Manga 1695 Adolf Ni Tsugu

Adolf is one of Osamu Tezuka's later works and acclaimed as one of his best. Since it deals with Jews and Nazi's, comparisons to the masterpiece Maus, published around the same time, are bound to happen. But the works are incomparable since they deal with different parts of the Holocaust. Adolf, unlike Maus, focuses more on the mental state of one particular SS officer rather then the Jews themselves and what they go through.

Simply said, it is a very well crafted WWII spy story. Unlike most spy stories, it is fairly realistic in the timeframe of the story since it is told of the span ... of 9 years (excluding the very end) starting at the 1036 Berlin Olympics and mostly ending at the end of the war. The pacing is done very well as it alternates. The slower parts are used for two things, setting up for what is later to happen and character development. Even between events, years sometimes pass and some contains some of the rare instances where narration is used in manga to explain how the war is unfolding. Though mostly in-directly affecting to the characters, it is still helpful to show how the world is developing around them.

Though the story starts off and with the plot revolving around the missing documents of Hitler's origin, that is not the focus. In essence, it is a tragedy of the irreversible effects of brainwashing and blind devotion have on a person's psyche and their relationships. Though overarching theme is Adolf Kaufmann's mental state, the other characters also have problems large and small to make them feel real, but the focus isn't on their mental state so the story doesn't explore their psyche so much. There of course is the ever-present theme of racism, but that is quite self-explanatory.

I have only completed two of Tezuka's works, this and Metropolis. Since the two are on the opposite sides of his career, I can say that he has improved immensely as an artist with a profound influence from Gekiga. I have quiet a bit of Gekiga and I can say that the art is even superior to the majority of Yoshiro Tatsumi's (judgeing him by what has been published by Drawn & Quarterly) but falls short of Lone Wolf and Cub, Screw-Style, and Red Color Elegy (of what I've seen that is). The most impressive scenes are the narrative ones. Those scenes are visually-staggering, vividly-haunting (though it doesn't contain the alienating feel of Tsuge's works) and comparable to the austere beauty of the Himalayas in Buddha (though they do have a different feel). What is most impressive to me is the character designs. Tezuka easily has one of the most varied character designs that I have seen. Unlike many different designs, the design isn't dependent upon the upon the hair nor clothes, but rather the face of the person. Due to the old art, quite a few will be turned away, especially some of the people who are quite new to anime and manga.

Overall: It meets its potential. My only complaint is that there is not an extensive usage of symbolism and literary techniques to add depth, nor is it highly experimental. It is as I would define as a "progressive" comic. Separating the medium from other ones (animation most particularly), but in a more conservative way rather then the ground-breaking and experimental works of many of the works of underground and art comics (see Maus for that). A hugely enjoyable work that doesn't require much require intense thought. Lastly, there are mature themes (such as rape) presented, so this is definitely not for kids.

Availability: Despite only being 5 volumes, it is quite a scare manga to find with volume 1 going for even more then volume 4 of Phoenix. Since it was Tezuka's first work published in its entirety in English, it has been out of print for quite a while (started in 1995 and continued for only a few years). But for some reason all other volumes have been quite easy to find. With the exception of the first volume, I haven't really been able to find any scans. Since this is Tezuka that were talking about, there has to be scans of them out there, but I am at a lose to explain why all of them are so hard to find. In the past couple of years, there has been an immense surge in an interest of his works with the publication of Black Jack, Buddha, Phoenix, and MW (to name a few). So it is only a matter of time before it is republished in the US. But when is still iffy.

EDIT: It is currently being scanned, check for a comment by Curropt ID in the The Tokusyu Manga Club.

-Pierre Bezukhov
P.S.: Feedback is most welcome.

This is the story of three men named Adolf. It is a story with the grand sweep of myth, something that seems to rise from the unconsciousness, as told through a Japanese observer. At the opening of this story, in the early 1930's, it was a popular given name. Two Adolfs lived in Kobe, as part of the German expat community: one the son of a Jewish baker, and one the son of a Nazi diplomat. The coincidences interweaving their lives are so profound they should seem contrived, but they play out organically in the cadence of tragedy.

This is more painful to read the second ... (third, etc) time. The suspense is still there, but it is tinged with the tragedy of inevitability. That, I hold, is a hallmark of truly great storytelling. It is compelling no matter how many times you read it, and you realize different things each time you do. The dramatic irony that comes of the reader knowing history is brilliantly rendered. This is a masterwork of literature, skillfully plotted, driven by a vague sense of futility. And I am struck, each time, by the clarity of perspective with which Tezuka writes. It is a stunningly anti-war work, ruthlessly critical of the Japanese military state and the Nazi regime, but the atrocities of each country are laid bare. They are all guilty of unimaginable violence. The Manchurian campaign is to this day glossed over in Japanese textbooks (America is no less guilty of this sort of censorship of its history), but discussed openly in the story. The American firebombing of Kobe (recall most Japanese buildings were woodframe at this time) was an attack of equal cruelty as the Blitz and the atomic bombings. The Pearl Harbor ships were essentially dragged out as bait, the seamen left to die. The Russian army raped and pillaged Berlin with impunity, taking revenge, as is so often the case in war, on those who had no control over the situation from the beginning, many of whom were just quietly trying to survive. The Jews were ruthlessly persecuted by the Nazis, but then persecuted the Palestinians with equal ruthlessness, and the Palestinians responded equally heartlessly against Israeli citizens.

I am taken by the honesty with which Tezuka portrays a person's awareness of his own malleability, foreshadowed by a young Adolf Kaufmann not wanting to go to a Hitler Youth school, because he knows it will brainwash him to hate Jews--even though his best friend is Jewish. Even knowing this, he does indeed become a Nazi ideologue. This is one of the most stunning aspects of the story, not often explored honestly in literature, anymore. Usually, we assume awareness of the effect ideology will have on us is portrayed as sufficient to prevent its effects. It is so often not so.

Sexism and racism aside (of which there is plenty in his works), Tezuka was a man leagues ahead of his time and place. I ask the reader to keep this in mind with any of his works, and I am glad they were reproduced accurately. If we censor the casual prejudices of brilliant writers in hindsight, to make their works more palatable to contemporary audiences, we erase a record of how pervasive these prejudices actually were, to be entrenched even in people who truly believed in egalitarianism. It still took courage to write this stuff, even as late as the 1980's. As recently as this year, Miyazaki Hayao was catching heat for anti-imperialist themes in his latest movie, which takes place during the war. That's 2013.

I find it interesting Tezuka implies Hitler was a man who abstained from all forms of stimulants, as shown in a brief dinner scene. The pop culture version I had always heard here in the US was that he was a vegetarian, but a meth addict in his later years. I do not know if that was the Japanese version of Hitler that existed in the public mind back in the 80's. Maybe Tezuka was illustrating his hypocrisy.

Overall, I most highly recommend Message to Adolf, even if you don't normally read manga or comics at all. It is just a damn good story, and an illustration of the potential of graphic novels to portray stories of equal nuance and power as prose.

Serviceable, fair, decent. a real lukewarm affair. 'Message to Adolf' seeks to be an epic of a comic, and while achieving that to some success it is ultimately underwhelming.

A big part of this springs from the fact that the core premise, the reason we're to be so invested in this story, what is meant to get us hoked, is so terribly uninteresting. It evokes zero emotion. Combine that with a bit of a boring cast and a series of events that leave no lasting impression and you have this comic.

Of the three Adolf's, only one is really interesting in any sort of way and ... it is really frustrating to see him make some very illogical decisions. The rest of the cast is similarly flawed but their greatest flaw is fading to irrelevance. As you read through, because of the little time you have with them you really couldn't care less about the greater majority of them.

The same could really be said for the storey. As I've already said, the initial premise is boring and while it is developed decently(I have my own problems with the execution) there is never a reason to care. After the first couple of chapters it really does become a chore to read through this. This happens, That happens but it really has no effect on the reader.

As previously stated, this isn't a bas comic and may very well end up as somebody's next favourite. I just do not believe that it succeeds in reaching the goals it sets for itself and think that it is rather underwhelming and disappointing in that regard.