Every now and again there is an anime project done in conjunction with a country outside of Japan. With First Squad the project was done in conjunction with Japanese animation studio Studio 4C and a Russian company Molot Entertainment. Molot Entertainment doesnt seem to have done much else besides First Squad besides another animated film called Ivan about a postapocalyptic world filled with magical creatures such as dragons From what I can find the company seems to be focused on helping promote independent projects. First Squad itself seems to have an interesting history by itself. Starting out as a music video in 2005 by both Studio 4C and Molot Entertainment with the song for the music video done by MC Ligalize. It even won an award at the MTV Russian Music Awards for best hiphop video in 2006. By 2007 the Russian studio behind the music video announced that they were working on a film adaptation of the music video. 2 years later First Squad: Moment of Truth was released to the public. Apparently is was well received enough in its home country of Russia that it even went on to win an award by the Kommersant newspapers prize. There was even a graphic novel adaptation the year after First Squads release. So with the surprisingly interesting history of First Squad out of the way lets have a closer look at it. Set during World War II on the Eastern Front a group of Nazi mystics plan to resurrect Baron von Wolff and his Teutonic Knights during the Moment of Truth a moment that has appeared throughout various points in time that will determine the outcome of any significant conflict. To prevent this Division Six of the Soviet Military intelligence has enlisted a group of young people with special abilities to fight the invading German armies and prevent the Nazis from reaching their goal. The story follows a young clairvoyant girl named Nadya who survived a deadly air raid attack only to be left shellshocked. While recovering from her concussion she soon discovers that she has a new ability the ability to foresee said Moments of Truth. Soon she is taken into Division Six and is trained along with the rest of the rest of the squad to prevent the Moment of Truth from being used by the Nazis to win the war. Unfortunately the whole movie is a bit of a mixed bad. While the premise is great the rest of the movie is a bit underwhelming. The fact that this movie is only an hour long is the thing that unfortunately drags this whole thing down. Im going to assume that the team behind First Squad not having a bigger budget not having enough time or not having both is the reason that the length of this movie is so short. I dont know how much better it would have been having an extra 15 minutes but I feel like the whole thing would have definitely felt a lot smoother. As a side effect of the length of this movie the characters dont always get the character development they need. Nadya pretty much gets most of it because shes the main character but the rest of the characters only get the most minor of character development something that could have been solved with a longer length. The few action scenes that this movie gets are just OK nothing to write home about. There is actually two versions of First Squad. A Theatrical cut and a Directors cut.The only difference between both versions is every now an again in the Directors cut there are a brief interviews done with veterans historians and other live actors in between the rest of the movie. These are basically just here to not only try and lengthen the movie with the meager budget they had but these are more of a mixed bag than anything. Some of them dont really add anything such as the one interview that simply explains what sedatives are. Maybe its to give it some authenticity but considering that the whole thing flows much better without them I cant really recommend the Directors cut unless you found something about the original interesting enough to warrant something more. First Squad: Moment of Truth might be a rocky in terms of quality but I dont really hate it. Its not something you should immediately go out and see but its worth checking out if you some free time and it looks interesting to you.