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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome spy story, January 21, 2005
This review is from: Adolf, Volume 1: A Tale of the Twentieth Century (Paperback)
From the hype surrounding this I was expecting something kind of educational or with serious history. I was pleasantly surprised. This read as a good spy story.
The Adolf series proposes to tell the stories of three Adolfs. One is the historic Hitler. The other two are fictional. We start by following the story of Toge, a Japanese reporter in Berlin to cover the 1936 Olympics and to some extent our narrator through these stories. His brother is an exchange student living in Berlin. Toge receives a call from his brother about a secret that will throw Hitler out of power. When Toge arrives he finds his brother murdered. The police take the body but it never arrives at the station. When Toge tries to track down the body he finds that no one will admit to having met his brother and the police (who also have no record of the murder) claim that he must be making the story up. Through the first half of this book we follow Toge's search for information about his brother in Berlin. He wants to bury and avenge his brother, and gets caught up in something much bigger. Somehow the murder is connected with a murder of a Geisha six months earlier in Japan. Both victims had plaster under their fingernails. When Toge returns to Japan he continues to search for the truth about his brother.
Through this Geisha we are introduced to the next two Adolfs. One is the son of the prime suspect for the murder, a high ranking German intelligence officer stationed in Japan. The third Adolf is a Jewish German whose family is in Japan because that is a better place for them to live than is Germany. The two boys are the same age and are best friends, which bothers both families. Non-jewish Adolf doesn't want to go to school in Germany and take the career path that his father wants for him, because he doesn't want to be taught that jews and therefore jewish-Adolf are bad. Both Adolfs come to learn the horrible secret that can destroy Hitler and so they are caught up in the bigger story.
This is a really great and well paced story. I got pulled in and had to finish it. I had put off reading it because much of the hype I had heard about it made it sound dry and educational. It isn't dry. I'm sure that I learned something from seeing a telling of WWII from a Japanese perspective, but regardless this is a good story.
I highly recommend this book. Keep in mind that there are a couple of graphic torture scenes, a rape and a suicide (and book 2 gets much much worse). So don't give this to your fourth grader to teach them history.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The first volume in a great, epic series, June 19, 2004
This review is from: Adolf, Volume 1: A Tale of the Twentieth Century (Paperback)
Osamu Tezuka's, 'Adolf: A Tale of the Twentieth Century,' is the opening chapter in what will turn out to be an epic, sweeping tale of 3 Adolf's - Adolf Hitler, Adolf Kamil (a jewish boy growing up in Japan) and Adolf Kaufman (a half japanese, half german youth). Within this framework, Tezuka will spin a deep and moving story set against the backdrop of Japan and Germany during WWII providing both entertainment and fresh historical perspective of events during this timeframe. Spanning 5 volumes and over 1300 pages readers will easily glide through each book thanks to Tezuka's sharp and easy-to-digest narrative along with his crisp black & white artwork. This series is highly recommended to anyone interested in graphic novels, excellent storytelling and WWII. Definitely start with this first volume and enjoy the rest of the tale over the next 4 books.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quality Comic Paperback, December 5, 1998
This review is from: Adolf, Volume 1: A Tale of the Twentieth Century (Paperback)
ADOLF: A TALE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY is about three people named Adolf during WWII- the infamous dictator, a half-German half-Japanese boy, and a Jewish boy. It seems that a potentially harmful document to the Third Reich has fallen into the wrong hands. This is a historical work with fictional characters. I recommend this comic book to anyone interested in World War II, comic books, or Japanese magna. The artwork is in black-and-white, but that does not detract from this masterpiece. There is a distinct Japanese style to the artwork. This is the first book in a five part series. My only gripe is that the the most famous Adolf- Adolf Hitler- could have been featured in the book a little bit more. I am sure he will be in the other books- considering what the damaging information about him is. Like I said, if you are interested in worldly events in that time period 1930's-1940's get this- now!
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