While First Squad isn’t frighteningly awful, it isn’t the type of movie you would randomly feel like watching again. Excuse me if this spoils the movie for you, but the movie is quite deceptive. It starts (and ends) with explosions, Teutonic zombie knights, Nazis, a psychic girl named Nadya, and the use of the mockumentary style, which is rarely used in anime; but it all goes downhill into a pile of cliches, blotches of anti-climactic action, and conversations. When you think about it, not much actually occurs during the movie, although the length is a good hour and ten minutes, roughly. Without the mockumentary-style interviews, First Squad would definitely be more of an OVA than a theatrical film. In fact, it would have been a decent OVA without the abrupt 3D people injected into it.

 Yes, they’re trying to go for something different, good for them, but the use of real people was unnecessary and distracting. The speakers were much too direct on the subject, and gave away what we could have easily reflected upon ourselves. The beauty of film is the underlying messages, interactive participation, provocation of thoughts. In other words, like most dialogue in any narrative, whatever is said in the interviews must be important and not revealing (showing, not telling). A good amount of interviews in First Squad, however, were just as dull and pointless as the videos your high school history teacher shows just to pass time, or in this case, a lame way to introduce the next or previous scene. Honestly, they were buzzkills. Aside from explaining information that needed no explanation, they would outwardly blurt out the themes of the movie, which is something you should formulate on your own. A lot of, “No sh!t, Sherlock”, moments.

As a film from Studio 4°C, beautiful artwork and flawless animation should be expected, but I was heavily disappointed. Not only were most of the explosions, battle scenes, and air raids cut short, but any sort of action aside from running away and dodging something was not shown, as if to purposely stray from animating a good fight scene. If you’re going to have a main character who fights with a katana, there should be more displays of fluid fight scenes and liquid movement. There is nothing about the animation that really impresses me, except maybe for the excess explosions, smoke, airplanes, etc. Even less impressive is the character design and artwork, although that is more up to personal preference. I find the character style and design unappealing and lacking in uniqueness, although the other aspects of the artwork is fine, such as the backgrounds (the CGI automobiles were weird though). While it’s good that the style isn’t the stereotypical animu/mango that makes everyone look the same, most of the younger characters who have the generic “pretty” face aren’t drawn too nicely, in my opinion – sometimes I feel as though their eyes are too close together, or their mouths look rather silly, or that Nadya is too skinny at times. 

 First Squad doesn’t do much. It’s not pretty to look at, it’s not motivating, it doesn’t offer a great moral, and it’s just not fun. The use of mockumentary turns the movie into a really bad, chunky action smoothie – you mildly like the flavor, but the consistency is all wrong. There’s just random chunks of action and story here and there. That is the main reason, along with bad character artwork, voice acting (the main character’s acting and “aaah!”s are the most off-putting), and failure to capture my interest, First Squad is assigned a depressingly mediocre 5 out of 10.

Rating: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

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