Looking for anime or manga about WW2 that goes beyond the Japanese civilian experience. Does anything like that exist?
Looking for anime or manga that portrays Japan's role in WW2 as something other than purely a victim. Most of what the medium produces focuses on civilian suffering, the atomic bombs, the home front. All of it devastating and worth engaging with, but it tells one very specific part of the story.
The one creator I've found who genuinely goes elsewhere is Shigeru Mizuki. His autobiographical work on his time as a soldier is about as far from romanticized as you can get. Boot camp, the political atmosphere, how that entire system operated. He doesn't flinch. Whether his work ever directly confronts what Japanese forces did in China or Korea I'm honestly not sure, his own experience was more conventional battlefield than occupation, but even what he does depict is rare enough to stand out.
Is the absence of that perspective in mainstream manga and anime a reflection of what Japanese audiences will engage with, what creators are willing to make, or what the education system has made it possible to even think about critically?
Anyone found anything that actually goes there?