Peleliu: Guernica of Paradise

TL;DR One of the few truly anti-war manga out there, written with the collaboration of veterans, while avoiding being grim for the sake of it. I'm part of the generation that grew up playing Call of Duty: World at War. Those of you who also played this game now that more than one mission involves decimating Japanese soldiers, hidden in the bushes, just waiting to get the jump on you with their bayonets while screaming "BANZAI". Which, in fairness, gives you the perfect excuse to either blast their limbs off with a shotgun, or burn them alive with your flamethrower in their caves. Certainly was funat the time. These are the things that kept popping in my mind throughout reading this manga. I think that, by now, it's no secret that the Call of Duty series is not exactly about even-handed and objective storytelling; but ironically, I think it did enrich my experience of reading Peleliu. In this series, you follow Tamaru, a young aspiring mangaka as he is drafted to defend the island of Peleliu from the Americans. I won't go into details, but let's just say that very little of the manga revolves around actual battles and tactics. The Japanese are very quickly completely overwhelmed, the island turned into an absolute wasteland, and it's every man for themselves. Soldiers turning insane, others who stay oddly focused on the task at hand (or at least, their idea of what the task at hand is). Propaganda and out-of-touch orders from the top brass. Hunger, thirst, sickness, horrid weather, bombings, executions, loss, all things that these Japanese soldiers had to deal with for years. Peleliu does not shy away from some of the vilest shit that goes on, and I would argue that it actually paints the Japanese in an even worse light than the Americans, who are regularly completely taken aback by how irrational and downright insane those "Japs" seem to be acting. And this is where the art comes in; its extreme simplicity allows the reader to go through extremely grim scenes without it turning into downright voyeurism. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to have been a fully conscious choice, but is rather a consequence of nerve damage the author got from his cancer treatment a few years prior, chronicled in "Sayonara, Tama-Chan" of the same author. Peleliu is not about camaraderie, nor is it about understanding your foe, nor is it about the glory of combat or the importance of friendship between peoples. It is simply about ordinary, young men, facing absurd circumstances the best they can, where their world is turned completely upside-down, and how no two of them reemerge the same, when they do. It is a reasonably short read, very nicely paced; it doesn't dwell on events for the sake it, nor does it gloss over things too quickly. Its characters are definitely in service of the plot and most often very functional, but I believe that doing so really works well in this context. Expect them to be treated more as narrative and meta-narrative tools than fully-fledged people. Don't hesitate to go for it. While not a life-changing experience, it definitely is one of the few mangas in recent years which will change your perspective on things.