Black Jack: Difference between revisions

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A manga series about an unlicensed physician who charges immense fees to use his miraculous healing skills.

 

 

Black Jack himself is a mysterious but distinctive figure, with a scarred, discolored face and a white shock in his black hair. He lives alone in an [[Big Fancy House|isolated beach house]] at the beginning of the series, before taking in Pinoko. Black Jack is a brilliant surgeon, but has no license (the reasons for this vary a bit between adaptations.) He charges enormous fees to wealthy clients, but often helps the needy for just as much as they can pay, or even for free, and if his operations fail generally refunds the money paid. His behavior is often [[Dr. Jerk|abrupt to the point of rudeness]], and he has a rather [[Deadpan Snarker|dark sense of humor]]. Often, he will arrange circumstances to teach [[An Aesop]] to the guest character of the story.

Other manga series have featured an [[Captain Ersatz]] or [[Lawyer-Friendly Cameo]] of Black Jack when the script calls for a doctor.

 

 

* [[Action Girl]]: Watou, who aside of being a [[Kendo Team Captain]] can defend herself well when unarmed.

* [[Adaptation Dye Job]]: Kiriko's white hair gets a [[You Gotta Have Blue Hair|blue tinge]] in the [[OAV|OAVs]]. Pinoko's red hair gets changed to [[Real Is Brown|dark brown]] in the [[OAV|OAVs]], then back to red in the TV anime.

* [[Artificial Human]]: Pinoko, but see below...

* [[Art Major Biology]]: Black Jack makes biology his bitch on a regular basis.

* [[Author Appeal]]: Tezuka was a licensed doctor himself.

* [[Author Tract]]: Mostly against abuses in the medical establishment, but usually saved by good characterization & Blackjack's sheer awesome. One example that really sticks out, though is ''Dingoes'', a [[Green Aesop]] about the dangers of pesticides & introduced species that erroneously attributes the arrival of the titular beasts in Australia & subsequent damage they caused to the ecosystem to European colonists, when they actually predate Europe's colonial age & are believed to have been brought by an earlier wave of humans in prehistoric times. Whether this was intentional on Tezuka's part in order to shoehorn in an anti-colonialist message, or if it was a simple mistake is unclear. At any rate, considering this episode also features [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Blackjack extracting a parasite from his own intestines while the Dingoes are trying to eat him]], it's hard to bear a grudge.

** Incidentally, though dingoes predate European colonists, many of the other placental mammals currently living there do not.

** He once spent the time held hostage in an operating room memorizing the patient's internal anatomy so that when the lights went out he'd be able to operate in complete darkness.

* [[Back-Alley Doctor]]: Black Jack himself. He's usually careful not to use the word "doctor" to describe himself.

* [[Badass Bookworm]]: One of the few doctors capable of using scalpels to ''deflect bullets''.

* [[Batman Gambit]]: Black Jack often pulls these to teach his Aesops or favor his patients.

* [[Belated Backstory]]: It's not until much later in the manga (and several episodes in the anime) that we learn Black Jack's birth name, why he became a physician, why he's estranged from the medical establishment, or how he got those scars.

* [[Berserk Button]]: Any semblance of composure Black Jack has will instantly dissolve once [[The Rival|Dr. Kiriko]] is so much as mentioned.

** Or if someone badmouths his mentor, Dr. Honma.

*** And if Black Jack even ''insinuates'' interest in another woman, [[Clingy Jealous Girl|Pinoko will not be happy.]]

** Lay not a hand on a friend of Watou. She'll go [[Mama Bear]] on you. And since she's a [[Badass Normal]] [[Action Girl]]...

* [[Betty and Veronica]]: In the TV anime; Sharaku is the Betty, Black Jack's the Veronica, and Pinoko's the Archie.

** Black Jack built little Pinoko from a teratogenous cystoma living as a parasitic twin and a plastic exoskeleton to replace the body parts she'd never developed. While ''drunk''.

** That's nothing compared to one of the surgeries he's done on himself. In the middle of the Australian Outback. While ''fighting dingos''. ''[[Iron Man (film)|WITH A BOX OF SCRA-]]''... sorry, got confused there for a second.

* [[Body Horror]]: Oodles, but "The Face Sore" runs on it.

* [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]]: from people complaining it's too late and there's not enough ''panels'' left, to guys jumping and bonking their head on the panel border.

* [[Bunny Ears Lawyer]]: Black Jack again; anyone who wants his services has to put up with his many eccentricities.

** However, a special mention goes to the man's prices!

*** In many cases, those prices are just walls to make sure the patient is willing to do ''anything'' for recovery. But if you have the money, he ''will'' make sure you pay...

* [[Butterfly of Death and Rebirth]]: At the end of the chapter where Doctor Kiriko is introduced, after Jack saves the patient he was set on euthanizing. At mild provocation from Jack, he illustrates that his philosophy hasn't changed one bit; picking up a wounded butterfly from the steps they were conversing on... and crushing it. He then starts to leave, insinuating Jack is a fool for spending time saving lives.

* [[Canon Immigrant]]: Sharaku and Watou, who had appeared in other Tezuka works (originally in ''[[The Three-Eyed One]]'') before they became regulars (sorta) in the new series. Sharaku was even a more or less recurrent villain in some [[Astro Boy (manga)|Astro Boy]] continuities, with Watou as his ward and [[Morality Pet]].

** Sharaku and Wato are frequent [[Canon Immigrant|Canon Immigrants]], so much that many don't seem to realize (or remember) that Sharaku was the villain ([[Jekyll and Hyde|and the hero]]) ''in his own series.''

* [[Car Fu]]: Black Jack seems fond of this.

** It's Anglicanized in the fan-dubs of the TV series as "Omigewdness!" The manga translations by Vertical leave it as it is.

** The episode "A Teacher and a Pupil" begins with a bored Pinoko idly watching kiddy TV -- starring two goofballs who introduce themselves as Acchon and Burike. "Together, we're ACCHON-BURIKE!!" And then she turns the TV off. In the manga there was never any attempt at explaining this or any of her other nonsense exclamations.

* [[Celibate Hero]]: Black Jack is usually of the "Love is a Distraction" variety, but sometimes brings up the "I'm a Danger Magnet" argument. However, see Jerkass Facade.

* [[Chick Magnet]]: Kuwata, Megumi, Yuri...Black Jack gets around, 'kay?

* [[Compulsory School Age]]: Pinoko tried to go to high school, but the entrance exam alone was too stressful for her to handle (it didn't help that she didn't study). Black Jack then enrolled her in a class with other kids her apparent age, but due to her headstrong nature, that didn't work out either.

* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]: Frequently. There are also several corrupt doctors, as well.

* [[Dogged Nice Guy]]: Sharaku, in regards to Pinoko.

* [[Doomed Moral Victor]]: Many of Black Jack's [[La Résistance|politically involved]] patients.

* [[Driven to Suicide]]: A number of Black Jack's patients end up under his care out of suicidal tendencies. One of the sadder cases is {{spoiler|Yoshie Momota in "Yet False the Days".}}

* [[Eagle Land]]: The OVA series realistically portrayed the United States, but also created a fictional Eagleland country for an [[Author Tract]] episode.

* [[It Never Gets Any Easier]]: It certainly doesn't.

* [[Jerkass Facade]]: Black Jack actively ''strives'' to look like a bad guy, especially when it's for the patient's own good.

* [[Kendo Team Captain]]: Watou is a female example.

* [[Kirk Thornton]]: Dr. Black Jack (in English dub).

* [[Land Mine Goes Click]]: The incident where Black Jack was scarred and injured and then lost his mother.

** In most versions, anyway, though in the original manga his house had been built on top of an unexploded bomb from WWII.

* [[Lighter and Softer]]: The TV anime compared to the manga.

* [[List of Transgressions]] In one story, Black Jack's school friend, Makube, is a criminal. He gets detained by the ICPO.

Makube: [[I Resemble That Remark|I'll cop to public urination]]. }}

* [[Locked Into Strangeness]] / [[Skunk Stripe]]

* [[Magic Plastic Surgery]]: As might be expected, Black Jack can pull this off with no problem, though he's done some reasonable work on that front (removing a noticeable scar, etc.).

* [[Only Six Faces]]: It's rather strange to see the same [[Reused Character Design|"actor"]] playing a degenerate gangster who's been sentenced to death one week and a heroic scientist a couple weeks later.

* [[Open-Heart Dentistry]]

* [[Parental Abandonment]]: Black Jack's mother was killed from wounds she sustained from a landmine blast while his father left both of them while she was still holding on. Also, when Black Jack got the crazy idea to turn a patient's removed teratoma into a cute little girl and introduce her as her sister, the first thing said cute girl did was violently call her older sister out since she wanted the teratoma to be killed; the woman naturally freaked out and refused to accept her as family, leaving the girl in Black Jack's custody.

** Several of Black Jack's patients have also been abandoned or neglected by their parents.

* [[Plucky Girl]]: Pinoko.

* [[Psychic Surgery]]

* [[Rage Against the Heavens]]: "You, so-called God! You are cruel!"

* [[Reused Character Design]]: A signature style of Tezuka. Black Jack is special for his work in that Black Jack and Pinoko are only reused when he specifically is trying to cameo them in other works. Dr. Hounma, who's also a rather unique design, is used again in nearly every major Tezuka work, and prominently in ''[[Phoenix]]'', showing Hounma's continued [[Reincarnation|Reincarnations]] all end up as the [[Woobie]].

* [[Ripped from the Headlines]]: A few of the chapters reflect various major stories in Japan at the time. The delinquent girl adopting a baby abandoned in a coin locker? Japan really ''was'' experiencing a bizarre rash of infants abandoned in coin lockers around the time the story was written.

* [[Sadist Teacher]]: Subverted in the manga and last TV series, where the local sadist teacher is actually a good person who ''willingly'' puts on the "sadist" mask to toughen up his students... but ends up terrorizing one of them and almost causes a tragedy.

* [[Second Place Is for Winners]]: The episode where Largo is introduced.

* [[Shadow Archetype]]: Dr. Kiriko (aka "Mozart"). A doctor who served in wartime, he believes in helping patients die painlessly when there is no chance for recovery. He's not ''evil'', as such, but where Black Jack will do anything possible to make a patient live, [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Dr. Kiriko will choose euthanasia rather than prolong the patient's suffering]]. Naturally, the physicians clash at times [[Enemy Mine|but must cooperate at others]]. To his credit, if he discovers that the patient ''has'' a chance of recovery, guess who he turns to?

** Black Jack actually had three shadows, though Kiriko was the only one who stuck. An acupuncturist who disdained traditional medicine appeared a few times, and an idealistic doctor who worked within the system appeared exactly once.

* [[Steven Ulysses Perhero]]: Black Jack's real name is Kuroo Hazama. As he explains himself once, "Kuro" means "black" while the second "o" can be short for "otoko", meaning "man". Thus "Black Jack" is a loose English translation of his actual name.

** Given Tezuka's fondness for using [[Punny Name|English puns for his character's names]], it's interesting how "Kuroo" sounds an awful lot like "crow". Literary analysis goggles, ''on''!

* [[Super Doc]]: Black Jack.

* [[Super Drowning Skills]]: Pinoko is too heavy to swim (except in water with an unhealthy level of salt)

[[Category:Anime]]

[[Category:Manga]]