while Roots Search I felt immense pity for.