I am wondering if anyone else has read or is reading this series.
I've read the first three volumes, and I plan to buy the final two.
It was done by Osamu Tezuka, so the style is a bit old-skool cartoony, but it's more realistic looking than his other works. I found the first volume in a comic shop, read the back cover, started flipping through the first pages, and decided it looked like an intersting story.
I got hooked.
Adolf is a historical fiction drama about World War II. The story is, in the words of the narration by one of the main characters, Sohei Togei:
"This is the story of three men named Adolf. Each Adolf lived a life that was very diffrent from that of the other two...yet the three of them were bound by a single twist of fate."
One of the Adolfs is Adolf Hitler. The other two are a German-Japanese boy and a Jewish-Japanese boy. The other main character in the story is a Japanese reporter named Sohei Togei. The story spans years, from just before the war, to... I believe in the final volume, just after it. It is about the lives of Sohei Togei, Adolf Kaufman, and Adolf Kamil as they get caught up in the pursuit of documents which could dismantle the Third Reich. Sohei gets involved when his brother is murdered in Germany and he tries to find the killer, and to seek justice. The other Adolfs, who start out as childhood best friends, also get caught up in it. (One of these Adolfs is Jewish, and the other... gets forced to join a Hitler Youth School to train to be a Nazi).
It's a highly entertaining story - if you like historcial drama. It has a lot of mystery and action. There are parts of it that read... like watching a good Spielburg movie. There are some upsetting things about it, of course... it being World War II... the Nazis... well, they act like Nazis. I warned a Jewish friend of mine about reading it because I was afraid some of the scenes would make her cry. It's definitely an anti-Nazi series, it's just that... it's sad to see the Jews abused!
What I like best about this series, perhaps, is though it is written from a Japanese perspective, the story is not "Rah-rah, Go Japan!" like many American World War II stories are "Rah-rah, Go America!" Tezuka portrays the war in a way that there is pain on all sides, and in a way that is against the Japanese military goverment of the time. It's quite refreshing to see a World War II story that doesn't portray "We Good! They Evil!" like most American war epics do.
I am looking forward to finishing the series. It's very good.