Slightly Biased Manga

This is really kind of hard to read.  It’s quite brutal in its depictions of the Nazis, and its made worse by all of it being true.  It broke my heart to see the sweet little boy that didn’t want to go to Nazi school do the terrible things to his former associates that he did here.  The transformation of Adolf Kaufmann has so far been the hardest thing for me, especially since he hasn’t lost all his judgment (which is apparent later on in the volume), so it’s hard to understand why he can do some things and not others.

While Adolf Kaufmann is off committing Nazi atrocities and getting buddy-buddy with Hitler, I’m glad Toge is spared and catches several breaks.  I couldn’t handle Adolf killing people and Toge getting beat up simultaneously in every chapter.  Toge only takes one beating early on, and then its somewhat smooth sailing for him.

Also, I was wrong about Lamp and Hamegg last time.  Apparently Hamegg didn’t die.  I had thought that he had either been shot by Lamp, which would be truly tragic, or had fallen to his death since his body is shown motionless at the end of the last volume.  The aftermath of that final incident turns out to be good for both the good and bad guys involved.

You know, sometimes the art style and the way the characters look here reminds me of Naoki Urasawa’s style.  There are some very few character expressions which… just look so much like Urasawa, to the point where if you told me it was possible he drew them, I would believe you.  Take that for what it’s worth.

You may not get this from my ramblings, but this series really is fantastic.  It’s not over-the-top in the same way that Apollo’s Song and Ode to Kirihito, and it’s not quite as… ambitious, I suppose, as Phoenix, but it’s epic and wonderful and plays the gamut of emotions and does what it needs to do almost perfectly in every way.  It’s over the top in its own way, and it’s ambitious in its own way, but it’s doing everything it needs to do and saying so much with just a few characters and 200 pages per volume.  It’s deep, I understand pretty much everything that’s going on and all the implications of the actions, and it’s just marvelous.  I can see this series as a gateway to serious manga more than anything else I’ve read, I think.