Black Jack (ブラック・ジャック Burakku Jakku?) is a manga written by Osamu Tezuka in the 1970s, dealing with the medical adventures of the eponymous doctor Black Jack.
Black Jack consists of hundreds of short, self-contained episodes that are typically about 20 pages long. Black Jack has also been animated into an OVA, two television series (directed by Tezuka's son Makoto Tezuka) and two movies. Black Jack is Tezuka's third most famous manga, after Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. In 1977, it won the 1st Kodansha Manga Award forshōnen.
Storyline
Most of the episodes involve Black Jack doing some good deed, for which he rarely gets recognition—often curing the poor and destitute for free, or teaching a capitalist fat cat and his pompous colleagues a lesson in humility. They frequently end with a good, humane person enduring hardship, often unavoidable death, to save others.
Osamu Tezuka drew on his knowledge as a physician in writing Black Jack, and the manga contains frequent medical details. However, Tezuka chose to generally eschew medical plausibility in his manga: Black Jack is superhuman, regularly performing spectacular and impossible feats of surgical virtuosity, such as operating in absolute darkness completely from memory, and transplanting body parts without any risk of rejection. (However, rejection is accounted for in some anime episodes.) The Black Jack stories also frequently include pseudoscience and science fictionelements.
Characters
- Black Jack
- Pinoko
- Pinoko (ピノコ?) is Black Jack's sidekick, a little girl constructed by him who is actually aTeratogenous Cystoma (a sort of tumor also known as a teratoma). As seen in "Teratogenous Cystoma", she was a rare type of parasitic twin, living in one of Black Jack's patients' bodies for eighteen years until Black Jack extracted her and gave her a real body, a plastic exo-skeleton that gives her the aspect of a normal little girl. However, this exoskeleton does limit some of her abilities, such as not being able to swim for long durations. After being rejected by her twin sister, she started to live with him in his house. She always helps the doctor by doing house-chores and even acting as an assistant to some of his operations. She often acts ascomic relief in Black Jack, physically and in many ways mentally appearing to be a girl of elementary school age, but claiming to be a girl of eighteen and engaged to him, despite that he mostly treats her as a daughter.
- Pinoko's main form of comic relief is yelling アッチョンブリケ(acchonburike), equivalent to "Oh my goodness!" in English, whilst pressing her cheeks together with her hands when something surprising happens. Sometimes, this is translated as "OHMIGEWDNESS" to fit the phrase being distorted by the action.
- Wato
- One of the original characters from TV series. Wato is the leader of kendou club in Ooana senior high school, always speaking out from a sense of justice, and the best friend of Kumiko. She is also famous for being late for school and a sweet tooth for doughnuts. Owing to her brother’s illness, she also becomes a positive supporter and friend of Black Jack. Her father is a famous archeologist works around southern Asia.
- Kumiko Honma
- An adapted character from original manga to TV series, who was only an immigrant from China but adapted into a student of Ooana senior high school. She is Jotaro Honma’s only daughter and the waitress in Tom's café. Contrary to her bosom friend Wato, Kumiko holds an introversive and attentive personality. She also very appreciates Black Jack and her foster father Tetsu for saving her life.
- Sharaku
- One of the original characters from TV series, a schoolboy attending Shiokou junior high school. Once he was saved by Black Jack, he has been Pinoko's best friend and is clearly infatuated with her. Sharaku himself is a bald, clever, gentle boy with a vivid imagination.
- Largo
- An adapted character from original manga to TV series. Largo was a stray dog found by Pinoko, Wato and Sharaku during a car accident. Originally in manga he died in the collapse accident of Black Jack's home but was saved to be the housedog in anime. He usually seems lazy but shows a sharp nature in every emergency.
- Tetsu
- An adapted character from original manga to TV series, the host of Tom’s café. Owing to his past gratitude of Jotaro Honma, he fosters Kumiko to live with him. In the past, he was a nameless magician and changed into a pickpocket.
- Biwamaru
- Biwamaru (琵琶丸?) is an acupuncture doctor who specializes in needle techniques. He made his first appearance in episode 51. He is blind, but he can walk on his own to many places, and goes wandering everywhere where his sensitive nose takes him, since he is able to smell out the whereabouts of people who are sick. He cures his patients without accepting any money in return, making him homeless. Biwamaru carries a walking stick and a huge purse-like bag with his medical equipment. He dislikes operations, saying that humans are not supposed to be operated too many times.
- Biwamaru believes that his needle techniques are the perfect solution to any medical problem. He often cures Black Jack's patients, causing Black Jack to feel unhappy and annoyed. One day he found a small kid (who was also Black Jack's patient), but he made a terrible mistake. He had thought that his needle techniques were perfect, but what he didn't know was that the small child had a fear of needles. Her condition became worse. Black Jack was furious and intended to show the proud Biwamaru about his mistake. Biwamaru was grateful when Black Jack saved the child's life. Later on that night, Biwamaru cured Black Jack's large intestine, which Black Jack has attempted to treat through surgery, by piercing a needle into his foot to return his kindness.
- Black Queen
- First making her appearance in "Black Queen", Kuwata Konomi was a doctor specializing in amputations, thought to be heartless by many, earning her the nickname 'Black Queen' in the medical world. She is engaged to Rock (referred to as Makube Rokuro in the TV series, probably to make up for the lack of "Carved Seal" episode), but her being infamous sends troubles for the couple. She met Black Jack, drunk, in a bar, addressing herself as the Black Queen. The former is impressed by their similarities and falls in love. The end was bittersweet as he later discovered that Rock was actually her fiancé.
- Voiced by: Atsuko Tanaka, Naoko Matsui
- Megumi Kisaragi
- Black Jack's tragic love, they met during their internship. She stayed up late at work and cared more about the patients than everyone else. She discovers that Kuroo Hazama has been the one looking after her whenever she walks alone at night. Later, she reveals to have ovarian cancer, and is afraid to tell Black Jack because of her fear that having these parts removed will interfere with their relationship. Nevertheless, the couple confess their love before the operation while Megumi is "still a woman" (In reality, a hysterectomy oroophorectomy can affect sexual function, but the side effects associated with these procedures are not as extreme as those depicted in this story).
- Afterwards, Megumi changed her name to Kei, a male name, and started living her life as a man, treating sick patients as a ship's doctor.
- Dr. Jotaro Honma
- The reason why Black Jack pursued the career in medicine, mentor and life-saver, he played as the young boy's father-figure after the tragedy struck. Kagemitsu Hazama, Black Jack's father, flew to Macau, China with his new wife Renka, abandoning his son Kuro and his first wife (the reasons for Kagemitsu's behavior are later explained in the Black Jack 21 series). The boy suffered from paralysis in all four limbs and spent many lonely years in a wheelchair until he regained the use of them. Dr. Honma wrote a book about the miracle, as seen in "The Leg of an Ant."
- Dr. Honma dies because of old age in the episode four of Black Jack 4 Miracles of Life "Just like a Pearl" after a failed surgical attempt by the man he inspired to revive him. However, he plays an important role in Black Jack 21, since he has once worked at the "Noir Project."
- Dr. Honma is "played" by Saruta, a member of Tezuka's "star system" who appears in multiple volumes of Tezuka's Phoenix and other manga stories by Tezuka.
- Dr. Kiriko
- Dr. Kiriko (ドクター・キリコ?), the "death doctor", is another shadowy doctor, traveling the world like Black Jack. When Kiriko was a war doctor, he saw many patients in great pain, and got into the habit of using euthanasia. He often appears in the manga, attempting to kill terminally ill patients which Black Jack wants to save. He is so dedicated to euthanasia that he once attempted to kill himself when he got a rare infectious disease. Although he is not exactly a villain or primary antagonist, he is often considered Black Jack's opposite: While Kiriko leads patients to their deaths, Black Jack leads patients to their lives.
- Though arch-rivals, they have been in situations where they had to cooperate in order to survive or to accomplish a task, and manage to do so with good results. Whenever he is confronted by Black Jack after a successful operation which avoided the death alternative, Kiriko simply replies with something along the lines of "I'm a doctor as well, you know".
- In the Clinical Chart OVA series, Dr. Kiriko is introduced only as Mozart, in homage to his affinity for classical music. In this OVA, it is also shown that Kiriko is not greedy for money like Black Jack nor did he consider his style of Euthanasia as a 'Solution to all sicknesses' as demonstrated by his act of charity as he provided basic nutrients and some food to a patient suffering from what appeared to be severeanorexia at one point.
- In the same series of OVA, it is shown that he travels by Motorcycle and shows a proficiency in mechanics and music.
- Voiced by: Kazuhiro Yamaji
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