The First Squad: The Truth

11 hrs. 43 min.

Language Russian

Author Anna Starobinets

Narrator beckham48

Description

Seventeen-year-old Nika is certain that the much-talked-about anime film about the war and heroic pioneers “First Detachment” is a coded message. Will she be able to unravel the secrets of the occult divisions of Nazi and Soviet special services? During a dizzying investigation, Nika is forced to take on a dangerous mission: to save Earth from World War Three and to prevent a catastrophe in the Dead World. The events of the film and the manga “First Detachment” acquire terrifying and subtle meanings…

The plot of the book (mind you—this is not manga!) by Anna Starobinets is not a retelling of the cartoon’s plot. What we have is a book where the cartoon is merely a pretext: a coded message for the girl Nika, urging her to prevent World War Three and the collapse of the Dead World. Essentially—nothing special. If we didn’t mention the first Russian anime, we’d be looking at an ordinary Russian adventure novel about schoolchildren, in the spirit of “Ethnogenesis.” But as it is, it’s a cultural cross-experience. Also a rare thing in our parts. The setting isn’t Moscow and not Petersburg—literary writers have already plowed them up from end to end—but Sevastopol, Berlin, and places somewhere under Murmansk. And what a beautiful “somewhere under Murmansk” it is!