Black Jack by Osamu Tezuka

            Despite the immense popularity of anime and manga as a creative medium in the U.S., it seems like a lot of the younger fans ignore some of the earlier classics: in this case, the works of Osamu Tezuka, the proclaimed “God of Manga.”  Having created over 150, 000 pages of work during the span of his life, Tezuka was essentially the driving force behind the aesthetic appeal most manga and anime have today.  Although he is best known for his artistic work, Tezuka actually held a medical doctorate, which he put to great use when writing the series, Black Jack.

            Black Jack caught my attention several years ago when I saw a commercial for one of its more recent anime adaptations, but I never actually had a look at the series until recently.  I had some difficulty starting the series, too used to most manga being more episodic in its story telling versus the short story format used in Black Jack; the titular doctor is, for the most part, the only recurring character in the series until Pinoko is introduced (a slightly psychic, parasitic twin extracted from a patient and then given a false body by Black Jack), with no other characters really making secondary appearances.  Aside from the short-story format of Black Jack, I was also slightly shocked at Tezuka’s habit of recycling character designs from story to story: you might see Astro Boy or Princess Sapphire from Princess Knight running around in Black Jack’s modern-day setting, acting as completely different characters with completely different names.   According to The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga by Helen McCarthy, Tezuka utilized what he called the “Star System,” treating his characters like a director would with film actors, casting them in different roles from story to story.  This is probably one of the most interesting things I found about Tezuka’s approach to story telling, as I’ve never seen it so intentionally employed in any other comic or manga; some comics may suffer from similar character designs due to the artist’s preferences (for instance, although I enjoy Rumiko Takahashi’s work, the most recurrent critique I’ve seen of her artwork is that a lot of the characters look the same).

            Aesthetically speaking, I found Tezuka’s style interesting due to the sheer

variety found in his work, specifically in regards to characters.  You’ll have almost realistically proportioned characters like Black Jack alongside more comically disproportioned, and even exaggerated characters interacting in the same story, which ensures it never gets visually uninteresting.  I enjoy the fact that he has no problem with exaggerating character proportions for emotional responses either, particularly when it comes to humor (seeing more serious characters like Black Jack given this treatment makes it all the funnier, such as below).

I'm never quite sure whether to think Pinoko calling herself Black Jack's wife is cute or disturbing.