Joseph Luster
December 1, 2011 
It’s a bittersweet feeling to see Vertical Inc.’s release of Osamu Tezuka’s medical thriller Black Jack finally come to an end. On one hand, I’m actually not anywhere near tired of reading his episodic exploits. B it’s also really nice to see the entire run published in English, so everyone should feel free to step back and take a moment to soak it in before diving into this fantastic farewell.
Of course, there is no real “end” to Black Jack. Though the order chosen for this edition—Vertical Inc. follows the Akita Deluxe Edition, which doesn’t present the chapters in the order of their original publication—the final frame still manages to offer a nice closing image. It’s comforting to know the doctor will go on beyond the pages, performing expensive surgeries on his own terms, however questionable they may be.
Indeed, Osamu Tezuka never attempts to offer a concrete answer as to what precisely drives Black Jack to do what he does. It’s as open to debate in the last chapter as it was in the first, despite how much we’ve learned about him over the past 17 volumes. I wouldn’t want it any other way, frankly, and it’s refreshing when any creator puts the audience’s intelligence before easy answers and definite, black and white conclusions. Why is Black Jack more concerned with healing a less mortally wounded girl than the son of an assemblyman the girl was trying to help in the first place? Well, he said he’d operate for fun in this instance, not for work, and that’s exactly what he does. There’s more to it than that, but it bubbles quietly beneath the surface.
There are a lot of references in Black Jack, some subtle and some not so much, but this volume seems to be even more loaded with them than normal. This goes doubly so for references to Tezuka’s own work. “”Two Shujis” recalls Princess Knight (which we reviewed here) with the tale of a railway CEO forcing his daughter take the place of his son, who is initially presumed dead in a tragic fire. Without his son around, he’ll have no one to inherit his position, and he’s willing to go so far as to have Black Jack perform transformative surgery on his own daughter to fulfill his bloodline ambitions.
Other chapters feature shades of Astro Boy and Phoenix, and it all comes together to form a fine closing of the curtain. One of the later chapters even manages to serve up a nice throwback to Pinoko’s origin, as the sister whose body she was extracted from returns to Black Jack with a heavy case of amnesia. Pinoko finally gets to enjoy that feeling of having a sibling to spend time with, however fleeting it may ultimately be.
Black Jack vol. 17 ends with a hefty appendix listing every chapter title in the order they appeared in Vertical’s edition alongside the original publication dates. With this we can all take solace in the fact that, some day, should we be feeling particularly bold, we can go back through Black Jack’s tales again and experience them as they were presented in Weekly Shonen Champion magazine. For now, just try to enjoy how nice the full set looks lined up on a single shelf.
Publisher: Vertical Inc.
Story & Art: Osamu Tezuka
© 2011 by Tezuka Productions
