World War II, it is said, has a shadow history. Behind the front lines, in darkened rooms and secret laboratories, occultists on all sides of the war sought to use arcane powers to tip the battle in their favor.

First Squad: The Moment of Truth uses this idea as the springboard for a production that's the first of its kind, so far: a joint co-production between the Russian film company Molot and the Japanese animation studio Studio 4°C.

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They're back! And it's still not their fault!

Last year, I was thrilled to report the English-language DVD premiere of The Dirty Pair, the original 1980s TV series that gave us the riotous misadventures of Kei and Yuri, far-future "troubleshooters" who get called in to clean up the messes no one else wants to touch ... and who leave behind even bigger ones.

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Keima Katsuragi's a lover of women -- but not real-world women. Rather, he's a serial seducer of the women he encounters in a peculiar subgenre of video game called "dating sims," where his score is based on how effectively he wins over a woman's heart.

Unfortunately, his controller-mashing ways are about to be upended when a demon named Elsie comes into his life, looking for help with a very thorny problem. Seems a whole slew of rogue spirits have broken out of Hell and are busy lodging themselves in the hearts of girls everywhere ... and the only thing that can shake them free is for the girl to fall in love with someone. Guess who's just been appointed to perform that job, on pain of quite literally losing his head?

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It's never easy being the dark horse of the class. Sawako knows all too well what that's like -- she's such a dark horse that the other kids call her "Sadako", after the malevolent ghost in The Ring. So what's a girl to do when she's barely able to say hello -- and then finds herself befriended, almost by accident, by one of the most outgoing and popular boys in her class?

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