Shigeru Mizuki is one of the great manga authors, but is rarely translated into English. This is one of his classic stories, based on his personal wartime experience.

A platoon of Japanese soldiers is assigned to defend a beachhead near Rabaul, in what is now Papua New Guinea. They are subjected to a terrifying air assault followed by a landing of marines supported by tanks. Hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, their rations dwindle to nothing, and their pitifully low weaponry is useless against the Americans.

Against all advice, the platoon commander decides that the platoon must perform a death-or-glory suicide charge to pay homage to the honour of their ancestors. Since the order is to suicide, anybody who survives and gets back to base is considered a traitorous insubordinate and subjected to the most severe discipline.

The hardship and brutality that the soldiers experience at the hands of their own officers is reminiscent of the wanton waste of life that heedless British commanders wreaked during the trench warfare campaigns of World War 1. It is a reminder that extreme suffering and gross disregard for human life is seen on all sides of a war. ( )

Do not expect any sort of happy ending, some kind of moral satisfaction, at the end of this book. It is first and foremost a story about war, and the men made to fight in them. It is violent, vulgar, bloody, and unforgiving. You will probably walk away from ONWARDS TOWARDS OUR NOBLE DEATHS with a sense of futility, a sense of anger, and yet also an inch of comprehension for those soldiers made to die in the name of gyokusai. And if so, then manga-ka Mizuki has succeeded in his mission with this "90 percent" autobiographical work. ( )

A beautifully drawn testament of Japanese soldiers' lives in WWII. The raw emotion captured in the sharp contrast between hyper-realistic and cartoon-ish panels makes Mizuki's story more sympathetic. It's easy as a Westerner to sometimes forget that the opposing sides are fought by real people who have war thrust upon them just as suddenly as the "home team," and this book humanizes them in a beautiful and tragic way. ( )

magnificent illustrations and a touching story that reveals a lot on how the Japanese soldiers dealt with that war and the rigidity of the army rules ( )

Geoff Dyer has noted that, thus far, the best accounts of the ongoing wars in the Middle East are non-fiction, while the most successful accounts of World War II (from the allied side) are novels. With the publication of Shigeru Mizuki's autobiographical work recounting his service in New Guinea during World War II, one sees that another form will have to be taken into account: comics. Brilliantly drawn and told, Mizuki's Onward Towards Our Noble Deathsgives those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced anything like such horror a powerful draught of the pain and futility of war.