Manga like Adolf ni Tsugu

MONSTER

Also known as Monster.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Mystery , Psychological , Thriller

Everyone faces uncertainty at some point in their lives. Even a brilliant surgeon like Kenzo Tenma is no exception. But there’s no way he could have known that his decision to stop chasing professional success and instead concentrate on his oath to save peoples’ lives would result in the birth of an abomination. The questions of good and evil now take on a terrifyingly real dimension.

Years later, in Germany during the tumultuous post-reunification period, middle-aged childless couples are being killed one after another. The serial killer’s identity is known. The reasons why he kills are not. Dr. Tenma sets out on a journey to find the killer’s twin sister, who may hold some clues to solving the enigma of the “Monster.”



Tags: Seinen , Conspiracy , Tragedy , Philosophy , Twins , Amnesia , Fugitive , Noir , Foreign , Male Protagonist , Memory Manipulation , Primarily Adult Cast , Historical , Detective , Ensemble Cast , Police , Medicine , Time Skip , Crossdressing , Orphan , Adoption , Suicide , Torture , Gore , Achronological Order , Assassins

NeuN

Status: Finished
Genres: Action , Drama , Thriller

The story unfolds in Nazi Germany, when SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler commanded a top secret mission in Wewelsburg under the Führer. It follows Neun, the ninth child to carry Hitler's DNA, and his protector, Teo Baker, as they travel across the country on the run from the Nazis.

Tags: Historical , Military , Seinen , Tragedy , Super Power , War , Gore

MW

Also known as MW.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Psychological , Thriller

Michio Yuki has it all: looks, intelligence, a pedigree as the scion of a famous Kabuki family, a promising career at a major bank, legions of female admirers. But underneath the sheen of perfection lurks a secret with the power to shake the world to its foundations.

During a boyhood excursion to one of the southern archipelagos near Okinawa, Yuki barely survived exposure to a poison gas stored at a foreign military facility. The leakage annihilated all of the island’s inhabitants but was promptly covered up by the authorities, leaving Yuki as an unacknowledged witness—one whose sense of right and wrong, however, the potent nerve agent managed to obliterate.

Now, fifteen years later, Yuki is a social climber of Balzacian proportions, infiltrating the worlds of finance and politics by day while brutally murdering children and women by night—perversely using his Kabuki-honed skills as a female impersonator to pass himself off as the women he’s killed. His drive, however, will not be satiated with a promotion here and a rape there. Michio Yuki has a far more ominous objective: obtaining MW, the ultimate weapon that spared his life but robbed him of all conscience.

There are only two men with any hope of stopping him: one, a brilliant public prosecutor who struggles to build a case against the psychopath; the other, a tormented Catholic priest, Iwao Garai, who shares Yuki’s past—and frequently his bed.



Tags: Seinen , Politics , Conspiracy , Crossdressing , Primarily Adult Cast , Torture , Urban , Crime , Psychosexual , Religion , Nudity , Boys' Love , LGBTQ+ Themes , Bisexual , Espionage , Suicide , Age Gap , Zoophilia

Ayako

Also known as Ayako.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama

Opening a few years after the end of World War II and covering almost a quarter-century, here is comics master Osamu Tezuka’s most direct and sustained critique of Japan’s fate in the aftermath of total defeat. Unusually devoid of cartoon premises yet shot through with dark voyeuristic humor, Ayako looms as a pinnacle of Naturalist literature in Japan with few peers even in prose, the striking heroine a potent emblem of things left unseen following the war.

The year is 1949. Crushed by the Allied Powers, occupied by General MacArthur’s armies, Japan has been experiencing massive change. Agricultural reform is dissolving large estates and redistributing plots to tenant farmers—terrible news, if you’re landowners like the archconservative Tenge family. For patriarch Sakuemon, the chagrin of one of his sons coming home alive from a P.O.W. camp instead of having died for the Emperor is topped only by the revelation that another of his is consorting with “the reds.” What solace does he have but his youngest Ayako, apple of his eye, at once daughter and granddaughter?



Tags: Historical , Politics , Seinen , Espionage , Tragedy , Rural , Incest , Police , Time Skip , Yakuza , Crime , Fugitive , Nudity , Gangs , Urban , Rehabilitation

Billy Bat

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Mystery , Supernatural , Thriller

The story is set in 1949 and follows Japanese-American comic book artist Kevin Yamagata as he draws the popular detective series "Billy Bat" for "Marble Comics." When he learns he may have unconsciously copied the character from an image he saw while serving in occupied Japan, he returns to Japan to get permission to use Billy Bat from its original creator. Upon arriving there, however, he becomes embroiled in a web of murder, cover-ups, and prophecy that all leads back to Billy Bat.

It is soon evident, however, that the truth of Billy Bat's nature is far larger than Kevin could ever guess, spanning millennia and across the world.



Note: Won the Max und Moritz Prize for "Best international Comic" in 2014.

Tags: Drawing , Historical , Politics , Time Manipulation , Philosophy , Conspiracy , Ensemble Cast , Urban Fantasy , Seinen , Travel , Foreign , Achronological Order , War , Primarily Adult Cast , Time Skip , Police , Male Protagonist , Dystopian , Anachronism , Religion , Espionage , Nudity , Terrorism , Ninja , Guns , Swordplay

PLUTO

Also known as Pluto.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Mecha , Mystery , Psychological , Sci-Fi

In an ideal world where man and robots coexist, someone or something has destroyed the powerful Swiss robot Mont Blanc. Elsewhere a key figure in a robot rights group is murdered. The two incidents appear to be unrelated...except for one very conspicuous clue - the bodies of both victims have been fashioned into some sort of bizarre collage complete with makeshift horns placed by the victims' heads. Interpol assigns robot detective Gesicht to this most strange and complex case - and he eventually discovers that he too, as one of the seven great robots of the world, is one of the targets.



Tags: Seinen , Robots , Artificial Intelligence , Detective , Police , Tragedy , Urban Fantasy , Philosophy , Politics , Foreign , Anti-Hero , Memory Manipulation , Real Robot , Ensemble Cast , War , Noir , Amnesia , Conspiracy , Anachronism , Post-Apocalyptic , Male Protagonist , Cyberpunk , Cult , Suicide , Agender

Chi. Chikyuu no Undou ni Tsuite

Also known as Orb: On the Movements of the Earth.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama

In the fifteenth century, claiming that the Earth revolves around the sun was a heresy that could get believers burned at the stake. Child prodigy Rafal is introduced to the truth about the universe by his mentor, and then must flee when the Inquisition comes to mete out "God's justice." With only a peculiar pendant to guide him, will Rafal discover his master's research, and can he and other believers set the world alight?



Notes:
Winner of the 26th Annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2022.
Nominated for the 14th and 15th Manga Taisho Award, placing 2nd and 5th respectively.
Placed 10th in the 7th Annual Next Manga Award.
Nominated for the 67th Shogakukan Manga Award in 2021 in the General category.
Ranked 2nd in the Kono Manga ga Sugoi! (Male Readers Division).

Tags: Historical , Seinen , Astronomy , Foreign , Conspiracy , Fugitive , Religion , Philosophy , Tragedy , Torture , Time Skip , Gore , Primarily Male Cast

Ishi no Hana

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama

The author, who saw a microcosm of the world in the multi-racial nation of Yugoslavia, sharply depicts justice and human nature through the eyes of a boy involved in the guerrilla war against the Nazi occupation.

Tags: Shounen , Historical , Male Protagonist , War , Foreign , Primarily Teen Cast , Ensemble Cast

Big X

Status: Finished
Genres: Action , Sci-Fi

This is a grand-scale hero action adventure in which a boy given an iron body via the secret weapon "Big X," possessed by the Nazis, battles against evil. Invited to Germany during World War II, Dr. Asagumo is asked by Hitler to collaborate with him on the research of the new weapon Big X. Concerned about the possible affects of the completion of Big X, Dr. Asagumo intentionally delays the progress of the research, conspiring with his co-researcher Dr. Engel. Immediately before Germany is defeated, Dr. Asagumo implants a card inscribed with the secret of Big X in his son, Shigeru, and is then shot to death by the German army. Twenty years later, the card is discovered in the body of Shigeru, who was then living in Tokyo. Then, an organization claiming alliance with the Nazis appears, steals the card, and completes the Big X project. Dr. Engel's grandson has joined the Nazi Alliance. The completed Big X is then revealed to be a drug that can expand the human body without limitation. Recovering Big X from the enemy, Shigeru's son Akira fearlessly challenges the Nazi Alliance and Hans Engel, who are plotting to conquer the world.



Tags: Shounen , Historical , Super Power , Superhero

Tokkou no Shima

Also known as The Isle of Tokkou.

Status: Finished
Genres: Mystery , Thriller

"You will not be able to return a live after piloting these weapons" ...is the only explanation the boys got, when asked if they would like to apply to become pilots for the special new weapons. As speculation fills their minds, they're sent to a certain island... What awaits them there?



Tags: Military , Seinen , War , Historical