Anime First Squad
It's an alright film that should most definitely be watched by any self-respecting Otaku, it's about a Russian Esper girl on the Russian front in the second world war on a mission to protect the life of a soldier who will lead a successful Russian local offensive who is being targeted by an occult branch of the Waffen-SS who are summoning a demon-knight Baron Von Wulff from beyond to do so, who are of course trying to eliminate Nadya (the Esper girl) to prevent her from saving that Soldier.
That's it, the plot has nothing really to add to this, no twists, no conspiracies, no nazi stupid jetpack hitler mecha (don't watch the trailer unless you wanna feel disappointed) or much to really ADD to the film's depth, Nadya is conveniently amnesiac so we don't get to fully explore her character, her colleagues from First Squad while colorful group of contrasting personalities we don't ever get to see them as anything other then their 5 man band tropes, nothing.
The movie provides and delivers on the premise of being set with the backdrop of the Eastern front and easily carries the viewers interest mostly banking on the fact that Reds With Rockets is cool, with cgi AF Vs, interspersed fighting showing how war is hell and doing a fairly decent job showing the heroism of the average Russian soldier trying to show that war is hel-Is That was T-34!? Awesome! Uh Where was I? Right, the film being a legitimate Russo-Japanese venture has the entire cast speaking Russian adding the extra depth of immersion that the film would otherwise lack had it been a Western production or been simply awkward had it been in Japanese and at the same time experiments with a faux-documentary style with live action interviews interspersed throughout the film which if your a WWII buff is pretty sweet but got really weird and confusing once they brought on 'experts' in the paranormal and the Soviet and German occult intelligence services etc, which I think they might have been better off not having as it left me confused and distracted.
So in short, while falls a little short, and definitely not the film of the trailer, it's worth watching if your even remotely interested in WWII/Soviet Russia, the actors being real Russians is cool, and the way the film puts everything together is both fun to watch, interesting and pretty cool in general.
Enjoy.
Anime Technical mastery can not compensate for a thin plot
Before I begin, let me start by saying that I watched an edit that did not contain the "mockumentary" scenes, then watched them later. They add exposition and good atmosphere to the film. That said, their non-presence reveals something about the film: the atmospherics and technical direction are great, but the plot is extremely weak. The film goes to great lengths to add stylistic touches of realism; Russian voice actors, Mosin-Nagant rifles, PPSh-41s, era-realistic vehicles, and a generally dark aesthetic really make this film feel like a war film about the Eastern Front. Animation is also superb; Studio 4C and a who's who of other studios did a great job on it.
That said though, the plot is extremely thin given the setting. This may be a function of betrayed expectations; I came in expecting a piece about the biggest battles of the earliest days of the Great Patriotic War, such as the Smolensk campaign. Instead, I get a Nazi-zombie piece that revolves around protecting a no-name officer I don't care about from villains I don't care about...and while it is admittedly one of the better entries in that genre, it still leaves much to be desired. The action scenes sort of also seem to be just...there, rather than aiding the plot. Still, it's a fun romp until you get to the end. The ending makes you wonder why you wasted the time watching all that buildup. There's no reason to have an ending like that, since we KNOW the true ending to WWII!
In conclusion, if you want a mindless action piece set in a theatre of war that doesn't get a lot of play, go for it. If not, don't waste your time.