Young Black Jack – 02

Money Shot

Man I feel silly.  Here I am worrying “can Young Black Jack be crazy enough to satisfy me?”  Well, let’s just say this episode has reached “crazy cultists who talk in unison” levels.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Let’s talk about this week’s episode of…

Everybody Loves Raymond

Even with context I couldn’t possibly explain this.  Plus three points in my book

You have no idea how long I have been waiting to make that joke.  Anyhow, our young dreamboat Black Jack wakes up to find himself chained to a hospital bed by a rather eccentric mobster named Tachiri who really likes playing with a deck of cards.  It makes him stand out or something.  It turns out that Black Jack owes the mob 300 million yen!  I guess that explains why he has to extorts his patients for such ludicrous amounts of cash.  But because Tachiri is a mobster with a heart of gold, he isn’t going to break Black Jack’s kneecaps and make him crawl back home from the middle of the forest (not that that would really be a problem for Black Jack.  What, you think he can’t do surgery on himself?)  So Tachiri has also gathered a bunch of other debtors, including Yabu, the doctor who gets high on his supply and is afraid of blood.  Why?  So that someone can perform a heart transplant.

Keeping with the shows interest in medical history, events are taking place around the same time that the first ever successful heart transplant has taken place (Wikipedia assures me of the historical accuracy).  You see, a lot of cults are often led by old suspicious men.  And sometimes when a cult leader gets really old, he needs to get operated on by shady doctors, even if that means the cult leader needs the organs of people who are in serious debt.  And wouldn’t you know it, this old cultist needs a fresh heart.

  With this much charisma, its no wonder he is a leader.  That face says people person!

Of course you can’t just rip open any random saps heart, still beating, and shove it into someone else’s chest to cure them.  That happens much later in Black Jack.  It turns out that both Black Jack and Ray Ramano Raymond (another debtor)  are perfect matches to be “donors.”  But wouldn’t you know it, when you hire an underground doctor like Doctor Joker, you don’t get great customer service.  DJ has to go underground, so it naturally turns to BJ to save the day.  This is when the crazy really starts to show.

Face of Another

After making it very clear that the cultists will kill Tachiri, Black Jack, and Yabu if the surgery is not a success.  Raymond starts to tell Black Jack his life story and why he needs the money so badly he could die.  He came from poverty to earn money and save his daughter, and is more than willing to die to save his daughter (she has Leukemia).

These twins make me think of Baron Ashura.  Plus 10

So Black Jack and Yabu are about to to the transplant.  Yabu takes the moral stand, saying this transplant would just be murder.  A desperate person backed into a corner has no choice but to offer their life.  Yabu saw all this stuff during WWII, when he ran from all his dying comrades.  In the end the morality play of this episode, namely not giving in to desperation works.  Because the cult leader dies before they can even do the operation!  So you might be thinking: is this game over for Black Jack?  Of course not, because Black Jack has one special card up his sleeve.  He can’t give Raymond’s heart away, but he can give Raymond a new face.  That’s right, Black Jack does a magic stint of plastic surgery and transforms Raymond into the cult leaders body double.  This brings up all sorts of questions like: Did Black Jack have to rip the face off the cult leader and put it on Raymond?  Did Black Jack then have to ground up the body of the cult leader so his twin-like followers didn’t catch on?  Did Black Jack then have to transfer the memories of the cult leader into Raymond so he can perfectly play the role of the cult leader FOREVER because now this middle age man has the appearance of a near corpse geezer?  I assume the answer to all of this is YES!

Thank you Black Jack.  Here I was worry that this show just didn’t have the classic Tezuka crazy bone in it, but then it wows me with an episode so impossible I can’t not love it.  The characters are super cartooney, the plans are seat of the pants, and the morality lessons hit just close enough to home to make the viewer think “I think we all learned something today.”  Soon Black Jack is off to war, I would kill to see Black Jack operate on a hippie.

Now I’m sure no one is wondering: what does Samsura’s crazy scale look like?  Thanks for asking!  At the bottom end of the crazy scale are your slice of life/coming of age/sports shows WITHOUT super powers (looking at you Kuroko).  These are the ones that aren’t separated from reality.  Next come shows that are extremely formulaic but have fantastical elements.  Sorry (insert light novel here) but I’ve seen the same thing to many times to blow my mind.  Getting into the screw loose part of the scale are the weird shows.  Ranpo Kitan, Tatami Galaxy, and Monogatari all are bonkers shows.  But these shows also know that they are crazy, and play this part up.  The high end of the crazy spectrum is when you have shows that take themselves completely seriously, but that only makes the crazy even more welcome.  I’m talking about shows were you beat up the Statue of Liberty to prove the power of your kung-fu, shows were a man can wear a grenade jock-strap, shows were you form a human being from a teratoma!  And of course, the pinnacle of the crazy scale can only be JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.  “Hey this Italian food is little spicy.  Also, my stomach just exploded!”  Now the crazy scale does not have to relate to quality, I’m just saying wouldn’t all shows be improved with a little of the crazy juice?

About Samsura

As someone of questionable tastes and even more questionable ethics; if we laugh at the same things you are one of two things: A person of discerning taste or a weirdo. Guess where I fall.