First Squad: The Moment Of Truth - MIFF 2010
Film
Rob Jan
If the main female character in this eclectic Japanese/Russian animation lived to have children she’d have to take a deep and thoughtful breath before answering the classic question: “Mummy, what did you do in the war...?”
“Well, dears...in the Great Patriotic War, when the Nazi occultists summoned 12th Century Teutonic zombies to fight the Soviet Union, mother took her magic sword and led the counterattack upon the Castle of the Dead in Gloomy Valley, which, before you ask, was a kind of low rent Valhalla where warriors went on holiday after they were killed in battle...”
And so on...
Nadia is her name and psychic visions are her game; actually at first slice she's a rather unconvincing girl Hero-Of-The-Soviet Union when it comes to blade work. (And why IS it a Japanese katana, and not, say, a Cossack cavalry sabre?) No worries, she’s plucky, lucky and somehow, more than a match for even the pair of buxom Rhine maiden assassin-acrobats (Ach du lieber himmel!) the Nazis send her way. Anyway, Nadia works for the top secret Russian Division 6, a covert unit for whom the term ‘spooks’ might have been coined. They’re the Eastern equivalent of the Hellboy comics United States Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence. Just as ruthless, and just as dedicated to battling evil Nazi monsters whether they’re human, inhuman or....undecided!
First Squad was created by Japan’s Studio 4C (Halo Legends, The Animatrix, Spriggan, etc.) and the Russian based Molot Entertainment and harnessed the talents of Russian animators Mikhail Spritz and Aleksey Klimov and Japanese director Yoshiharu Asino. If you know your history you may recall that Russia and Japan have had more than a few military stoushes in the past so I’m encouraged by them co-operating on this movie. Both countries are known for an understandable preoccupation with the Second World War, which in the area of animation frequently manifests in a fascination for period aviation and other technology. In this case, it served the artists well, as I kept spotting all sorts of characteristic well detailed hardware in the background, including the dreaded Katyusha truck mounted rocket battery. The art design also references the kind of industrial rendering popular in W.W.II Hollywood propaganda cartoons, alongside a definite stylistic influence that looks to be gleaned from Soviet patriotic posters.
It’s always a bit of a mind-muncher when anime and zombies meet but in this case the Undead are almost overshadowed by the apocalyptic scale of the greater conventional war raging around them. Fortunately the Nazis mages are too focused upon their latest super-weapon to worry about winning anything as mundane as a normal battles!
However, a zombie related feature of this film that works particularly well involves live action mock interviews with 'war veterans'. Interwoven with the animated footage these helped elevate an otherwise relatively average supernatural pastiche, reminding me of Max Brook’s terrific World War Z novel, which collects anecdotal stories from the survivors of a global zombie holocaust. Way cool!
First Squad is a slightly awkward piece but that’s exactly why I was pleased to catch up with it at MIFF. It's a bit inconclusive, clearly meant to be a part of a series, but I won't hold that against it.
Besides: Sword wielding Soviets battling Nazi zombies? It’s more than my geekdom is worth to miss that!
Director Yoshiharu Ashino
2009/ 70 min
Screening again on Thursday July 29 at MIFF
Rob Jan presents Zero G, Mondays 1-2pm.
