Yes, this strange bird was met by hate from many anime
fans and has got some undeserved low ratings at various
review forums. It's a wild and GREAT mess of a film, and much too short
too, where the parts are better than it's
whole, and a film can't be too confusing to suite the tastes of the
big audience. Nothing too strange or imaginative
are allowed. It has some very imaginative ideas and a great setting,
the big war and the eastern front and with fine
russian audio (i love this beautiful language), i love russian film
and a russian-japanese anime sounds alluring to me.
BUT, the film only plays 57 minutes and it's much too short with a very
abrupt ending. It seems like the makers of
this film had planned a regular lenghth movie (90 minutes or so) but
then got cold feet or something .... Njet, No,
this isn't working we have to re-cut and shorten it drastically, and
a stressed editor cut it to shreds.
A japanese-russian production directed by Yoshiharu
Ashiho and made by Studio 4 & Molot. Created by Misha
Shprits and Aljosha Klimov and i know nothing about these guys (and
i'm too lazy to wiki them .. that's lazy) are
they russian manga writers or something ? They do have a delightfully
wild story and the co-work between Japan
and a former eastern state as Russia makes wonders, just as Mamoru Oshii
did with his great Avalon in Poland.
BUT, i've a big complaint. This film could be included in the great
WW2 horror genre, that has worked so well in
films like e.g. Outpost, The Devil's Rock and Frankenstein's Army, and
there is some fascinating esoterical WW2
stuff here with the The Ahnenerbe and the twin (?) Nazi vixens hunting
our heroine. But, this are dwelled on much
too little as there could be some explanations and info about the Nazi
obsession with the occult for the viewers.
The blond Ahnenerbe hit-girls (dressed as russian soldiers, se pic below),
lovingly animated was quite ....eh, nice
to look at and should have had a bigger part in the movie
The Ahnenerbe - founded by Heinrich
Himmler was a part of the SS and a Nazi "science institute"
for studies of
the heritage of the "ancient" arian people and their superiority
and with strong inclination to the occult. I doubt they
had busty female agent killers in their service though (but, who knows)?
2 other great films about the Nazi's love for the occult
are 1. The sadly underrated and almost unknown minimalistic
intense horror The Devil's Rock (2011) directed by
Kiwi Paul Campion where a SS colonel seek an occult weapon
on one of the channel islands, desperate to turn the war around, in
form of a minor female demon.
2. Richard "Dust Devil" Stanley's engrossing and gripping
documentary The Secret Glory of SS Obersturmfuhrer
Otto Rahn, about the occultist, the Nazi and
the SS man Otto Rahn's quest for the holy grail.
The Story of First Squad ...
OK, we're at the eastern front during WW2 and a girl,
Nadya, is appearing in front of battle-exhausted soldiers
displaying her ESP abilities when Nazi bombplanes attack. It's a bewildering
start to the movie and i just love
when you're feel somewhat disoriented at the start of a film (just like
when watching the great anime Paprika),
because Nadya is sitting in a cinema and watch fragments of her earlier
life. She's in Limbo maybe after getting
hit in one of the bomb explosions and who are Leo, the strange monk,
the soldier and the Templar she sees?
The Nazi's are worried over the results of the war and
the front slowly moving westwards towards The Reich,
and the Ahnenerbe is called in. The Plan - Operation Sword of Vengeance
where occult powers are to be used
when the 700 year dead medieval Templar, the russophobic Baron von Wolff
is to be called back from the
Land of the Dead among with his horde of dead soldiers to create havoc
at the eastern front.
So, what can the russians come up with ?
Young Nadya is the only still living member of the former
secret ESP Division 6, and now using a special
apparatus she's sent to the land of the dead to fetch her deceased ex-members
of the ESP squad.
Will they succeed entering the world of the living and once again fight
the Nazi's to save Mother Russia?
Well, the pic above give a spoiler to that i guess.
GREAT STUFF even though it's a mess really, and this
because of the very atmospherical setting and the cool
ideas (that could've been handled better, admittedly). This film plays
a bit like a animated Russian dead X-Men
movie against dead Nazi medieval Templars, and it just ends suddenly,
very abruptly.
This version of the film did NOT include interviews with "real"
WW2 veterans.
anamorphic widescreen 1.78:1, russian audio 5.1 with
english or swedish subtitles i.a. No extras at all, sadly,
it would've been great to hear stuff about how this strange project
came up and about The Ahnenerbe
