This week’s manga recommendation is a manga about… surgery (Next week: Manga about Firefighting). People may run away, but before you do, know that this manga is by the legendary Osamu Tezuka, known in Japan and around the world as “The God of Manga”. I believe the title is fitting for Tezuka: like a real god, he’s created some great things, some bad things and some totally unnecessary things. His mediocre works aren’t bad by “general” standards, though his best works are, simply put, sublime.

Black Jack (Osamu Tezuka)
(22 volumes)

There are Black Jack anime movies out there, but you should avoid these movies because (a)Tezuka didn’t direct them, and (b)Like Doraemon, Black Jack is a collection of short stories that is meant to be read in large batches.

Plot
Black Jack is a series of stories about a brilliant but ruthless surgeon, who operates unlicensed because of the enormous fees he charges for his services. Black Jack is a peculiar-looking fellow, almost the antithesis of what we expect doctors to look like – he has hair like Cruella de Ville, a black cloak like Dracula (I actually based East Seawood’s cloak on his!), and scars all over his face. He looks like a villain, but is the hero of the story, and despite his cold facade, he really has good intentions.

Now, if I had made the story sound like something about a misunderstood loner with a heart of gold and a core of inner strength; it’s the wrong impression. Black Jack is a doctor, NOT a hero – he does things that I would consider heroic, but this is a mature story that doesn’t necessarily see heroic behaviour or noble sacrifice as rewarding. Black Jack doesn’t always succeed in saving his patients, though alot of the time it’s through no fault of his, but through fault of circumstance or of human weakness. Many of the stories have happy endings, and many do not.

Why I recommend this story
This particular Tezuka manga has a special place in my heart, because it was the first Tezuka work I read. My manga-mad cousin first handed this to me when I was 15, and while he explained how good it is, I wasn’t initially impressed. A story about surgery?? How terribly exciting. Not to mention the art seemed really dated and unattractive. It went straight to the bottom of my manga pile, under the DragonBall and Swords-and-Sorcery manga.

After I read all my new action adventure manga, I decided to give Black Jack a try, and then I found I couldn’t put it down. It wasn’t like anything I’ve read before, and it actually held my interest. Up until Black Jack, what I mainly read have been Shonen fighting-and-adventure manga, and rarely ventured outside that world because other stories had little appeal to me. I wasn’t much interested in the (repetitive) romantic problems of Japanese High School girls, so alot of popular 90s Shoujo bored me. Popular 90s Shounen were mostly DragonBall-offshoots, and fairly formulaic. What I found in Black Jack were stories that was NOT formulaic, and about things other than whether I’m going to save the world and/or get the guy of my dreams. This manga opened up a whole new universe for me.

While this manga uses surgery and weird illnesses as it’s main premise, it’s not really what the stories about. These are stories of humanity examined through a medical perspective, and so have the characters at the heart of the drama rather than whatever the Disease-of-the-Week is. That is why I’m able to recommend Black Jack to just about anyone – here is something that SEEMS to be aimed at a niche market (doctors?), but is infact universal in its appeal.