Young Black Jack

Episodes 1-3

Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack manga series has come out of surgery with a shiny, 21st-century makeover. The original series was something like part House M.D., part The Twilight Zone. Each chapter was a different medical crisis with some sort of supernatural element to it, often including a moral at the end. A woman receives an eye transplant, and then finds herself haunted by a mysterious man no one else can see. Another patient has a sentient parasitic twin, so Black Jack separates the tumescent sibling and reconstructs her body to become his doting assistant, Pinoko. Black Jack himself was charismatic but mysterious, and yet the focus remained away from him, give or take a few backstory episodes. All that has changed for Young Black Jack, the new anime series based on a spin-off manga about the shadowy doctor's medical school days.

Young Black Jack moves away from the supernatural—though it never completely loses it, as with episode 2's retread of the plot from the first original manga chapter, "Is There A Doctor?" It's more of a straightforward medical drama now, plus a bishonen show. Black Jack himself has had a bishie makeover, constantly losing his shirt so the show can linger over his buff and scarred chest. Instead of focusing on the quirky circumstances of each surgery, the show squares in on Black Jack's angst as he juggles ethical problems with his surgeries. His feelings stayed in the background in the original, with the focus on the patients, other clients, and whatever moral the audience was supposed to take away from it. Here, it's all about fangirls getting to watch him brood over if it's right to transplant a good man's heart into a bad man, if the good man wants it done. (That's the sole original twist it takes on "Is There A Doctor?" In the original, the poor boy forced into the procedure was extremely unwilling.) In episode 3, he questions whether he should risk his career to help an American who's in the country illegally. The show has also added a character named Yabu ("Quack"), another doctor who is addicted to drugs and fought in World War II. He's apparently close to Black Jack—or Hazama, since he's still going by his real name here. That means more fangirl bait, further transforming the old premise into something for modern-day anime audiences.

Hazama may be fully bishified, but the anime does try to retain Tezuka's round faces and big eyes for supporting characters. It produces interesting results when blended with the modern-day anime art style, including Hazama and the other major characters. It sticks out, but in a charming way, reminding viewers just how different this show is from the other fall anime offerings. Another neat visual element is the colorful head trip Hazama goes through every time he performs surgery. It adds a lot to the show's 1960s setting. The only thing better would be if they scored it with some psychedelic rock music (maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here).

That brings me to the other genre the show adds to its soup: historical fiction. Young Black Jack situates itself very firmly in the political and social struggles of its time period. So it's unfortunate that the series comes down so negatively on the activist movements of the late 1960s, no matter how reasonable they were. The first episode focuses on medical students protesting for better wages, then pans out to show us the protagonist, blissfully ignorant while he practices his surgical skills. Hazama is dedicated and serious, while the other students are shown as lazy and entitled for protesting when they could be doing their jobs. Never mind that the wages they ask for are far lower than what Hazama will charge throughout his career, including in this very episode. This pattern continues in episode 3, when Hazama must help an American deserter from the Vietnam War. The episode shows the Japanese anti-war activists working with him as pigheaded and even cruel, putting their political goal over the deserter's health. Hazama implies that he doesn't agree with their goals even before their methods turn twisted. Of course, by the end of the episode, we find out the deserter is actually a CIA spy, which is a group never shown as anything but benign in fiction, and of course this comes back on poor Black Jack.

Not only is this unfair to both the reality of that conflict and Japan's anti-war movement (one that continues strong to this day), but it's just weird to see such a conservative agenda in a show like this. It's also a disservice to Black Jack as a character, who fought against the status quo and the abuses of power it allows in the original series. The "villains" of his stories are frequently rich men who think they can buy their way to better medical care, often taking advantage of the less-fortunate in the process. It's implied that abuses like this are why Black Jack left traditional medicine in the first place. The saving grace of this new approach is that this story is about a younger version of Black Jack; it makes sense that he'd start out as an apolitical geek, and then gradually realize that medicine requires living in the world and being aware of its power struggles. The next series of episodes promise a two-parter where Hazama actually goes to Vietnam. Maybe then we'll see our hero start to develop into the reclusive rebel of Tezuka's stories.

Weird though it is, Young Black Jack is interesting because it's so rare to see a show like this as a TV anime. Anime doesn't have many straightforward medical dramas. Historical dramas are almost as rare, especially for a mass fan audience. When we get them, chances are they're slice-of-life stuff like Kids on the Slope, somewhat removed from the major events of their time. These genres are both much more common on American TV, so Young Black could turn out as a series you use to introduce friends to anime. Come for the medical moral dilemmas, stay for Hazama's hot bod—and then check out all the other anime with brooding bishie protagonists.

It would be more encouraging if Young Black Jack didn't feel like such a lazy, slapdash combination of these elements. Hazama's psychological vignettes look cool at first, but they don't have the emotional impact they seem like they should. The show's incorporation of historical events feels a little insistent, like an after-school-special—which is why it's so easy to zero in on their implications. Most of the characters besides Hazama are one-sided and fall too easily into types. This would be fine if Young Black Jack were a more vignette-driven show like the original manga, but it's clear this version is about the characters' development. At least, it's about Hazama, but he needs some interesting people to rub up against too.

Most importantly, for something that's trying to be its own thing, it sure doesn't need to be stealing plots from the old Black Jack. This would indicate that Young Black Jack does want to lead its new audience toward the original manga. If so, it needs to remember what made Tezuka's work so special. More creepy moral quandaries in the form of supernatural medical mysteries, please. Fewer mundane procedures that simply give the protagonist room to brood. You can have both the angst and the magic, Young Black Jack. I believe in you.

Rating: B

Young Black Jack is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rose is a music Ph.D. student who loves overanalyzing anime soundtracks. Follow her on her media blog Rose's Turn.