Video Backlog: "First Squad: The Moment of Truth"

Publisher: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (ERA Home Entertainment, Hong Kong)
Format: Region 3 DVD, NTSC, Russian Dialogue with optional English, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai dubs and English, Chinese Traditional, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai Subtitles
Length: 60 minutes
Production Date: 2009
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes

I think what anime really needs is quality films to keep people (i.e. westerners who aren’t hardcore fans) interested. Luckily Japanese studios have come up trumps in the last couple of years; “Summer Wars”, “Redline” etc. Here’s another one. Again Studio 4°C has collaborated with non-Japanese to produce a pretty good film. Written by Russians Aljosha Klimov and Misha Sprits, the plot is quite absurd. It involves a squad of teenage Russian soldiers specially formed in WWII. All are killed in a German air raid prior to the beginning of the film, with the exception of a 14 year old girl with psychic powers, Nadya. The Nazi’s have decided to raise from the dead a supernatural army of crusaders from the 12th-century Order of the Sacred Cross in order to beat the Russians. However the Russians find and send Nadya “to the other side” to recruit back her dead comrades to fight off the Nazi’s undead.

Silly? You bet it is. Incredibly entertaining? You bet it is. A large chunk of the movie is focused on Nadya and her struggles. What has happened to her and the chronology of events isn’t all that clear. We see through a flashback she was a circus performer and then joined the elite squad which is wiped out. Then it seems she joined a group of who entertained the troops, but she lost her memory. Why the Russian army didn’t keep her in their ranks is not explained. There’s also a Gandalf type character that helps her, though his role is never quite defined. On the opposing side we have a lot of rather strange Nazi characters. My favourite is the two blonde female assassin twins who wear way too much eye shadow. The action and events, despite implausibility and silliness of them, keep propelling the story along. I think probably too much time was spent on Nadya’s struggles and her search for her comrades, but overall it was paced rather well. Nadya’s way of bringing her dead comrades into the world of the living was just a little too much to swallow.

Compared to the original Russian version, this film and seemingly every video release outside of Russia seems to be cut. The original version includes an additional 13 minutes of live action mockumentary footage where interviews of actors posing as Soviet and German war veterans, historians and psychologists are inserted at various points, where they comment on the story of the film as if it was based on real historical events. I think it is a real shame that these segments have been cut from not only this video version, but also the Japanese version. The version I have seems to be one manufactured by Sony for all Asian markets outside Japan. There’s no place of manufacture and the Hong Kong distributor has stuck a sticker over the shrink wrap with the relevant info for the region. Summing up, it’s not a brilliant film, however it is a load of fun. The Japanese dub is not included, which doesn’t matter as the original language here is Russian. I think the English subtitles are dubtitles, but I haven’t checked yet. A couple of Russian lines aren’t subbed. I might rebuy the film again if there is an English friendly DVD version with the live action mockumentary segments in place, but I think that’s not going to happen. And that is damn annoying, as the crew and the cast of the mockumentary are credited in the closing credits of this DVD version of the film (and presumably all non-Russian video versions of this film). 7 out of 10.

Remaining Backlog: 24 months (it's much easier this way than listing the number of discs).