Black Jack Special, The Four Miracles of Life

Mmmm... Black Jack. Bringing you all the suspense of E.R. with all the drama of a soap opera, and a dash of the deepest darkest angst you can find in one delicious little package. All this combined will get you one of Tezuka Osamu's great masterpieces. It's always a good strategy to start any project like this strong, and I figured what better way to start than with the remastering of a Japanese classic? So let's start with a little background. The Black Jack TV special was created in 2003 to start off a TV series titled simply "Black Jack" that ran starting in 2004. However, all of the episodes are based on the manga serial of the same title that Tezuka Osama wrote starting from 1973, featuring the case logs of the title character, and his sidekick Pinoko.

The special incorporates four stories, from the original manga serial. However there are a few points at which some of the stories differ. For one thing, in the four stories that are part of the special, Pinoko either had yet to be 'born' in the manga, or she didn't play a huge role. Her early addition to the cast adds a small change in tone, providing slightly more comedy relief, though it does little to change the original direction of these stories. Another thing I've noticed is that the show is also much less graphic than the manga as far as the operating scenes are concerned. This is due to the fact that it was clearly expected there would be kids watching, so I'm willing to understand that little ommision.  In spite of these differences, I think the integrity of the stories has been preserved very well. Probably due to the fact that the director for the series, Tezuka Makoto, happens to be Tezuka Osamu's son. His dedication to his father's art style is definitely appreciated. (I guess I'm just a sucker for that kind of thing.) But anyway, on with the review.

Before we even get into the special we have a brief prologue focusing on Black Jack's origin story, (how in the heck he got all those scars) as we watch him (as a little boy about 4 years old) and his mother frolic on a beach until they find an unexploded mine. We also briefly meet Dr. Honma, Black Jack's savior and the person who inspires him to become a doctor in the first place. This occurs as the expert surgeon who's nose is almost as large as his head (also a veteran of Tezuka-sama's Star system by the way), takes charge and leads BJ through the grueling months of surgery and recovery to the point where he can start moving on his own and starts training to become a surgeon in his own right. Incidentally, BJ looks totally hot in a school uniform but I digress. Once we get to the present, there's a totally rockin' set of credits and then we get into the special's meat, which includes the stories "Where is the Doctor?", "Disowned Son", "U-18 Knew", and "Sometimes Like Pearls."

In "Where is the Doctor?" we encounter the sufferings of Davy the tailor, as he falls prey to circumstance when the son of a powerful businessman (ahem *mob boss*) gets himself badly hurt due to being a reckless driver. In order to save Akudo, a.k.a. Mr. "Can't Tell the Difference Between a Road and a Sidewalk", his father frames Davy so that he's found guilty in the court case and is ordered to donate his organs to Akudo's surgery, which is naturally to be overseen by Black Jack. (Huh... is that even possible in most countries?) However, Black Jack obviously has more moral fiber than Akudo's father, as he instead saves Davy by changing his face and then helping him and his mother escape to another country. It's a nice little introduction into the kind of stuff BJ does for a living, and sets up some of the running plot points and gags that carry through into the regular series, such as Black Jack's notorious practice of charging extraordinary fees for his services, and Pinoko's regular assertion that she is his wife.

In part two, "Disowned Son," the primary plot surrounds the reconciliation of an elderly mother, and her youngest son, who was disowned by the father of the family, because he made some major screw-ups in his youth. At the beginning there is a brief scene in a coffee shop where the owner and Kumiko, Honma sensei's daughter who happens to also work there, are introduced so that when you meet them in the TV series, you'll know who they are. There's also a brief cameo from Tezuka Osamu himself, as any manga historian worth his salt knows Tesuka-sama liked to draw himself into his comics. Sadly, the manga he's working on at his table gets coffee spilled on it as Pinoko rushes in to drag Black Jack away from his coffee and back to the plot...  I mean back to work. (How dare you Pinoko, you made Tezuka-sama look like he wanted to cry!) After the car breaks down in the snow, they end up at the home of a little old lady, (and I do mean little, she's like three feet tall and would make Krillen from DBZ look like a normal sized human being) who was initially planning for her three sons to show up for her birthday. Sadly, they all have important lives now, and are apparently too busy to come see her, so Black Jack and Pinoco help her throw the party anyway. There's a knock on the door and the old lady finds her fourth son, Shiro at the door. Shiro explains how he was disowned before his mother has a major pain attack and collapses on the floor. It is then revealed that after being disowned Shiro started school to be a doctor and has detirmined she has appendicitis. But while he goes to get his tools, BJ checks her out himself and comes up with a different diagnonsis. After an argument, they get down to the business of operating and save the little lady.

Just an aside here before we move on. This story has some interesting commentary on the Japanese family of today. Historically it was always the job of the children to take care of their parents as they got older. That was why it was important to have many children, but the irony is that generally in a dispersed family it would be the oldest who would have the primary responsibility. However, all of the other sons in the story have abandoned their traditional duties leaving them all to the youngest son even though he got kicked out. It's even more ironic that that he's the one who originally represented the hopes and values of the parents the least, and yet he ends the story by upholding the tradition of filial piety the most. This is a common thread with lone wolf characters, but fun to point out anyway. I guess it's the scholar in me. ^^

Moving on to "U-18 knew," we've gotten ourselves into the world of hard science fiction. There's a computer on the fritz and it thinks it's a human being that needs an operation. Definitely a strange computer. We start by looking in on the daily goings on at a hospital that is fully automated. It handles the care of the patients without any doctors or nurses, unless you count the folks who oversee the facility. Somehow, inexplicably, several of the patients get U-18's wires crossed because when expressing their doubts about the computer's ability, they mention Black Jack. (Wow, and I thought he was trying to keep a low profile.) Suddenly the computer gets an error and sends the facility into lockdown, refusing to yield until Black Jack comes to the facility and eventually threatens to kill off all the patients if this requirement isn't met in 48 hours. (Dear god, it's Hal!) They try to get him there as fast as they can, but while they're waiting for him to show up, we learn that Dr. Wattman built U-18 after losing her daughter to disease. Finally, the helicopter arrives with Black Jack aboard. They try to tell U-18 they'll get started the next day, but she's having none of it, being paranoid and all, and wants him to get started right now. Then Black Jack says to hold everything, since he hasn't agreed to do it yet. You can just feel the build-up as he goes into this spiel about how they have to accept his price. He wants ten million dollars. (0.0!) Wattman accepts and after U-18 subjects BJ to a lie detector, she teleports him to the brain room so he can get to work. A little time passes as BJ works until suddenly, Dr. Wattman realizes "Hey, the computer's off, we can fix things now!" So everyone swarms on the brain room to take over. Black Jack tells them to get lost and after convincing Dr. Wattman to go along with the parallel of U-18 being her child (Dude, that's just weird), Black Jack gets back to work, while everyone else exits. In the end, U-18 shows BJ the image of Wattman's daughter which she has adopted as her own identifying appearance. Everything ends well and BJ and Pinoco fly off into the sunset, as Pinoco counts off the zeros on that juicy ten million dollar check.

This part was fun to watch because it was very entertaining to find the differences between the TV episode and the manga. For one thing, as noted earlier, in the original version, Pinoco was not there at all, but there were other differences that were interesting and really illustrate how far things have moved along since BJ first came on the scene. For instance, the head technician that works with Doctor Wattman, (he's wearing sunglasses in the episode) was drawn as being black in the original story. However, I suspect they changed his appearance because in Tezuka Osamu's original chapter, the fellow was drawn using conventions for representing persons of African decent that some might consider offensive today. These include the use of puffed out lips, and a nose that looks more like a clown's. But despite this, even in the old version, the guy was given a very strong supporting role, and I still thought he seemed pretty cool. The level of technology implemented in the hospital has been seriously updated from the original manga. While in the manga, U-18 was represented completely by computer screens and robotic arms, which were the height of technology in the 1970's and 80's, they've been replaced or augmented here by holograms that can physically interface with people and objects. I won't lie, that's definitely very cool. ^^ The lie detector U-18 uses with Black Jack was originally little more than an old-style polygraph machine, and now it's an entire capsule. The circuitry in the central chamber has been updated, now requiring that BJ have a magnifying glass to work on the chips. Heck, even the asking price for the job has been updated for inflation. (Or perhaps they just thought ten million dollars sounded much more impressive than three million.) This is probably one of the more memorable BJ stories, not just because of the plot, but because of questions it brings up about what happens when a robot or computer gets too close to being human. Either by accident or design.

The fourth and final installment of the Black Jack Special, based on the short "Sometimes Like Pearls" differs from most of the other stories in the series in that it is one of the few where the operation is not a success. Even more significant because the patient is not some ordinary Joe, but Black Jack's role model and mentor, a figure through which we are allowed to explore BJ's past through a different lense.

We open up with Pinoco as she comes into the living room with a cake and starts looking for a knife to cut it up for serving when she finds this scalpal embedded in a stone stick. Black Jack stops her before she attempts to use it to cut the cake, (probably one of the few times he actually scolds her for anything,) and explains that it is a momento sent to him by Jotaro Honma, the Doctor who saved his life as a boy and was his mentor during his school years. We then go back a year or so, to the point at which Black Jack received this strange object. Oddly enough, the initials of the sender written above the return address are in English. My best guess is that Tezuka Osamu thought it would make better dramatic timing because kanji are a lot harder to abbreviate than words written with roomaji, being as they are mostly pictograms drawn to represent whole words. Had that been the case it would have taken BJ mere moments to figure out the identity of the sender, but to move on... upon making the realization that Honma-sensei is indeed the sender, Black Jack decides to track him down. He finally finds the old doctor on his death bed. The reason? Old age. He seems to have given up on life as he refuses to go to a hospital claiming it only delays the inevitable. Black Jack then shows him the stone encased scalpal and asks for an explanation. Honma-sensei says it is Black Jack's and we then go further back in time, to the day Black Jack came into the E.R. all mangled from the mine that caused his scarred appearance. It is explained that Honma-sensei made a dangerous mistake during that first operation. He left a scalpal in Black Jack's insides. (0.0!!) Because he was so arrogant at the time, he refused to acknowledge it until years later when he finally succumbed to his guilt and arranged to do an exploratory operation to have it removed. That was when they extracted the stone stick, and upon cutting it open, he found the scalpal inside.

The flash back ends as Honma-sensei admits that he wanted to return it to BJ before he died so he might be able to keep it as a momento and his last words in the episode are a derisive question about how ridiculous it is for one human being to control the life of another. Ironic words coming from a doctor to be sure. He then loses consciousness and Black Jack immediately sets things in motion to get him to a hospital to try to save him but all is in vain. After arguing about fate a little bit, Black Jack goes out and sits on the steps of the hospital to deal with his grief while the other doctors go to handle the death certificate. Back in the present Pinoco tries to cheer Black Jack up by giving him a piece of cake. His expression is truly priceless. They then make a visit to Honma-sensei's grave where BJ finally gives his answer to the question Honma-sensei asked before he died, saying that what he said may be correct, but then what's the point of being a doctor? As they leave, Kumiko appears to pay her respects. After a brief visit to the coffee shop where the coffee shop owner and Kumiko talk about living for the present rather than dwelling on the past, we transition to the cliff behind Black Jack's house, where he throws the stick away, metaphorically putting the past behind him so he can work towards the future.

While for the most part the special is pretty entertaining, it is not immune from execution issues. For one thing, while a lot of the music is pretty rockin', it can also get a little repetitive as they use the special's theme song at different speeds in many places to indicate different moods. While it is a pretty flexible theme, there are some parts where it kind of makes me want to laugh. Like in U-18 knew, when they get off the helicopter. It sounds more like it belongs at a Mexican Hat dance than a dramatic entrance. Even so, the special is still pretty good. If you are a Tezuka Osamu fan, this is a program for you. It captures a lot of what Black Jack is about in a somewhat short format that allows one to watch it in the time it would take to watch a feature film. While there are volumes upon volumes of Black Jack material out there, and a lot of it is captured in the regular series, this special can be considered something of a classics collection, if you will. Even if you don't have time to sit through all 62 episodes of the regular series, definitely check this out.

The images utilized for this review are all from the Black Jack Special.

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