Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths

"As Shigeru Mizuki's World War II graphic novel masterpiece approaches 40 years old, Drawn & Quarterly has released the first American translation in a gorgeous production that reads from back to front, from right to left, in true Japanese style and captures a side of the war in the South Pacific you've never seen . . . With hundreds of vignettes, Mizuki captures the brutal lives of enlisted men serving in the Imperial Army in Papua New Guinea near the end of the war, where soldiers can be ordered to chop off a nearly dead soldier's little finger to prove he died in battle, or to lob back ignited grenades that have been tossed into their trenches . . . Mizuki presents the reader with the guilt of friendly fire, the waste of good men, the relentless imperative to die rather than be taken prisoner, the shame of surviving . . . In a dazzling variety of layouts and frames of all sizes, the reader watches in horror as platoons of endearing characters are ordered to run at the enemy in a banzai charge with no hope of survival. The last few stunning panels have no text. None is needed. Mizuki has made his point, achieving an overwhelming sense of loss."—Nick DiMartino, Shelf Awareness