Currently in Japan, the life of Mizuki and his wife has been made into an extremely popular television drama that airs daily. Mizuki's list of accolades and achievements is long and detailed. Mizuki was a soldier himself (he was severely injured and lost an arm) and uses his experiences to convey the devastating consequences and moral depravity of the war. The soldiers are instructed that they must go into battle and die for the honor of their country, with certain execution facing them if they return alive.

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 Two. In his hometown of Sakaiminato, one can find Shigeru Mizuki Road, a street decorated with bronze statues of his Kitaro characters.Shigeru Mizuki is the preeminent figure of gekiga/manga and one of the most famous working cartoonists in Japan today - a true living legend. A researcher of yokai and a real-life ghost hunter, Mizuki traveled to over sixty countries to engage in fieldwork based on spirit folklore. In fact, a new anime series has been made every decade since 1968, capturing the imaginations of generations of Japanese children. He invented the yokai genre with GeGeGe no Kitaro, his most famous character, who has been adapted for the screen several times, as anime, live action, and video games. After the war, Mizuki became one of the founders of Japan s latest craze manga. A creative prodigy, he lost an arm in World War II. Biography: Shigeru Mizuki (1922 2015) was one of Japan s most respected artists.And yet the human instinct endures, seeing through the absurdity of such a rigid and outdated command structure with gallows humor. Indeed, commanding officers prove even more ferocious than the wild unknown of Papua New Guinea. Mizuki's fanciful characters must make do against a photo-realistic backdrop teeming with tropical life that remains inhospitable. The desperation and moral depravity on display is devastating. This deeply personal and landmark anti-war work could only have been made by a pacifist.

Inspired by Eisner Award-winning author Shigeru Mizuki's own mandatory tour of duty as an active combatant in the Imperial Japanese Army, Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths portrays a flailing infantry unit on its last legs near the end of the Second World War. The alternative is certain execution as a consequence of survival. A platoon of soldiers is ordered into battle. The book that brought pre-eminent Manga-ka Shigeru Mizuki to the English-speaking world.

Onward towards our noble deaths