Black Jack an amazing classic manga

Posted Oct. 21, 2021

By Jonas Hobson-Reeves

Staff Reporter

Black Jack is a groundbreaking Japanese manga written by the late mangaka Osamu Tezuka. The main character is Hazama Kuro, better known as Black Jack; an unlicensed surgeon who will treat anyone who can pay his unreasonable rates. He is globally known for being a miracle doctor whose patients always get off the table themselves.

The story is original, written in chapters and does not follow a conclusive storyline, but is like a collection of short stories with some characters having repeat appearances. The way Tezuka constructed this story was really well done. This story for the most part took itself very seriously, and every time he wrote about someone getting injured he would consult a doctor for the injuries, and while he took liberties with how good Black Jack was that he, for the most part, made sure Black Jack was doing real operations.

Black Jack himself is a patient of the great Doctor Honma who is Black Jack's mentor and savior. When he was young Black Jack couldn’t walk because of an accident and Doctor Honma fixed his legs performing a miracle which inspired Black Jack to also become a doctor. The art style, however is really outdated and the art itself is kinda bubbly and round. There aren't very many straight lines, and it can definitely be weird to go from the more modern art styles in stuff like Jujutsu Kaisen or One Punch Man, which both have amazing art styles that blow readers away, which is a very stark contrast to Tezuka's style, which feels very old because it is. The side characters in this manga are pretty stereotypical by modern standards, but Tezuka wrote this in the 1970s, so it was super innovative then, and even then, I still personally like the way all of the characters were handled. Pinoko, the doctor's assistant, was someone's ingrown twin. Black Jack separated them and Pinoko became her own person and chose to follow the doctor in his journeys. My personal favorite character, besides the doctor himself, is Kiriko. He is written beautifully as an adversary for Black Jack to overcome. Kiriko is a different type of doctor who kills his patients on purpose with a special injection. Kiriko appears the most. Out of all of the side characters, he is always showing up the worst time for Black Jack, and giving him a serious problem every time, trying to put his patients out of their misery while Black Jack is certain he can save them. The short stories that Tezuka writes are always different and usually very heavy. For example, he might write a story about a pilot who ran away from his country in a war so the doctor can treat his son, and the son might survive, but the father was hung for treason. Or he could tell the story of a young pianist who loses his fingers and Black Jack has to reconnect them, but they won’t let him operate until the kids fingers can no longer be reconnected.

The story does have some downfalls and it is a bit weird to read in the 21st century, since writing has evolved so much in the past 50 years. The stories can have abrupt endings, but I like that it feels more realistic, but it can feel weird. A lot of the side characters don’t feel very fleshed out, and we don’t know much about them, but I like that because the main character only sees them as much as the reader, so he doesn’t know anymore about them than they do. Pinoko is the most fleshed out character, besides the doctor. She is in almost every story after she becomes a character, and she is usually comic relief. She has a weird speech pattern, making her sound funny. She is technically 18, but she has the body of a 7-year-old, which is a popular Japanese trope. Throughout the story, Black Jack has many interactions with other doctors who don’t buy into the hype that people give him. Usually they are proven wrong in a way that would make anyone feel bad for them. Some other notable series Tezuka either co-wrote or wrote, include Pluto, Astro Boy, Kimba and the White Lion (the inspiration for Lion King) and Dororo. Tezuka himself is somewhat considered the grandfather of manga, his series Astro Boy was one of the very first popular anime’s and caused a lot of interest in the genre as a whole.