First Squad: How A Western Story Was Adapted Into A Japanese Anime And Manga (for Comic-Con@Home 2020)

Misha Shprits (First Squad) will discuss the journey and techniques that he and his co-creator took to get their original story produced into a Japanese anime and manga. As well Misha Shprits will partake in a Q&A discussion with Austin Osueke (publisher of eigoMANGA).

The above virtual discussion was released as apart of ComicCon@Home, in lieu of the cancelled San Diego Comic Con for 2020. Featured below are trailers and the opening sequence for the anime, for which I swore I featured on my blogs, but cannot seem to find a trace of it...!

"Set during the opening days of World War II on the Eastern Front. Its main cast are a group of Soviet teenagers with extraordinary abilities; the teenagers have been drafted to form a special unit to fight the invading German army. They are opposed by a Schutzstaffel (SS) officer who is attempting to raise from the dead a supernatural army of crusaders from the 12th-century Order of the Sacred Cross and enlist them in the Nazi cause. Pretty soon all the teenagers die, except for the protagonist Nadia. She is taken to a secret Soviet lab that studies supernatural phenomena, especially contacts with the dead. Nadia's task is to dive into the world of the dead for reconnaissance. There, in the Gloomy Valley, she meets her dead friends and tries to persuade them to continue fighting.

The animation is interspersed with mockumentary "present day" sequences, where Soviet and German war veterans, a historian and a psychologist comment real historical events and the events of the plot as if they were historical." (www.first-squad.com)