Books: Black Jack Vol. #11 (Osamu Tezuka)

For every manga that ends with a good solid concluding chapter, there are at least as many that don’t. The last chapter here is not for plot closure but emotional summation, a way to shut the door in our hearts while leaving the one in our heads slightly ajar. It’s done though a trope as old as fiction itself — the Dream Parade, where a slumbering Black Jack encounters all the major figures from his life (his mentor, his first love, his rival, his “wife”, etc.). But this trick also leads us full circle in a fitting way — some of the last words in this story were also spoken at the very beginning of the series, and we’re even treated to a moment when Black Jack comes face to face with himself as a boy dying on an operating table. It’s a metaphor for how Black Jack has pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.

Then there is the rest of the book, which is a mixed bag if only in the sense that the series itself contains both highs and lows. I liked the stories that revolved most directly around Black Jack’s moral convictions, as when he uses a dead dictator to provide his citizens with a service that he never did in life. Some episodes are a mix of his cynical ideals and too-convenient plot management, as when he reunites a baby with the wrong mother but escapes immediate consequences because of her colorblindness. (Yeah ... no.) And then there’s the stuff that doesn’t work at all — but is still interesting because it’s Black Jack being Black Jack, as when he brings a dead woman back to life by implanting a tape recording of her voice into her dog, which has horrible consequences for her boyfriend, and for us as well.

After eleven volumes, I’m not surprised Tezuka started to repeat himself or run short. With a few striking exceptions, I felt the stories from earlier in the series were on the whole more adventurous and compelling, and after a while I could see more and more ideas being reworked in slightly different forms. I don’t blame him: it’s tough to sustain that kind of output and be consistently creative on top of it, especially since Black Jack was episodic and not a single, continuously unfolding arc of a story like most of the popular manga titles today. But what a thrill it is to see all of it, and not just an editorially-chosen subset. The remaining volumes should be fascinating no matter what their provenance or place in the Black Jack chronology. Bring ‘em on.