Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths

Plot

A landmark publishing event by one of Japan's most famous cartoonists.

Shigeru Mizuki is the preeminent figure of Gekiga manga and one of the most famous working cartoonists in Japan today. Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths is his first book to be translated into English and is a semi-autobiographical account of the desperate final weeks of a Japanese infantry unit at the end of World War II. The soldiers are told that they must go into battle and die for the honor of their country, with certain execution facing them if they return alive. Mizuki was a soldier himself, and he uses his experiences to convey the devastating consequences and moral depravity of the war.