What scholars claim to be the first true Japanese war film (a sort of 'All Quiet on the Manchurian Front') might be best appreciated today by students of early cinematic wartime propaganda. Most of the foreground is stale, State-approved, mildly xenophobic melodrama, devoted to the day-to-day life and camaraderie among a group of front line troops in China prior to an ill-fated scouting mission in enemy territory. The script manages to embrace pacifist and pro-military sympathies at the same time, showing a mission doomed to failure carried out by soldiers of rare (i.e. unheard of) nobility and devotion: these boys die with the Emperor's blessed name on their lips, and a parting cry of Banzai! for their comrades-in-arms. The film (shot on actual battlegrounds) renders the more mundane details of infantry life with simple, unaffected realism, but it's too bad the same can't be said for the characters and dialogue.