Yuhki Kamatani, a Japanese manga artist, is all set to release a manga adaptation of Touma Aisaka’s war novel titled “Comrade Women: Shoot The Enemy”. Typically, the manga will adopt the same name as the novel. What is interesting is that the heroine of the story is a young Soviet soldier.
Serafima was compelled to train and become a world-class sniper. The German-Soviet turmoil grows worse by the day. Under those circumstances, she needed to train to protect herself. All this is in the event of Hayakawa Publishing, a Japanese publishing company, opening their new comic website called ‘Hayacomic’.[ez-toc]
Hayakawa Will Release A New Website
The largest sci-fi publisher in Japan, Hayakawa Publishing, will celebrate its 79th anniversary soon. The launch is on July 23, 2024, and it will also include a special event. On the same day, Hayacomic, a new manga website by Hayakawa, will also set in motion with adaptations of some of the most popular novels.
The strong lineup includes the popular mystery novel ‘And Then There Were None’ by Agatha Christie, Solaris, a sci-fi novel by Stanislaw Lem, and last but not least, the historical war novel ‘Comrade Girls, Shoot The Enemy’ by Touma Aisaka.
Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then There Were None’ is illustrated by Aya Nikaido. Solaris, by Polish author Lem, is popular in Japan and honorably adapted by Taketo Moriizumi.
It is an effort of Hayakawa Publishing to create a platform that unites stories. They want to bring stories from all over the world. Furthermore, they believe in creating a rich and diverse palate of mangas.
“Comrade Girl: Shoot The Enemy” is about a female Soviet sniper
The novel “Comrade Girl: Shoot The Enemy” by Touma Aisaka, will be released as an illustrated manga by Yuhki Kamatani. Although the original book, released in Nov 2021, was a debut work that became critically acclaimed because of its raw depiction of war-torn regions, most intriguingly, from a woman’s perspective.
Serafima is an 18-year-old girl who lives a peaceful life with her mother, Ekaterina, in a small village near Moscow. The year is 1942 and the German-Soviet tension is at an all-time high. She goes hunting with her mother and has a close friend, Mikhail, whom she has known since childhood.
But, her whole life is turned upside down when German soldiers arrive in the area, accusing the villagers of conspiracy. Soon things take a dark turn, and most of the villagers, including Ekaterina, are slaughtered before her own eyes. Fatefully, she is rescued by Red Army soldiers who arrive almost too late.
Next, she is asked the ominous question: “Do you want to fight, or die?”. In the event of her mother’s death and the massacre of people she had known since birth, Serafina vows to avenge them and kill the soldier who murdered her mother. Consequently, she enrolls in the Central Female Sniper Training School to become a world-class sniper.
A May 2022 article in JAPAN Forward reports the country’s “rising attention to women on the front lines”. It could easily be the effect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022, just about three months after the publication of Aisaka’s novel.
War is never a safe place for anyone, but it is hellish for a woman. Testimonies of women in hyper-aggressive “male-centric” occupations, like the police or army, have always been jarring. Our heroine, Serafima, is a determined young woman. She is fighting against the Germans, yet she kills her friend for trying to assault a German woman. The particular “un-womanliness” of war is beautifully explored in the story of Serafima.
“Comrade Girls: Shoot The Enemy” is inspired by the German-Soviet conflict.
Aisaka’s “Comrade Girls, Shoot the Enemy” was inspired by Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich’s “The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War 2″(1983). Svetlana conducted extensive research and documented the real-life testimonies of more than 500 women who served as soldiers during the actual German-Soviet unrest.
As it turns out, there were, in total, 2000 female snipers in the Red Army during WW2. Out of that, only 500 survived the war. One of them was Lyudmila Pavlichenko, who appears in the novel as an associate of a character. Pavlichenko was the greatest female sniper in history with 309 confirmed kills.
Aisaka, born in 1985, graduated with a degree in International Studies from Meiji Gakuin University, Japan. He released the book in 2021 just months before Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022. Later, he won the 2022 Honya Taisho Award, or Japan’s Bookseller’s Award, on April 6, 2022. During his acceptance speech, he expressed his despair seeing young men and women suffer in war times and took a stance against its existence.
Accomplishments of the “Comrade Girls: Shoot The Enemy” Novel
Awards
- The Bestselling Novel in Japan (2022)
- 2022 Honya Taisho Award
- The 11th Agatha Christie Award
- The 9th High School Naoki Award
It was also nominated for the 166th Naoki Award.
Reviews
“A masterpiece that people will inevitably come across.” – Hideo Kojima, an auteur of video games
“It’s not a tale of heroism, but rather a story of what a girl who becomes a sniper loses and gains.” – Natsuo Kirino, multiple award-winning novelist
There are also talks of an anime adaptation of the “Comrade Girls: Shoot The Enemy” manga.