Black Jack: The Movie

A Medical Assessment of Dr. Black J. Acula's Movie While I'm not as familiar as with the character as I was watching the show semi-regularly when I was younger, I found this feature adaptation on Amazon the other night and decided I'd try it out. What I found was a mixed bag of alternating extremes. At times extremely interesting and involving writing, at times extremely cliched and melodramatic writing, at times truly beautiful and engaging animation, at times truly terrible animation half-heartedly painted over with stylized freeze-frames. I found the concept of the story to be pretty great, even if it's not necessarily the most original, aspooky company performing experiments on people to create super humans gone horribly wrong ask a brilliant doctor to help them fix the formula. It's relatively well-done and I was quite drawn in throughout about 75% of the run-time, however, the last 25% almost completely lost me. Where it started out as a moderately subdued and down-to-earth medical mystery/conspiracy theory story, in the last act it felt the need to throw in a cacophony of dramatic exposition dumps and fiery action scenes set to supremely cheesy 80s love ballads. The last act was beyond ridiculous and wasn't helped by the fact that the incessant freeze-frames for dramatic emphasis tended to occur almost every time a character projectile vomited blood, a side-effect of the aforementioned experiments gone wrong. But as the dramatic conclusion drew near, characters were almost constantly vomiting blood to remind us of the ticking clock and after a while it became frankly hysterical every time it happened. Despite its occasionally awkward animations and slightly overblown shakespearean dialogue, the movie was a pretty good time and kept me entertained from start to finish. It had quite a few interesting characters who almost all got their time to shine, even if that time was sometimes spent hamming it up a bit in the voice acting department. If you're a big fan of the series you'll probably like it more than I did and if you aren't or were just a casual viewer like I was, you can still get a kick out of it. Black Jack the Movie gets a good 7 out of 10 stars from me.

The 1996 Black Jack anime film is actually a side story of sorts from a series of OVAs that were released throughout the 1990s, featuring Osamu Tezuka’s famous unregistered surgeon. Here, Black Jack has to aid a mysterious doctor named Jo Carol Brane, who blackmails him to aid a number of supposed “superhumans” who possess extraordinary capabilities within different fields, yet find their bodies deteriorating after a period of time from a newly discovered disease. The Black Jack movie is more-or-less a medical mystery film with the titular character trying to figure out the origins of the disease affecting the superhumans. Those who have dabbled intothe OVA series from the 1990s can think of this as an extended episode of it. It retains the dark, gritty mood found from the OVA series and the mystery in question plays into the franchise’s overall theme of dabbling into corruption within the medical field. The film drops hints of shady activity at play with the disease in question and Jo Carol having something to do with it, that is gradually unraveled by Black Jack and others as the film progresses. The mystery is an engaging one to see develop and offers solid exploration of Jo Carol’s motives for her involvement with the superhumans, though the film’s efforts to make a moral of the mystery do usually get overly dramatic and to-the-point on occasion. Also a fair warning, this movie can get quite graphic at points as there are several scenes depicting Black Jack performing surgeries that are shown in rather graphic detail thus I’d avoid this film if you get squeamish at the site of gore, even when depicted during medical procedures. Visually, the Black Jack movie’s more-or-less on par with the visual quality of the OVA series in depicting Black Jack with a modern drawing style with detailed character designs and subdued color tones to be in line with the dark mood depicted from the OVA series. The drawing style does allow for some lifelike character designs and detailed scenic shots to be shown, though Pinoko seems to oddly stick out in still being drawn in Tezuka’s classic drawing style which does clash with the intended aesthetic choices for this film. Anyone with interest in medical mystery or anything connected to Osamu Tezuka should give this film a watch. There is solid buildup with the mystery as more elements concerning the superhuman medical crisis get unraveled and the fleshing out of Jo Carol’s character with her connections to it show she has more dimension than your run-of-the-mill anime villain. Those looking for anything a bit more action-heavy or squeamish over graphic violence may not get as much enjoyment out of seeing the 1996 Black Jack movie.

honestly I loved this movie despite never seeing anything else black jack related. the animation was beautiful even if it fell off a little at the end, character animation was smooth and detailed and all of those shots of old computers and surgery were to die for. fantastic backgrounds and direction, interesting characters and the plot was good enough even if it was predictable. i'm a huge sucker for good 90s animation/character designs so this was a treat to watch, I really enjoyed it. the only thing that bugged me was the indoor rain around the 55 minute mark. a solid 8/10.

I have never seen Black Jack, other versions of it, this is the first time I have heard of it and decided to click on this movie and give it a try. I really enjoyed the movie a lot and it was very interesting concept as well. The idea of SuperHumans, who end up getting sick, the idea of how far medical assessment can go, well I do believe stuff like this happens, and people are just not aware of it, its scary to thing what the future holds haha. I wont give more details about the movie, do not want to spoil itfor anyone. However i will say the following the story and concept is really good, and just based on the story alone its worth a watch, I feel its an anime anyone can enjoy even known anime lovers, the art, and animation is really great too, voice acting is pretty nice as well, and overall character development is good. Its almost a perfect movie, but i gave it 9 out of 10 stars, felt it could have been a little better but defiantly worth a watch.