First Squad – The Moment of Truth by Yoshiharu Ashino, Aljoscha Klimov, Misha Shprits October 27, 2009

Rating: ND

This is a strange one. Initially I loved the concept behind it, but in the end it left me rather indifferent. The film is styled like a historical documentary film, there are live actors playing the parts of historians, veterans, psychologists etc and the animated story is an attempt to reconstruct the events that those people mention. The main idea is that during the Second World War both the Germans and the Russians engaged in a secret occult war. The Germans summoned ancient daemons and the Russians had a clairvoyant Nadya, supported by special occult machinery. At first we meet Nadya travelling with a group of actors, she seems to be a war orphan and she does not remember who she is. Later she travels to Moscow and to even more remote locations in order to stop the daemon knight summoned by the Nazis.  I have to say that I should have loved it, because I really like occult in stories and I find it funny and entertaining that way. But I just could not connect to this story. The main problem was probably Nadya, because I found her completely not likeable, she seems to have no personality and just lets things happen to her.

I think this film may be worth seeing for people who like anime, it is an interesting experiment and it sounds funny to hear almost everyone speak Russian and not Japanese, but plot and character development was in my opinion somewhat neglected.

More details here.