On the eighth compiled book volume of Yuugo Okuma and Yoshiaki Tabata’s Young Black Jack manga a wraparound jacket band revealed that the manga’s TV anime adaptation will premiere on the TBS and BS-TBS broadcast networks this fall. In addition to this, a website was also launched and the first visual was revealed.
Anime visual:
The first televised appearance of Black Jack was in the 1980 remake of Tetsuwan Atom. Episode 27 of Astro Boy brought together three separate Tezuka creations, as Astro, Uran, Doctor Roget (Black Jack) and Penny (Pinoko) travel back through time to 15th Century Molavia (Silverland). In this storyline, Black Jack performs a life-saving operation on a critically injured Princess Sapphire (from Ribbon no Kishi), while Astro and Uran fend off Gor, a malevolent magician bent on usurping the throne. Characteristically, Roget/Black Jack refuses to operate until he is offered the key to the treasury vault, but later takes only one commemorative coin from the grateful court (which turns out to be worth $200,000,000 when he returns to Astro’s time).
Black Jack also made a cameo appearance in the theatrical film Phoenix 2772 as an interstellar prison warden, and is one of the main characters of the TV movie One Million-Year Trip: Bandar Book, in which he plays the role of a space pirate, somehow similar in concept to Leiji Matsumoto’s Captain Harlock.
In 1992, Tezuka’s protege Osamu Dezaki did the direction for a theatrical film and an OVA series. Ten OVAs were made (six of which, along with the film, were originally only available in dub-only VHS form in North America, but all 10 OVAs have since been released on bilingual Region 1 DVD). Wizard selected the series as their “Anime Pick of the Month” for August 1997, calling it “one of the darkest and hardest-hitting made-for-video series of recent years.”
Young Black Jack synopsis from Haruhichan:
Based on the brilliant maverick doctor created by manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka. This prequel follows Black Jack when he was still a medical student in the 1960s.
