Black Jack 5

First things first: one of the opening chapters in this book is about an armless boy who is something of an expert abacus user.  Black Jack gives him new arms and he is now competing at a national level in abacus competitions.  Apparently abacus competitions are… something like spelling bees?  This is one of those things that blew my mind because I’m too young to imagine this sort of thing.  Very rarely do antiquated things like this strike me as fantastic, but this did.

If they’re not real, that’s even better.  My hat would be off to you all the same, Black Jack.

Also, I haven’t thought of Pink Lady in years.  The extent of my Pink Lady knowledge is that there was a Pink Lady show starring the two women and Jeff Altman that had something to do with Sid and Marty Krofft.  Apparently it was one of the worst shows ever made.

Anyway.  This volume leans more on the heavily moralistic side, and I tend to prefer the insane no-strings-attached adventures of Black Jack.  We learn how to value our loved ones, when not to lose hope, when doing what comes naturally is better than forcing nature, that sort of thing.  The thing about the moralistic stories is that you can usually see the ending coming, and then it blares the lesson as loud as possible on the last page.  I enjoy the more subtle stories more.

There are still a few insane gems in the bunch, though.  Well, the stories are all pretty good, but you know what I mean.  My favorite is a story which features a takeoff on Hideshi Hino’s character designs on the 2nd or 3rd page of the chapter.  I did a double-take on the girl since the gigantic round eyes look extremely out of place in Black Jack.  The gigantic eyes are used as a symptom of Graves’ Disease in the story, but the nod to Hino is in there, too.

The most disturbing was a story at the very end called “Wolf Girl,” where Black Jack helps an outcast girl who was born with a cleft palate.  He fixes her, but tells her that the payment is that she can’t go down into the village.  She goes anyway since she wants to show off her new face to everyone who was absolutely terrible to her over the years, and is promptly killed due to military activity in the area.  I’m not sure why Black Jack didn’t explain to her his reasons for staying out of the town, it seems a much easier way to save a life than heart surgery.

Another great story was about Black Jack helping out a pair of ghosts who wanted him to save their invisible mother.  All three of the visitors died in a nearby plane crash.  Towards the end, they wanted Black Jack to join them.  It made me think of that “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” story about the elevator with the man that offered “room for one more.”

There are several stories that feature Kiriko, Black Jack’s rival and opposite, the mercy kill doctor.  His stories usually wind up being pretty heavily moralistic, as much as I like the idea behind him.

Pinoko continues to be scary.  The chapter where she winds up getting spanked and is smiling happily while it happens… while its intentions are not disturbing, the image is.  I’m sorry, Pinoko.  You’re just creepy.

There’s a chapter with an adult Rock, which is a little strange because Rock is normally portrayed as a little kid even when he’s not supposed to be.  In his story, he’s a childhood friend of Black Jack’s, so we also get a few more details on Black Jack’s background in addition to a nice story starring the evil Rock.

I may complain, but Black Jack is still one of the best series I’m reading at the moment.  I’m really surprised the stories aren’t more dated and uninteresting (like Astro Boy), but almost every single one of them manages to be entertaining and extreme to this day.  It’s incredible.