Mizuki generally draws his characters in an exaggerated, cartoony style while turning to a more realistic treatment for backgrounds, landscape, jungle and camp. “These bastards are living like kings fighting this war,” one observes bitterly. Later, the starving troops capture an American outpost only to fight over the boxes and boxes of food inside. His comrades abandon him, still living, but not before cutting off his little finger with a shovel to prove he died in battle. One man is shot in a rain-drenched firefight.

Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths is filled with wrenching details. This scorn is evident in every page of this work. He eventually lost his left arm and gained a healthy disgust for the treatment he and his peers endured. Only wounds from a bombing raid spared him from deployment in a suicide charge. He barely survived a skirmish that wiped out the rest of his detachment upon returning, he was berated for it. This eminent manga creator served on a Pacific island in the Second World War. The afterword shares that “90 percent” of the story is taken directly from the real-life experiences of author Shigeru Mizuki. They’re sent to scavenge in unfamiliar jungle, falling prey to crocodiles, tropical diseases and random bombing forays by Americans, who seem as distant and unknowable as the landscape itself. Even at best, the grunts are subject to constant beatings from their officers. It centers on a group of soldiers stationed on a remote island in New Guinea-although “abandoned” might be more accurate, given their lack of supplies and suffering at the hands of their superiors. Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths features a battalion-scale look at the lot of Japanese infantrymen in World War II.

Onward to our noble deaths