Best known in the US for his dark and violent gangster and "anti-samurai" films of the 1960s, Kihachi Okamoto is equally renown for his celebrated and popular war films which drew directly from his own negative experience as a soldier during WWII. After directing Toho's commercially successful star-studded war epic Japan’s Longest Day, Okamoto turned to ATG to explore a decidedly more idiosyncratic and personal vision of World War II, adapting the perspective of the individual rather than abstractly idolized soldier. A portrait of a hapless kamikaze submarine bomber floating in wait for his first and final assignment, Human Bullet uses an energetic flashback structure to inject unexpected humor into the film, recalling the soldier's youth and comic misadventures in first love. Okamoto's irreverence and rough love for the ill-fated soldier gives way to a bracing and poignantly unofficial history of the war.