The Silent Service
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- For other uses, see silent service.
| The Silent Service | |
|---|---|
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| 沈黙の艦隊 (Chinmoku no Kantai) |
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| Genre | |
| Manga | |
| Authored by | Kaiji Kawaguchi |
| Publisher | Kodansha |
| Serialized in | Weekly Morning |
| Original run | – |
| No. of volumes | 32 |
| OVA | |
| Directed by | |
| Studio | Sunrise |
| No. of episodes | 6 |
| Released | |
| Runtime | |
The Silent Service (沈黙の艦隊 Chinmoku no Kantai?) is a manga series by Kaiji Kawaguchi.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
During the cold war, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force jointly developed a nuclear submarine with the United States Navy. On its maiden voyage, the captain of the submarine declares the submarine to be an independent state, "Yamato."
[edit] Production history
The Silent Service appeared in a Japanese weekly comic magazine Kodansha’s Morning from 1989 to 1996. The comics (volume 1 to 32) were published from Kodansha. It was later re-published as a smaller paperback version in Japan.
[edit] Anime
The manga was later adapted into an anime TV special and OVA series by Sunrise.
The first two episodes of the series were also later spliced together and released in North America as a single volume. The rest of the series remained untranslated.
[edit] Reception
It was said by many Japanese conservative thinkers that the work was advocating Japanese military independence from the U.S. by way of Japan owning its own nuclear weapon. [citation needed] One conservative pundit even called Kawaguchi the “new Yukio Mishima”, a well known right wing Japanese novelist. [citation needed] However, as the story progressed, the comic became increasingly centered on the new role of the United Nations, the direction that was supported by many Japanese leftists. [citation needed]
The idea of a captain of an atomic submarine declaring independent sovereignty is not completely original. For example, a British man named Paddy Roy Bates declared a nation called Sealand in 1967 after occupying an abandoned navy fortification off the British coast.
The Silent Service is generally regarded as one of the rare Japanese comics that covered the unparalleled scale of realistic international geopolitics with a commercial success.[citation needed]
