Black Jack 6
Posted: August 8, 2009 Filed under: Black Jack 3 Comments »Osamu Tezuka – Vertical – 2009 – 17 volumes
On one hand, having just finished the volume, the moralistic twist at the end of the last chapter has me in shock. An officer who condemned three improving patients to death at the hands of Dr. Kiriko winds up slipping and falling on a cliff, and Dr. Kiriko’s laugh as he says he knows how to fix him is quite chilling in the context of the story.
On the other hand, this is one of those volumes where the morals at the end of each chapter wear on you. The second-to-last chapter in particular bothered me because of its ambiguity, but I think Black Jack’s position is supposed to be ambiguous, always. A little girl who had called Black Jack a devil at the beginning of the story asks him at the end why a devil would save the life of her mother. It’s unclear whether the meaning is that Black Jack isn’t really a devil, or if we were supposed to ponder the fact that Black Jack only found himself at that hospital because he was being paid well to perform the operation by the staff there. Is he an angel, or is he a devil driven by money? Such is the question behind most of the Black Jack series.
That particular chapter also featured the entertaining plot device of having Black Jack impersonate someone else. Now, when you think of Black Jack, you think of the huge scar on his face and his two-tone hair. But let’s say you cover that up with a beard and a wig, maybe he’d look just like whoever it is that you want him to impersonate if said person was in an accident that may have left a scar on their face. Except Black Jack also has a mismatched skin graft on his face, so his skin is actually two different colors and he would never look like anyone else, ever.
I liked this volume a lot for the strange medical conditions it showcased. It wasn’t quite as out there as volume 3, which is still my favorite, but it did have some of the most unusual cases yet. Black Jack deals with a case of “Lion-Faced Disease,” explains a hereditary condition that involves a shorter-than-usual ring finger, operates on a boy whose entire body is ossifying/”turning to stone,” and all sorts of other rare diseases, cancers, tumors, uh… and a man who kicks a rock towards a train and it ricochets and goes through a window and nearly kills his wife. You know. Most of the stories in this volume were compelling because of the strange and extreme extent of the things that Black Jack was being forced to cure.
My two favorite chapters were the one where the boy turned to stone (which has a very twisted outcome) and a later story where a boy was brought back to life, only to be tried for murder. I figured there would be some greater purpose to the requests to save his life, but there wasn’t. Black Jack’s point was that it was such a waste to offer him a second chance only to take it away when he’d already opted for suicide. My question came more from the fact that… why would the chief of police try so hard to revive the boy? Why? Why, when he knew exactly what would happen and made no effort to stop it? This was a case of the moral… really not making much sense, because normal people do not act this way. This story does feature an absolutely lovely panel/full page illustration when the boy makes the decision to end his life at the beginning of the story. This story also fulfilled my Lamp/Hamegg requirement, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned before is all I ask of a volume of Tezuka manga.
Actually, Lamp appears again in the very next story. It’s strange he seems to appear in Black Jack as law enforcement, but my reason for bringing him up here was that the final panel in this story was actually the most touching moment I’d ever seen in Black Jack. Lamp had been trying to bust Black Jack for practicing without a license, and gave him the impossible task of curing his son. He expected him to fail, just like all the other “phony” doctors. But he succeeds. And the final panel is a wonderful one where the two characters pass each other on the street and Lamp doesn’t find the words for gratitude. The expressions on both character’s faces and the unspoken thing between them was just lovely.
And that’s all I have for you this time around, friends.
Adolf was one of the first manga I ever read, and at the time I loved it. I read two volumes of Buddha, and I never really felt like reading the rest. And I’ve read the first three volumes of Phoenix, and I like that even less. I feel like I ought to read more of Phoenix, and then maybe I will understand why everybody praises it to the skies, but I read manga for fun, and reading Phoenix feels like a chore.
So the question for me is … would I enjoy this as much as I enjoyed Adolf all those years ago, or would I enjoy it as little as I enjoy Phoenix? I realize the only way to find out would be to actually try Black Jack, but it’s not a prospect which fills me with glee.
I understand. I like Phoenix a lot, and I really did enjoy it, but it took some doing to get into the stories in each volume. I started reading it because I felt like I should, but I don’t think I would have continued past the first two volumes if I hadn’t bought the first four or five together. The later ones really are better, but as much as I like it, I can see how it’s not a very entertaining read. Phoenix suffers pretty severely from over-ambitious and ambiguous themes, as good as some of the stories are.
The thing about Black Jack is that it’s hard to compare it to either Adolf or Phoenix. It’s closer to Astro Boy, though Astro Boy is probably the least readable of all the Tezuka stuff available in English, sadly. Black Jack doesn’t have a continuous plot, just a few reoccurring characters that pop in every now and again. The chapters are all one-shots, and are usually around 20 pages and are fairly action-packed and entertaining. The stories do try to include morals and lessons in most cases, but these feel tacked-on more than anything and may just be a byproduct of it running in a magazine for young boys. With the one-shot chapters, it can’t really do any of the things that made Adolf truly amazing, but it also keeps it from going off on the strange tangents that made Phoenix a bit of a chore to read. The chapters do manage to be pretty exciting again and again though, and the characters somehow showing up at Black Jack’s door with things like a parasitic twin or Lion-Faced Disease never really gets old. I’m guessing you won’t *love* it, but it might be worth picking up a volume to read.
Ode to Kirihito and MW are the only other two Tezuka series I would recommend. Ode to Kirihito approaches Adolf levels of greatness, and I really loved it, but it also has a bit of Phoenix’s problem of being over-ambitious. It’s not nearly as bad as Phoenix though, and the story’s pretty epic. MW doesn’t really set out to teach a lesson, and is more about a psychopath running around and his lover trying to stop him, but it’s also not anywhere near as good as Adolf since it’s in the nature of the story not to really be able to understand the characters as much as you can in Adolf.
[...] in Blue) Megan M. on vol. 1 of Ballad of a Shinigami (There it is, Plain as Daylight) Connie on vol. 6 of Black Jack (Slightly Biased Manga) Julie on Color (Manga Maniac Cafe) Lissa Pattillo on vol. 2 of Emma [...]