Anime News

Kaiji Kawaguchi’s The Silent Service Manga Gets A Live-action Film by Amazon Studio

 

 

A live-action film adaptation of Kaiji Kawaguchi’s popular manga The Silent Service was announced at a press conference held in Tokyo on January 25. It will be produced as an original film for Prime Video and will be released theatrically by Toho nationwide in Japan on September 29, 2023. This is the first time Amazon has produced a Japanese theatrical film.

 

The manga was serialized in Kodansha’s Weekly Morning magzine from 1988 to 1996, then compiled in 32 tankobon volumes with a total circulation of 32 million copies (paper and digital). It was previously adapted into a three-chapter OVA series by Sunrise from 1995 to 1998.

 

The story begins when the Maritime Self-Defense Force submarine Yamanami sank in a maritime accident in the waters near Japan. The survival of all 76 crewmembers, including the captain, Commander Shiro Kaieda, was hopeless. However, the crew survived the accident. They had been selected as crew members of a nuclear submarine secretly built by the U.S. and Japan, and the accident was a cover-up story to get them on board Japan’s first nuclear submarine.

 

54-year-old actor Takao Osawa (Wang Qi in the Kingdom live-action film series) plays the protagonist, Shiro Kaieda. Being a big fan of the manga, he has established a cooperative relationship with the Ministry of Defense and the Maritime Self-Defense Force, presented the project to the original author, Kawaguchi, and is also producing the film himself.

 

Kohei Yoshimoto, whose Haken Anime! received high acclaim last year, serves as director. He says, “The entire team is working together to bring to the screen as much as possible the thoughts and feelings that have been accumulated by the original author, Kawaguchi-sensei, and many others. We hope you will experience the passionate story in the dark sea in the darkness of the theater.”

 

 

Teaser trailer:

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

Source: “The Silent Service” live-action film official website / Twitter

 

(C)Kaiji Kawaguchi/Kodansha

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