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1[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/blackjack.jpg]]
2[[caption-width-right:300:''[[Music/RobZombie Dead, I am the life, dig in through the skin\
3Knuckle cracks the bone, 21 to win]]'']]
4
5->''"Osamu Tezuka was educated as a doctor, so the stories are rich in medical knowledge and experience. Except, of course, when Tezuka decides that it would be more fun to just make crazy shit up. Which is pretty much constantly."''
6--> -- '''[[http://shaenon.livejournal.com/58712.html?thread=806488 Overlooked Manga Festival]]'''
7
8A manga series about an unlicensed physician who charges immense fees to use his miraculous healing skills. Well, sometimes immense. He actually charges however much people can afford to pay him, but he's not above defining "afford to pay him" as "every yen you've got and you'll be paying off the balance for years."
9
10Created by Creator/OsamuTezuka, the original manga series ran from 1973 to 1983 in ''[[Magazine/ShonenChampion Weekly Shonen Champion]]''. Since Tezuka was himself a qualified medical doctor, the series often had a strong sense of verisimilitude, but the creator was not above exaggeration for RuleOfCool and MundaneMadeAwesome moments, or even just making new diseases and medical conditions up. The series has had several animated adaptations.
11
12Black Jack himself is a mysterious but distinctive figure, with a scarred, discolored face and a white shock in his black hair. He lives alone in an [[BigFancyHouse isolated beach house]] at the beginning of the series, before taking in Pinoko. Black Jack is a brilliant surgeon but has no license (the reasons for this vary a bit between adaptations.) He charges enormous fees to wealthy clients but often helps the needy for just as much as they can pay, or even for free, and if his operations fail generally refunds the money paid. His behavior is often [[DrJerk abrupt to the point of rudeness]], and he has a rather [[DeadpanSnarker dark sense of humor]]. Often, he will arrange circumstances to teach a moral to the guest character of the story.
13
14Other manga series have featured a CaptainErsatz or LawyerFriendlyCameo of Black Jack when the script calls for a doctor. Dr. Black Jack is one of Tezuka's most popular characters, often named second only to Manga/AstroBoy in that regard.
15
16The 2004 anime adaptation is legally available to watch on Tubi. By 2011 a prequel to the series was made titled ''Young Black Jack'', which stars a [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin younger]], [[{{Bishounen}} more handsome]] Black Jack, and details his days working in the Japanese medical field in the 60s. It received an anime adaptation for the October 2015, and is available [[http://www.crunchyroll.com/young-black-jack on Crunchyroll]].
17
18Not to be confused with comedian Creator/JackBlack. Or the card game. Or ''Say Hello to Black Jack'', which is also a manga about doctors who must work within the Japanese medical system, unlike their childhood hero. As well as the [[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Blackjack Micromaster]].
19
20----
21!!Tropes:
22
23* ActionGirl:
24** Watou, who aside of being a KendoTeamCaptain can defend herself well when unarmed.
25** Maria in the {{OAV}} episode "Decoration of Maria and Her Comrades". She's [[TheLancer second-in-command]] of LaResistance.
26* AdaptationalAttractiveness:
27** The anime turns the blue, zombie-like patches of his face into dark brown skin graft. As a result, he looks MUCH better.
28** The wife in manga chapter ''Vibrations'' is a goofy looking BrawnHilda, but in the anime adaption of the chapter, she is much nicer looking and borders on BigBeautifulWoman.
29* AdaptationalBackstoryChange: The circumstances of how exactly Black Jack was blown up by a bomb as a child tend to change in every incarnation.
30** In the original manga his family's house had been built on top of an unexploded bomb from WWII by crooked developers who didn't want to spend the money to have it properly disposed of. In most of the anime based on it, it's changed to a landmine at a beach.
31*** In ''Blackjack 21'', it's revealed that the bomb at the beach [[spoiler: was deliberately placed there by people of the Phoenix organization in order to harm Kuroo and Mio, as a way to threaten Kagemitsu into staying with the organization.]]
32** Black Jack's backstory is completely rewritten in the ''Young Black Jack'' live action television special (which has nothing to do with the manga & anime of the same title). Some time ago, Kuroo (now named Tatsu) had a happy a normal life with his family, until his father abandoned them one night without saying a word. The stress of this abandonment led to Tatsu's mother becoming mute, but despite this the two were able to get by just fine. One night, they were about to meet each other at a shopping mall during Christmas Eve because Tatsu wanted to give her his present to her--a drawing of a red rose. While waiting for his mother, Tatsu notices that there's a gift under the tree, with a playing card on it. Completely oblivious to the other people who are running away because of a bomb threat, Tatsu waves his drawing to his mother while she runs to him, realizing that the bomb is right near him. Right as she rushes towards her son despite the security guards' attempts to block her, the bomb goes off. In short, Black Jack and his mother were victims of a terrorist attack.
33* AdaptationalBadass: In Black Jack 21, [[spoiler: Renka, the new wife of Kagemitsu - Black Jack's father]] forms a plot to have Black Jack killed for giving her the exact face of Kagemitsu's late wife and take the [[spoiler: vaccine of the Phoenix Disease to make a fortune off of it]].
34* AdaptationalHeroism:
35** Black Jack’s father Kagemitsu is a greedy self-important jerk in the manga who abandoned Black Jack due to total apathy. In the anime on the other hand he only abandons his family [[spoiler:to protect them from assassins, and he does so with great reluctance.]]
36** Triton in the manga was a vicious killer whale who regularly attacked human beings and only spared Black Jack because he would tend to the wounds he suffered during his attacks. In the anime, Triton is [[spoiler:a HeroWithBadPublicity, being mistaken for ''a second'' killer whale who is the real culprit behind the attacks, and the wounds he received were the result of him trying to prevent the feral whale from harming the sailors]].
37* AdaptationDyeJob: Kiriko's white hair gets a blue tinge in the {{OAV}}s. Pinoko's red hair gets changed to [[RealIsBrown dark brown]] in the {{OAV}}s, then back to red in the TV anime.
38* AffablyEvil: Mr. Boccherini from 'Revenge' is outwardly a philantropist while secretly being [[spoiler:the Mafia Godfather.]] This doesn't stop him from being civil, showing nothing but utmost love to Pietro, his grandson, and [[AintTooProudToBeg is not above begging and crying in public]] for the JDA to allow Black Jack to save his grandson. It is only when the doctors botch Pietro's operation that he reveals [[WouldHurtAChild his ruthless side]], and even that [[PayEvilUntoEvil falls flat]] as the JDA director is an arrogant asshole thoroughly.
39* AmazingTechnicolorPopulation: A downplayed example with Black Jack himself. Despite the transplanted skin on his face coming from an Asian-African mixed person, it is usually colored ''blue''.
40* AnachronicOrder: Both the manga and first TV anime start InMediasRes and liberally jump back and forth between years. The only real indication of when a given chapter or episode takes place is what number Pinoko gives as her age, which fluctuates often enough that Pinoko even lampshades it.
41-->'''Pinoko:''' I'm weally 20! Or was it 18? That Oshamu Tezuka, he wites sho vaguely, it's a mesh.
42* AndTheAdventureContinues: The last chapter of the original run, "The SL Called Life", ends with Jack traveling by plane towards somewhere unknown, dreaming about people he's met through his life.
43* AnyoneCanDie: Other than Black Jack himself, the average character has roughly a 20% chance of making it to the end of the story.
44* ArtificialHuman: [[spoiler:Pinoko]] was supposed to be born as a normal human being (the Identical Twin to an unnamed other girl, to be exact), but the medical condition "Fetus in Fetu" occurred during their mother's pregnancy, and [[spoiler:Pinoko]]'s organs (including her entire, working nervous system) ended up as a malformed cyst trapped within her sister's body. After managing to plea Black Jack for help telepathically, he removed the mass containing her conscience from her twin's interior and put it within an artificial body, effectively making her a "full" person.
45* AuthorAppeal: Tezuka was a licensed doctor himself.
46* AuthorAvatar: Tezuka appears as a character, but really toes the line between this and CreatorCameo. He appears both in background gags as himself and as a recurring doctor. However he's not an omniscient/omnipotent figure like most avatars are.
47* AuthorTract: Mostly against abuses in the medical establishment, but usually saved by good characterization and Black Jack's sheer awesome. One example that really sticks out, though is ''Dingoes'', a GreenAesop about the dangers of pesticides and introduced species that erroneously attributes the arrival of the titular beasts in Australia, and the subsequent damage they caused to the ecosystem, to European colonists, when they actually predate Europe's colonial age and are believed to have been brought by an earlier wave of humans in prehistoric times. Whether this was intentional on Tezuka's part in order to shoehorn in an anti-colonialist message, or if it was a simple mistake is unclear. At any rate, considering this episode also features Black Jack extracting a parasite from his own intestines while the dingoes are trying to eat him, it's hard to bear a grudge.
48* AwesomeAnachronisticApparel: Black Jack [[LimitedWardrobe always]] dresses like he just walked out of Victorian England.
49* AwesomenessByAnalysis: Presumably how Black Jack can kick your ass as well as he can save it. He once spent the time held hostage in an operating room memorizing the patient's internal anatomy so that when the lights went out he'd be able to operate in complete darkness.
50* BackAlleyDoctor: Black Jack himself. He's usually careful not to use the word "doctor" to describe himself.
51* BadassBookworm: Black Jack is intelligent, introspective, and one of the few doctors capable of using scalpels to ''deflect bullets''.
52%%* BadassLongcoat: Black Jack.
53%%* BatmanGambit: Black Jack often pulls these to teach his Aesops or favor his patients.
54* BerserkButton:
55** Any semblance of composure Black Jack has will instantly dissolve once [[TheRival Dr. Kiriko]] is so much as mentioned.
56** If Black Jack even ''insinuates'' interest in another woman, [[ClingyJealousGirl Pinoko will not be happy.]]
57* BettyAndVeronica: In the TV anime; Sharaku is the Betty, Black Jack's the Veronica, and Pinoko's the Archie.
58* BeyondTheImpossible:
59** Operating at lightning speed, operating on a dozen patients at once and fingerprint transplants are all things Black Jack has done at one point or another of his career.
60** Black Jack built little Pinoko from a teratogenous cystoma living as a parasitic twin and a plastic exoskeleton to replace the body parts she'd never developed. While ''drunk''.
61** He's done surgeries on himself. In the middle of the Australian Outback. While ''fighting dingoes''.
62* {{Bifauxnen}}: The story "Two Shujis" has the owner of a company force his daughter to pretend to be her deceased brother, to prevent a rival corporation from taking over. [[spoiler:The not-so-dead brother lampshades it by noting that his sister always was flat-chested.]]
63* BlindIdiotTranslation: The ''official subtitled release'' of the 1st OAV gives us this: "As a last resort, they made me sample my pee".
64* BodyHorror: A given since it's a manga about peculiar surgeries, but "The Face Sore" runs on it. The chapter revolves around a man with a hideously disfigured face, which he claims to have become the way it is due to a supernatural entity. In his ImagineSpot, we get to see previous victims of the spirit, which had the same monstrous face parasite other regions of their bodies.
65* {{Bookends}}: The first and last chapters of the original 1973-78 run end with a similar narration about Jack's work.
66* BreakingTheFourthWall: From people complaining it's too late and there's not enough ''panels'' left, to guys jumping and bonking their head on the panel border.
67* BringMyBrownPants: Incontinence is brought up in a few non-comedic ways. In episode 5 of Black Jack, the war reporter wets himself in prison which is part of the dehumanization of war prisoners as they're bound and unable to go to the bathroom. Black Jack himself discusses his medical recovery from the bomb wherein he had little control over his nervous system or his bowels and would frequently urinate himself because of the damage to his intestines.
68* BrokenPedestal:
69** Subverted with Dr. Jotaro Honma, Black Jack's savior and greatest inspiration. He confesses on his death bed that the reason for his retirement was that [[spoiler:he once accidentally left a scalpel in Black Jack's body and out of pride only checked it in a follow-up operation years later]]. Black Jack is shocked, but doesn't hold it against him and still holds Honma in extremely high regard in subsequent chapters.
70** An elementary class reunion prompts Black Jack to find his old teacher, whom everyone thought was fired for trying to expose corruption within the school. Black Jack eventually finds him, but is horrified to discover the man was a drug addict who was just pretending to be a teacher [[BecomingTheMask but discovered it was a lot of fun anyway]] and really was trying to rob the school (the money ''was'' corrupt, but that didn't matter). Ashamed at the man who had been such an inspiration for his classmates was a fraud, he [[spoiler: puts him through an ''extreme'' detox regimen and succeeds in getting him sober. Black Jack not only doesn't charge him for his trouble but keeps the "teacher"'s secret from the other students.]]
71** One of Black Jack's best childhood friends grows to be an infamous criminal who tasks him to transplant his fingertips. Black Jack does it and is rewarded with a timebomb hidden in a suitcase. After miraculously surviving the explosion, Black Jack foils his ex-friend's plans and lands him in death row... [[spoiler:only for it to turn out that the guy honestly didn't order for Black Jack to be offed]].
72** One chapter opens with a diary entry by a boy who thinks his parents are the best doctors in the world, but his father dies and he has to deal with the fact the man was a gambling addict and left his mother with a huge debt to pay... to a certain Black Jack, who hires himself into their clinic for a month. Jack helps them move on and gifts them 10 million yen, becoming the kid's new hero in the end.
73* BigFancyHouse: The interior of Black Jack's house in the ''Young Black Jack'' film looks like it came straight out of a Tudor era mansion.
74* BullyingADragon: One chapter sees Black Jack hired to operate on a young boy, only for the head of Japan's medical board to demand he not do so, with the threat of every legitimate doctor in Japan going on strike. Black Jack relents, and another doctor performs the operation; he fails, and the boy dies on the operating table. [[spoiler:The boy was the grandson of a Mafia don, who has his men gun down the medical board head's son in a way only Black Jack can treat. The head begs Black Jack to perform the operation; Black Jack [[TranquilFury calmly refuses]].]]
75* BunnyEarsLawyer: Black Jack again; anyone who wants his services has to put up with his many eccentricities. However, a special mention goes to the man's prices! Now, in many cases, those prices are just walls to make sure the patient is willing to do ''anything'' for recovery. But if you have the money, he ''will'' make sure you pay...
76* ButNotTooForeign: Black Jack got the dark skin of his face from a childhood friend, Takashi, who was half-Black, half-Japanese.
77* ButterflyOfDeathAndRebirth: At the end of the chapter where Doctor Kiriko is introduced, after Jack saves the patient he was set on euthanizing. At mild provocation from Jack, he illustrates that his philosophy hasn't changed one bit; picking up a wounded butterfly from the steps they were conversing on... and crushing it. He then starts to leave, insinuating Jack is a fool for spending time-saving lives.
78* CanonDiscontinuity: The "Sealed Chapters", which Tezuka chose to withdraw from the official collections for various reasons (too controversial, overreliance on shock images, plot recycled into a better story, just plain not very good.) Most of them have been reprinted in special collections, but at least one has never been.
79* CanonImmigrant: Sharaku and Watou, who had appeared in other Tezuka works (originally in ''Manga/TheThreeEyedOne'') before they became regulars (sorta) in the new series. Sharaku was even a more or less recurrent villain in some Manga/AstroBoy continuities, with Watou as his ward and MoralityPet.
80%%* CarFu: Black Jack seems fond of this.
81* CatchPhrase: Pinoko's trademark cry of shock and/or frustration, "Acchon burike!" It doesn't actually mean anything, even in Japanese. It's Anglicanized in the fan-dubs of the TV series as "Omigewdness!", while the manga translations by Vertical leave it as it is. The anime tries to explain what it means in the episode "A Teacher and a Pupil", which begins with a bored Pinoko idly watching kiddy TV -- starring two goofballs who introduce themselves as Acchon and Burike: "Together, we're ACCHON-BURIKE!!" Then she turns the TV off.
82* CelibateHero: Black Jack is usually of the "Love is a Distraction" variety, but sometimes brings up the "I'm a Danger Magnet" argument. However, see HiddenHeartOfGold.
83* ChekhovsGag: The recurring character template Acetylene Lamp often spawns a candle on the back of his head when surprised or angry. After several instances of this visual gag, one story makes the candle real all of a sudden as it is grabbed by another character to set an explosion that kills everyone involved.
84* ChickMagnet: Kuwata, Megumi, Yuri... Black Jack gets around, 'kay?
85* ClingyJealousGirl: Pinoko, who sees herself as Black Jack's wife (or at least fiance?), while he thinks of her more as a daughter. It doesn't help that she's technically 18 years old, but [[NotAllowedToGrowUp her stunted growth makes her look like a little girl]], and PrecociousCrush aside she doesn't really act eighteen either.
86* CompanionCube: One story deals with a lonely policeman who cares for a policeman mannequin set next to his apartment.
87* CompulsorySchoolAge: Pinoko tried to go to high school, but the entrance exam alone was too stressful for her to handle (it didn't help that she didn't study). Black Jack then enrolled her in a class with other kids her apparent age, but due to her headstrong nature, that didn't work out either.
88* ContrivedCoincidence: The number of times that Black Jack is where he needs to be to operate on a patient that only he is skilled enough to cure is incredible.
89* CoolBigSis: Jo Carol to Pinoko in the first movie.
90* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Frequently. There are also several corrupt doctors and plenty of corrupt government officials, as well.
91* CosmicDeadline: The page limit is often noted and the operation is sped up accordingly.
92* CoveredWithScars: Black Jack is this from stepping on a landmine as a small child.
93* CrazyPrepared: When held at gunpoint and told to reach for the sky, Black Jack raises a pair of ''dummy arms'' concealed in his coat so his hands will be free to sling scalpels at the enemy. In fairness, it's not like he just ''wears'' those - he'd expected he would be attacked.
94* CrimefightingWithCash: He's no Batman, but Black Jack has done his fair share of defeating criminals using his money and resources.
95* DaddyHadAGoodReasonForAbandoningYou: [[spoiler: Black Jack's father, Kagemitsu, left his family in order to protect them from assassins. This is only in ''Black Jack 21'' however, in the original manga this is most definitely [[AvertedTrope Averted]] with Kagemitsu being an incredibly selfish jerk.]]
96%%* DarkActionGirl: Benitokage in ''Black Jack 21''.
97* DarkIsNotEvil: Black Jack's face, wardrobe, car, and name pertain to blackness, yet the worst thing about his personality is that he doesn't have much of a sense of humour.
98* DarkerAndEdgier: The {{OAV}}s compared to the manga. There is a lot less humor, and happy endings are rarer.
99* DeadlyDingos: Dingoes are the main antagonists in the episode "Wilderness Epidemic", where they are incorrectly portrayed as vicious predators that were introduced in Australia by colonialists and devastated the local ecosystem by overhunting the indigenous species. After contracting a disease, Black Jack is forced to [[SelfSurgery operate on himself]], but the smell of his blood attracts a pack of dingoes. He barely survives by using his scalpel as an ImprovisedWeapon, repelling the predators just long enough for his friends to find him and take him to safety.
100* DeadlyDoctor: He can be one if he's threatened. Fortunately, he's a nice person most of the time.
101* DeadlyUpgrade: The first movie features [[spoiler: a drug called Endorph-A]] which enhances a person's physical, mental, or artistic abilities to superhuman levels. However, it causes physical and mental deterioration in its subjects. One man's heart frickin' ''[[LudicrousGibs explodes.]]''
102* DeadpanSnarker: Some of the manga's more humorous moments come from Black Jack's cold sarcasm, particularly in regards to Pinoko, who he often mocks for her childish behaviour in spite of being 18 years old.
103* DeathByCameo:
104** The very first story starts with Rock Holmes dying in a car crash.
105** Acetylene Lamp appears as a corpse in one story. While being carried away, he stands back up and demands they [[LampshadeHanging give him some lines]].
106* TheDeterminator: One chapter juxtaposes a racer's determination to win a grand prix despite two eliminations in his career with Jack's determination to fix his heart after already failing twice over the years. [[spoiler:The racer wins but nearly dies from a heart attack. Jack pulls one heck of a stunt to prevent his car from crashing, gets his heart beating again and takes him to surgery.]]
107* DiabolusExMachina: Supporting characters, and sometimes even the patient, have a tendency to die of some unrelated cause at the last minute. Tezuka's decent at [[JustifiedTrope justifying]] them, but when he doesn't... well, [[RealityIsUnrealistic the real world works like that.]]
108* DoggedNiceGuy: Sharaku is implied to be attracted to Pinoko. Unfortunately for him, she only has eyes for the doctor.
109%%* DoomedMoralVictor: Many of Black Jack's [[LaResistance politically involved]] patients.
110* DoorstopBaby: In the 2004 TV series's episode "Rock's cradle", a gangster schoolgirl finds a baby boy in a locker whose key she stole. Said baby is weak and malnourished, so she takes him to Black Jack's...
111* DrJerk: Black Jack tends to the JerkWithAHeartOfGold version of this, but other doctors in the series ''do'' show a much stronger interest in their stock portfolio, reputation or advancement opportunities than the patients' wellbeing.
112* {{Dracula}}: One chapter shows Jack working for a descendant of Dracula.
113* DrivenToSuicide: A number of Black Jack's patients end up under his care out of suicidal tendencies. One of the sadder cases is [[spoiler:Yoshie Momota in "Yet False the Days".]]
114* EagleLand: The OVA series realistically portrayed the United States, but also created a fictional Eagleland country for an AuthorTract episode.
115* ElmuhFuddSyndwome: Pinoko has a ''bad'' case of this in pretty much every version of the series (yes, including the original Japanese manga).
116* EnemyMine: Black Jack and Dr. Kiriko have teamed up at least once to save a patient's life.
117* EvenEvilHasStandards:
118** While Dr. Kiriko has no issues with ending a terminally ill patient's life, seeing the U.S. government condemn men to death when they have a chance of recovery in "Terror Virus" sends him into a {{Tranquil Fury}}.
119** In the chapter "One Hour To Death", Kiriko visits New York City to acquire cardiotoxin, a painless, quick-acting poison invented by the Nazis. A young boy steals his bag and gives the toxin to his mother, who he can't stand to watch die slowly of heart disease. Kiriko ''freaks out'' and does everything he can to help Black Jack save her. He's willing to end people's lives, but he will ''not'' let someone else make the choice for the patient.
120* ExactWords: In Black Jack 21, Black Jack's estranged father asks his son to perform plastic surgery on the woman he left Jack's mother for, requesting he make her the world's most beautiful woman. [[spoiler: So Jack makes her look exactly like his mother, the woman he considers the most beautiful in the world.]]
121* ExtremelyProtectiveChild: In one story, Black Jack is hired to operate on a pregnant woman. Because of an untreated condition, not only was the baby dead, but the woman would be left unable to have any more children. This does not sit well at all with her young son, who is completely devoted to his mother and is convinced that Black Jack is a monster who is trying to kill her. [[spoiler:The son goes so far as to drug Black Jack to prevent the operation, but Black Jack is revived when Pinoko shoves a jar of mustard under his nose.]]
122* TheFaceless: Pinoko's sister, who wears a mask at all times when she appears. Apparently, she's quite famous and recognizable. Pinoko's face is no clue to hers, as that part of Pinoko was artificially created by Black Jack. [[spoiler:We do see her face in a later story, where we also find out that she is the daughter of a wealthy Buddhist family.]]
123* FashionDissonance: Dear God, the [[HotbloodedSideburns SIDEBURNS!]]
124* FlatEarthAtheist: Overlaps with ArbitrarySkepticism and even NayTheist, Black Jack disdains the notion of God, spirits and other supernaturals, and usually regard them as '[[JerkassGods cruel]]'. This coming from a man whose assistant was a sentient psychic tumor, had run-ins with real psychokinetic phenomena, yet still refuse to accept an old priest's word that the perfect operation he did, surpassing even Black Jack's own performance, was a divine intervention.
125* GentleGiant: A huge schoolboy who actually ''is'' a giant (he has gigantism) was a champion sumo wrestler in school and now wants to be a professional koi breeder and dote on his fish, despite being highly recruited by sumo stables and pro wrestling companies. Black Jack tries to tell the parents that the condition that made him great in school could overtax his heart and kill him, to no avail. [[spoiler: A well-timed car crash permanently ends any sumo prospects and Black Jack takes his prize fish as compensation. The boy resumes his koi breeding in peace, although he's eventually going to have to tell his parents that he didn't really lose his legs...]]
126* GoodDocBadDoc: Averted, Black Jack and Kiriko are much more morally complex characters. Though he charges exorbitant amounts of money for his services, Black Jack sincerely fights for the lives of his patients. His Dr. Kevorkian-esque rival is presented sympathetically (as in, he also wants to end unnecessary suffering), but vehemently disagrees with Black Jack.
127* GoodScarsEvilScars: Black Jack has a distinctive scar and a discolored patch of skin running across his face, not to mention countless other ones all over his body. These were the result of stepping on an undetonated landmine when he was a child, and the only kid willing to donate skin for a graft being a biracial African. He could easily fix it ''himself'', but doesn't because of his emotional attachment to his friend.
128* GoodSmokingEvilSmoking: All the average joes and ''[[EverybodySmokes doctors]]'' (What? It was the 70's!) smoke cigarettes, including Black Jack who smokes cigarettes and a [[DistinguishedGentlemansPipe pipe]]. The [[SleazyPolitician bad]] [[CorruptCorporateExecutive guys]], of course, smoke [[CigarChomper huge smelly cigars.]]
129* HalfTruth: Most of Black Jack's diagnosis as told to his patients and their families, to protect them or because he's certain they couldn't handle their therapy otherwise:
130** For example, in one of the earliest stories, a mafioso has a good kid framed for a crime he didn't commit, to use him as "spare parts" for his own spoiled rotten son. Black Jack [[spoiler: gives the good kid plastic surgery and tells him to claim to be the mafioso's son and use his money to escape, bringing along his own poor mother]].
131** Black Jack tells one of his patients the story of a young paraplegic who regained full mobility by exercising strenuously, then downtoning the story as a fib. As the patient starts a long marathon, as in the story he was just told about, Black Jack quietly follows him, interested. It's revealed that [[spoiler: Black Jack wasn't telling all the truth: the young paraplegic in the story was Black Jack as a little kid]].
132** Black Jack fits a former kid athlete with a crude, low-tech prostetic arm, claiming it's "Special". It's later discovered that [[spoiler: the arm actually had a useful feature: a two-way radio connected with a receiver, given to the kid's secret crush, who then was able to comfort him and push him to a new career as a shogi champion]].
133** Black Jack performs surgery on a young singer, telling her that if she doesn't observe a short vocal rest she'll go mute. The singer is so stressed that she disobeys to perform in a SchoolFestival, screwing over her voice. Black Jack then puts her on an unusual year long (three months in the anime) total voice rest, claiming that, if she obeys, he'll install a costly artificial voice box in her throat. [[spoiler: The artificial voice box was just a broken stethoscope, and Black Jack just wanted to scare her into observing proper therapy. After she did, she healed just fine]].
134** Black Jack claims he performed surgery on a girl to let her take the place of her dead brother as the heir of an important firm. [[spoiler: Later, he reveals he just hypnotized the girl to believe his lie, thus making her able and comfortable to perform the given role]].
135* HiddenHeartOfGold:
136** Black Jack actively ''strives'' to look like a bad guy, especially when it's for the patient's own good.
137** In an episode Black Jack is called in to perform the operation at the behest of a seemingly inhuman mother who was forcing the boy to get up and walk every night, further injuring him. Black Jack discovers later [[spoiler: that the mother had been acting so because she realized the house was under surveillance by the military of the country, which had already executed her husband for speaking against the war.]]
138** Mr. Muramasa from ''Teacher and Pupil'' is a tough but warm GentleGiant who puts up an incredibly vicious and sadistic facade in front of his students, insulting harshly them over small slights and mistakes. Muramasa's reasoning for this is to make them want to prove his insults wrong and overcome him, but unfortunately, this doesn't work at ''all'' on one student [[AttemptedSuicide who would rather die than go back to class]]... When Muramasa finds out about this he is [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone absolutely horrified and guilt-ridden]]. [[spoiler: In the end, Muramasa totally drops the facade in favor of being his usual strict but kindly self to his student]].
139* HighPressureBlood: Particularly in the {{OAV}}s. The movie has people vomiting up buckets of blood every couple of hours as a symptom of a mysterious disease.
140* HilariousOuttakes: The 2004 animated adaptation has some at the end of every episode, Pixar style.
141* HotSpringsEpisode: The 10th {{OAV}} episode, "Sinking Woman". The same episode where little Pinoko [[CovertPervert ogles Black Jack's ass]] in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it sight gag.
142%%* HystericalWoman: Especially in the manga.
143* IdenticalStranger: in "The Other J", Black Jack discovers a man named Jonathan who not only looks just like him (save for half his hair color), but even has the same exact scars on his face. Naturally, Black Jack's first reaction is to [[HypocriticalHumor wonder how a surgeon could do such a shoddy job on a patient]].
144* IdolSinger: Kumiko and Watou's classmate Rei in the 2004 series. Then it turns out she has a throat tumor...
145* IsThereADoctorInTheHouse: Not only the name of the first chapter of the original manga, but a frequent call throughout the manga which Black Jack ultimately rises to.
146* JerkassGods: Zig-zagged. In ''Shrinking'', [[spoiler:the only real explanation of the mysterious shrinking disease is God trying to send humanity a warning. Dr. Tokugawa views this as GodIsGood, whilst Black Jack views it as this trope]]. However, Black Jack himself seems to alternate between being a misotheist to believing some of his successes are because of God’s intervention.
147-->'''Black Jack:''' Now and then God lends a helping... Sleight of hand.
148* KarmaHoudiniWarranty: Frequently done actually. There are a lot of villains who have either done terrible tings in the past and are finally being caught or avoid punishment but it's clear they are only delaying the inevitable. Some notable examples include a factory unintentionally but apathetically poisoning a nearby town, the CorruptCorporateExecutive in the 1996 movie, and a BloodKnight general who is confronted by the children of the civilians he killed. [[spoiler: The five men who ruined Black Jack's life are supposed to be this, though we only see two of them face justice]].
149* KendoTeamCaptain: Watou is a female example.
150* KingIncognito: In ''Titles'', Black Jack was invited to lead a surgery so TheEmperor of a foreign nation, an accomplished doctor himself, could see his work. But after finding out how he will just be an assistant instead of lead, Black Jack walked off the surgery and the whole thing's canceled. The next day, a foreign man in casual clothes came to his house with a patient in tow, asking Black Jack to perform surgery with him as the assistant. Black Jack instantly knew that the man is really The Emperor, but Pinoko didn't and he ended up getting bossed around as Pinoko's assistant. But The Emperor took it well, he remarked how his status often acts as a leash, and at the end of the day thanked Black Jack for fulfilling his request.
151%%* KnightInSourArmor: Black Jack.
152* LandmineGoesClick: In the 2004 anime, the incident where Black Jack was scarred and left an orphan is attributed to his mother taking him to play on a vast field, where he steps on a land mine that had been hidden there since the Second World War.
153* LighterAndSofter: While the original manga was a dark story with intense, intricately-detailed medical procedures, the ''Black Jack TV'' anime is a fairly light-hearted piece with nary a drop of blood to be seen. Characters who die or are left crippled in the manga survive without any injury (with only ''very'' few exceptions), and the tone as a whole is much more optimistic.
154* ListOfTransgressions: In one story, Black Jack's school friend, Makube, is a criminal. He gets detained by the ICPO.
155-->'''Inspector:''' So you won't confess your crimes of murder, smuggling, drug-dealing, gambling fraud, forgery, battery, bribery, human trafficking, pimping, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking public urination]]?\
156'''Makube:''' [[IResembleThatRemark I'll cop to public urination.]]
157* LiteralMinded: Black Jack operates on an alien, and demands payment. He tells the aliens to give him a lot of money, using a bill as an example of earth money. [[GenreSavvy He also tells them not to rob a bank or anything]]. [[spoiler: Cue the end of the chapter, where Black Jack is in jail for counterfeiting. The well-meaning aliens duplicated the same bill exactly, down to the serial number.]]
158* LivingEmotionalCrutch: Black Jack is Pinoko's, and vice-versa to a lesser extent.
159* LockedIntoStrangeness: The landmine incident is the reason for Black Jack's scars, his face, and the shock of white hair.
160* MagicPlasticSurgery: Despite being the ultimate surgeon, Black Jack actually specializes in external operations.
161* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Many of the seemingly fantastical ailments and events Black Jack encounters are explained scientifically, while others are unambiguously supernatural like Pinoko’s former psychic abilities and aliens. Sometimes though it is left more ambiguous, this includes a strange shrinking disease, some potential encounters with restless spirits, and what could be outright divine miracles.
162* MeaningfulName: Pinoko, which comes from "[[Literature/TheAdventuresOfPinocchio Pinocchio]]". Black Jack is even shown reading the book.
163* MedicalDrama: With a good helping of science-fiction and comedy.
164* MoodWhiplash: An otherwise serious story about a [[JapaneseDelinquents girl gangleader]] taking care of [[DoorstopBaby an abandoned infant]] who also is an ill boy has the characters doing hilarious wild takes. This apparently a ShoutOut to another manga-ka.
165* MoralityPet: Pinoko to Black Jack. While a good person, Black Jack often has very little patience for those who insult him and/or refuse to pay his prices, in these cases it is often up to Pinoko to convince the doctor to give them a chance by appealing to his mercy.
166* TheMovie: Two of 'em: ''[[TitleTheAdaptation Black Jack The Movie]]'' in 1992, and ''The Two Doctors of Darkness'' in 2005.
167* MrFanservice: Despite his numerous scars, it's hard not to find a Black Jack fan who is somewhat attracted to him. This is helped by the various scenes where the doctor is shown without a shirt.
168* MrViceGuy: Blackjack is notable for 2 things: Greed and Pride, although he plays with them.
169** For Greed, he charges an exorbitant amount of money for his skills, often remarking that that amount of money is very cheap for his services. But he also knows when to NOT charge the money, and it's later revealed that he'd been using the money to [[spoiler:exact long-term revenge plots against the people who originally crippled him and killed his mother.]]
170** Blackjack doesn't care about titles and honors, and is perfectly content with people thinking he's just a back-alley, unlicensed surgeon. But the surest way to make him show his skills[[note]]Even Blackjack has been shown to refuse his services on certain cases, despite the money offered[[/note]] is to show that one is more skilled than him and somehow imply that he'd be incapable of achieving the same feat. At one point he was flabbergasted that an old priest did a near-perfect surgery, and then challenging the priest for a 'surgeon-off', despite the priest insisting that the whole thing was a divine intervention.
171* MuggingTheMonster: TheReveal of [[spoiler:"Revenge"]] -- The Japanese Medical Association cracks down on Black Jack just as a billionaire Italian philanthropist asks Jack to cure his son of a condition that only Jack could possibly treat. He tries to pressure the Japanese government, only for the JMA chairman to declare that they will strike if Black Jack is permitted to operate. He finally caves in and lets them operate in desperation... and they botch it, killing the patient. Turns out that [[spoiler:the "philanthropist" is actually the [[TheDon Mafia Godfather]] Boccherini -- ''[[WouldHurtAChild who has the chairman's son shot in a manner only Jack could treat.]]'']] The surgeon general offers to give Jack a medical license in exchange for treating his son. Jack responds by tearing the license, causing the chairman to beg for his help.
172* MundaneMadeAwesome: Mecha pilots aside, medicine is probably the most epic profession ever.
173* MurderTheHypotenuse: An odd and very tragic case involving a friend of Black Jack's, the friend's wife... [[spoiler: and a super intelligent deer who tried to kill the poor woman when he learned his only friend was married.]]
174* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: A common way chapters will end is with a character going through this. A good example is with the rancher Goldmount collapsing in shame [[spoiler: after he finds out he almost killed his own son... and this is one of the ''less'' depressing ones]].
175* MyGreatestFailure:
176** Dr. Hounma confesses to Black Jack on his death bed that [[spoiler: when first operating on him, he accidentally left a scalpel in his body, but adamantly refused to believe he could be so careless and therefore ignored it. When he discovered the calcium-sheathed tool in a follow-up operation, he was so disgusted with himself for putting a patient's life in jeopardy for the sake of pride that he immediately retired from practice.]]
177** Another story gives a second reason for Hounma's retirement. His attempts to cure an unknown heart disease with surgery were viewed as live experimentation and caused him to be cast away from the medical community upon the death of the patient.
178* NoEnding:
179** ''The SL Called Life'' originally gave an open ending to the series. Several chapters were made afterward, but none ever gave closure to Jack's journey.
180** As soon as their aesop is made clear, several stories end without a proper resolution.
181** The manga teases an overreaching plot about [[spoiler:Jack's revenge on the people responsible for the tragedy that ruined his mother's life]]. It doesn't get past the second encounter.
182* NotQuiteDead: Black Jack once kept operating on a patient that had lost all signs of life during the surgery. The other doctors stop helping and turn from him in disgust, only for the patient to recover seconds after Jack says he's done and leaves.
183* NotSoStoic:
184** The mere ''sight'' of Dr. Kiriko will lead Black Jack to drop whatever he's doing just to bitch at him. Dr. Kiriko seems to find this amusing.
185** In "Emergency Shelter", Jack plays it cool once he gets trapped in the titular room -- but once everyone else starts screaming for help, he joins in. Once Jack's done with finding a solution, he wipes sweat off his face with a particularly relieved expression. Another notable example is seen in "Dingoes", in which Jack becomes seriously distressed over being on the verge of death.
186* {{Ojou}}: Michiru the manga artist, Souno the Ikebana expert, Rei the IdolSinger.
187* OlderThanTheyLook: Pinoko is both this ''and'' [[YoungerThanTheyLook Younger than She Looks]], as she only received a proper body a short time ago.
188* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Black Jack can operate on ''anything''. People, animals, plants, aliens, robots, computers, ghosts, ''himself''...
189* OnlySixFaces: It's rather strange to see the same [[ReusedCharacterDesign "actor"]] playing a degenerate gangster who's been sentenced to death one week and a heroic scientist a couple of weeks later.
190%%* OpenHeartDentistry
191* PapaWolf:
192** Unless you want Black Jack to slice you to ribbons with his scalpels or just plain ruin your life, Do NOT threaten Pinoko. Or any other kids for that matter.
193** The father from ''Con Man, Aspiring'' is a lazy lout who is responsible for his family’s lack of finances, but he is also perfectly willing to send himself to jail if it means saving his son’s life.
194* PatientOfTheWeek: Justified in that Black Jack's patients hire him illegally, rather than seeing him in a hospital.
195* ParentalAbandonment: Black Jack's mother was killed from wounds she sustained from a landmine blast while his father left both of them while she was still holding on. Also, when Black Jack got the crazy idea to turn a patient's removed teratoma into a cute little girl and introduce her as her sister, the first thing said cute girl did was violently call her older sister out since she wanted the teratoma to be killed; the woman naturally freaked out and refused to accept her as family, leaving the girl in Black Jack's custody.
196* PastelChalkedFreezeFrame: The 90's anime version was directed by Creator/OsamuDezaki, the Trope Maker himself.
197* PetBabyWildAnimal: A chapter revolves around a baby deer who is surgically enhanced to increase its intelligence and make it able to communicate with its human caretaker. It backfires horribly when [[spoiler:the fully grown deer realizes how destructive human beings can be and becomes an AxCrazy beast who goes on a killing spree, forcing its human companion to euthanize him]].
198%%* PhenotypeStereotype: Most of the American/European characters, but there are exceptions.
199* PlayingDoctor: Played with in the manga story entitled, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "Playing Doctor"]]. A boy convinces one of his schoolmates, a child actor, to pretend to be Dr. Black Jack for his sick little sister who's convinced that only Dr. Black Jack can make her better. The kid is embarrased at examining a naked girl, but the brother reassures him that she's just a little kid so it doesn't count. Later, the kid practices his examinations by "playing doctor" on a dummy made of pillows and blankets, only for his mother to walk in and assume he's up to something dirty.
200* PluckyGirl: There are very, ''very'' few things in the world that will slow Pinoko down.
201* PoseOfSupplication: To prevent a shamaness from swindling people, Jack makes a risky bet. If he wins she gives him all the money she made, but if he fails the impossible surgery of the week he'll prostrate himself before her and quit practicing medicine. After he succeeds, she kneels over Jack's lap in tears because [[spoiler:her whole anti-doctor guru stunt was out of grief from suffering the same skin disease he just cured. Thankfully, Jack had already heard it from a friend and helping her was his goal in the first place.]]
202%%* PsychicSurgery
203* {{Pun}}: Tezuka seems quite fond of those, and actually manages to use them creatively to break the tension.
204* QuackDoctor: Black Jack talked a quack doctor through performing surgery on him, which the quack had never done before; soon after, the quack declared his intention to go to medical school for real.
205* RapidAging: One chapter features a man who's been comatose for decades but somehow hasn't aged since. With some incentive from Kiriko just being there, Jack operates on this seemingly hopeless patient and nails the surgery... only for this trope to happen and kill the man anyway, much to the frustration of both doctors.
206%%* RevengeByProxy
207* RageAgainstTheHeavens: In "Shrinking", Black Jack finally discovers a reliable treatment for the mysterious disease that has been plaguing Africa. However, he is too late to save his friend, who with his last words wonders whether the illness is a sign of divine punishment. This prompts Jack to curse against the heavens, asking why God even bothered allowing humans to experiment with medicine if He has also invented all the plagues that ravage mankind.
208--> '''Black Jack:''' "You, so-called God! You are cruel!"
209* ReusedCharacterDesign: A signature style of Tezuka. Black Jack is special for his work in that Black Jack and Pinoko are only reused when he specifically is trying to cameo them in other works. Dr. Hounma, who's also a rather unique design, is used again in nearly every major Tezuka work, and prominently in ''Manga/{{Phoenix}}'', showing Hounma's continued {{Reincarnation}}s all end up as TheWoobie. Of course, ''Black Jack'' features Tezuka's good old standard cast, including Astro Boy, Acytelene Lamp, Ham Egg, and pretty much every recurring Tezuka character ever.
210* RippedFromTheHeadlines: A few of the chapters reflect various major stories in Japan at the time. The delinquent girl adopting a baby abandoned in a coin locker? Japan really ''was'' experiencing a bizarre rash of infants abandoned in coin lockers around the time the story was written.
211* RoadsideSurgery: Black Jack winds up conducting a lot of these, either because the patient can't be moved without significant risk or is too far away from a clinic to get a proper operation.
212* RuleOfCool: Tezuka definitely ''did'' do the research (he ''was'' a doctor, after all), but he also knew that you didn't have to let pesky little things like "reality" and "medical facts" get in the way of psychic teratomas and the like.
213* SadistTeacher: Subverted in the manga and last TV series, where the local sadist teacher is actually a good person who ''willingly'' puts on the "sadist" mask to toughen up his students... but ends up terrorizing one of them and almost causes a tragedy.
214* SaveTheVillain: Jack will often save people who had meant harm for him, especially if he can make a buck in the proccess. In some cases, however, he doesn't bother. One remarkable instance had Jack doing surgery on [[spoiler:one of his revenge targets]] for the sake of the man's daughter. A year later, Jack is ''very upset'' at hearing the man later died of a natural cause and without regrets.
215* ScarpiaUltimatum: Black Jack pretends to pull one of these as a SecretTestOfCharacter, telling the daughter of a man he despises that he'll only perform lifesaving surgery on her father for a price she can afford if she pays the rest by letting him "do what he wants with her body". Only once she agrees, and thus shows how much she cares for her father, does Black Jack reveal that he meant [[ExactWords using her as a tissue and organ donor for the surgery]].
216* ScarsAreForever: Several of the scars (such as the iconic facial one) are justified, though, in that [[TragicKeepsake Black Jack had an emotional attachment to the skin donor]] and thus doesn't risk messing with them despite obviously being skilled enough to do so.
217%%* SecondPlaceIsForWinners: The episode where Largo is introduced.
218* SelfMadeOrphan: Dr. Kiriko's sister asks Black Jack to operate on her father, whom Kiriko has given up on and wants to put down. Black Jack has to tolerate Kiriko's taunts and his attempts at poisoning the man behind his back, but finds a solution after all. [[spoiler:The man dies anyway, to Kiriko's own horror, because he did succeed in poisoning him during the surgery.]]
219* SelfSurgery:
220** Black Jack once performed a full surgery on his own abdomen, while being circled by hungry dingos.
221** Black Jack also talked a quack doctor through performing surgery on him, which the quack had never done before; soon after, the quack declared his intention to go to medical school for real.
222** Another time finds him performing surgery on his leg instead of letting another doctor amputate it.
223* ShadowArchetype:
224** Dr. Kiriko (aka "Mozart"). A doctor who served in wartime, he believes in helping patients die painlessly when there is no chance for recovery. He's not ''evil'', as such, but where Black Jack will do anything possible to make a patient live, [[WellIntentionedExtremist Dr. Kiriko will choose euthanasia rather than prolong the patient's suffering]]. Naturally, the physicians clash at times [[EnemyMine but must cooperate at others]]. To his credit, if he discovers that the patient ''has'' a chance of recovery, guess who he turns to?
225** Black Jack actually had three shadows, though Kiriko was the only one who stuck. An acupuncturist who disdained traditional medicine appeared a few times, and an idealistic doctor who worked within the system appeared exactly once.
226* SheIsNotMyGirlfriend: Inverted. Everyone assumes Pinoko is Black Jack's daughter (and he usually presents her as his assistant), but she always insists she's his wife. No one seems to take her seriously on that, so the trope plays inverted till the end.
227* ShipTease: A lot of these with Black Jack and [[GirlOfTheWeek various one-shot female characters]], as well as [[spoiler:Kei/Megumi]] and, in the anime, Pinoko.
228* ShockinglyExpensiveBill: Black Jack often demands a 30,000,000 Yen BlackMarket rate for most operations and more. Often done just to make it clear how serious the work is. [[ComicallySmallDemand Subverted]] on occasion, such as the one time he accepted a pinwheel from a child and claimed that it was worth the 50 million yen owed to him.
229* ShootTheShaggyDog: Black Jack often cures patient with difficult to impossible cases, only for them to be killed in some other fashion.
230* ShoutOut:
231** Episode 7 has a white lion that's very similar to Manga/{{Kimba|TheWhiteLion}}.
232** Volume 10 of the manga, [[http://www.mangakong.com/manga/Black_Jack/010/73 seen here,]] has a poster to ''Star Wars: Film/ANewHope''.
233** In the story "Swapped" from volume 8, there's a TV showing ''Manga/AstroBoy''.
234** In the story *Sun Dolls" from volume 9, a boy has an ''Astro Boy'' poster and a ''Kid Cop'' poster on his wall.
235* SingleTargetSexuality: Doubly subverted with Pinoko; she [[GuyOfTheWeek gets crushes on other guys]] a ''lot'', but always loses interest after realizing she's still in love with Black Jack. Also, possibly how Black Jack feels toward Megumi.
236%%* SleazyPolitician
237%%* SlidingScaleOfGenderInequality: The manga tends to stay between Levels 3 and 4, but the first movie and 3rd OAV are more like Level 5.
238* SomethingAboutARose: In one opening of the 2004 Black Jack anime, he's shown holding a red rose.
239* SparedByTheAdaptation: Quite a few characters in the manga who die end up living in the anime, most notably the dog Largo who becomes a recurring character. Fans are divided on this, but most seem pleased on the grounds that it ends up removing some of the more [[SuddenDownerEnding abrupt sad endings]] and makes the times when someone DOES die more impactful.
240* SpellMyNameWithAnS: Little Pinoko's name is also frequently spelled as "Pinoco" to make [[Literature/TheAdventuresOfPinocchio the meaning]] more apparent.
241* SpinOff: An interestingly roundabout example. The manga ''Ray'' featured a LawyerFriendlyCameo from Black Jack. When it was made into ''Anime/RayTheAnimation'', Tezuka's studio happened to be the one animating it, and so it was promoted into a full-on spinoff, with Black Jack showing up in full.
242* SplitPersonality:
243** The ninth {{OAV}} deals with a patient who suffers from this - the personalities border on SuperpoweredEvilSide levels of competence.
244** An early manga chapter has Black Jack dealing with a man who has a "face sore" - a swelling with its own personality, based on an old Japanese tale, which happens to be on his face. [[spoiler:The man's a serial killer, and tries to kill Black Jack once the operation's done... but the sore takes over, throws him off a cliff, and asks that they be allowed to die. Jack complies, wondering if the sore was actually the man's conscience.]]
245* StatusQuoIsGod: While some chapters discussed giving Black Jack an actual license, none of them ended up with him actually getting his license. There will always be something that stands in the way, such as Pinoko missing (making him late to the meeting where they would consider giving him one), the doctor's council decides that they can't give him the license because his fee is too high, etc.
246* StevenUlyssesPerhero: Black Jack's real name is Kuroo Hazama. As he explains himself once, "Kuro" means "black" while the second "o" can be short for "otoko", meaning "man". Thus "Black Jack" is a loose English translation of his actual name.
247%%* StrawCharacter: The manga is especially prone to this.
248* SuicideByPills: One story has a woman staying at a hotel preparing to commit suicide via overdosing on pills. She's in the process of writing a farewell note to her parents (explaining that she embezzled money for her lover, who abandoned her and left her penniless) when a little boy in the next room [[InterruptedSuicide runs in, shouting how his father is incredibly sick and he needs someone to help]]. For the rest of the story, she forgets about her planned suicide in favor of helping the boy and his father. The story concludes with Black Jack operating on the father and telling the woman that he "bought" the pills off of her, conveniently paying the exact amount that she embezzled and had thought herself unable to pay back.
249%%* SuperDoc: Black Jack is said to be almost supernaturally good. If only he were actually licensed...
250* SuperDrowningSkills: Pinoko's exoskeleton is too dense to swim (except in water with an unhealthy level of salt)
251* SwitchedAtBirth: The manga chapter "Swapped" involves a woman being blackmailed by a nurse who saw her switch her terminally-ill newborn child for another infant in the maternity ward. [[spoiler:Subverted when it turns out Black Jack cured the child's illness, saw her swap the babies, and switched them ''back''.]]
252%%* SympatheticInspectorAntagonist: Inspector Tomobiki (known as Takasugi in the {{OVA}}s, for no apparent reason).
253* TelevisuallyTransmittedDisease: Lionitus, poison-secreting parasites, body freezing super-coma, anorexia-inducing brain worm, psychosomatic bullet wounds, flesh-eating anthrax variant, '''''psychic fetiform teratoma''''', deciduous plant becoming a human parasite...
254* ThinksLikeARomanceNovel: Pinoko idealizes her relationship with Black Jack and most of the events in her life as if they had come out of a romantic novel, [[BreakTheCutie no matter how many times reality bitch-slaps her for it.]]
255* ThouShaltNotKill: Jack doesn't like people dying on him if he can do anything about it, and this usually includes his enemies. Why kill when he can instead just severely injure them, patch them up and blackmail them into paying for it? One apparent aversion is seen in "Treasure Island", where the villains are all bitten by snakes while holding Jack hostage and the story ends with the doctor saying they can just die for all he cares.
256%%* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: Watou and Kumiko.
257* TragicKeepsake:
258** The half of Black Jack's face that's darker is his last memory of a close friend [[spoiler:who was killed during an environmental protest]].
259** The TV series has a necklace that Black Jack's mother was wearing during the landmine incident. In the second season, this becomes an OrphansPlotTrinket when it's revealed that [[spoiler:Black Jack's father hid a microchip in it detailing the purpose and methods of the Phoenix Project]].
260* TriageTyrant: One of Black Jack's patients, a politician, accuses Black Jack of being this, and even sues him over it, when, in the aftermath of a violent accident which leaves three injured, Black Jack operates on an endangered wildcat first, a baby second, and the politician last. Black Jack defends himself by saying that he simply treated them in order of how serious their injuries were, and that it's his policy to treat all life, both human and animal, as equal. (Though, privately, he admits that he considers saving a critically endangered wildcat more important than saving some SleazyPolitician.)
261* {{Tsundere}}:
262** Sharaku's older sister Watou is a Type A (tsuntsun). She's a rather rough and impulsive girl in almost every single interaction with others and an episode of the TV series has her in a borderline SlapSlapKiss dynamic with Jou, the local Bad Boy of her school.
263** Megumi claims that ''Black Jack'' was a type A tsundere towards her throughout medical school.
264* UltimateBlacksmith: A reclusive one who made Black Jack's and Biwamaru's scalpels and acupuncture needles, respectively. He accepts payment in cash.... and [[MoneyToBurn uses that cash as fuel for his forge.]] But his skills are real, he could tell how many patients Biwamaru has failed to cure just by looking at his needles, and forged scalpels so fine a gourd sliced in two with it could be reattached easily. Black Jack himself noted that his workmanship for that amount of money is a steal.
265* UncertainDoom: In the anime, Nadare the deer survives being shot by his human friend and limps his way back to the forest. The episode ends with the other characters wondering whether Nadare was KilledOffscreen.
266* UngratefulBastard:
267** The SleazyPolitician in the pilot. Even after Jack saves him, he sues Jack for malpractice (Jack treats [[ItsAllAboutMe him]] last among three patients, in order of severity). [[spoiler:It comes back to bite him, hard: He requires another treatment, but Jack refuses unless he drops the FrivolousLawsuit.]]
268** A woman hires Black Jack to perform surgery on her brother who has severe burn injuries. After some detective work, Jack finds she herself did them out of self-defense from heavy abuse but regrets it and wants him to be healthy anyway. [[spoiler:Jack barely gets away when the now healed madman walks in and burns both his sister, himself and their entire mansion to cinders.]]
269* UnseenPenPal: A friendship sort-of version happens in the last series, in which a Japanese ill boy lies to his Australian online friend about his prowess in baseball and breaks off the friendship in absolute ''panic'' when said friend says he'll visit him and watch his games. [[spoiler: It turns out the Australian kid ''also'' was lying... because he was another ill boy, and actually ''blind''. When they make up, Black Jack operates on both of them and they get better.]]
270* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: Inverted with Black Jack. Whenever there are whispers of conversation and Black Jack's on the scene, the only thing they talk about more than his heavy, black cape-jacket on a hot day is his patchwork face.
271%%* WellIntentionedExtremist: [[spoiler: Jo Carol Brane.]]
272* WhamEpisode: The story that reveals the complete backstory behind Black Jack's injury & his mother's death also reveals [[spoiler:that ever since then Black Jack has been orchestrating an elaborate revenge plot to murder all the people responsible, actually goes through with it on one of them, and the story ends with him planning to take care of the rest. He charges his wealthy clients exorbitant fees yet lives in a run-down cottage because he's been using the money to finance his scheme, and he refuses to get a license because it would involve him taking an oath to do no harm, incompatible with the vendetta he already swore.]]
273* WhatTheHellHero: When Jack is guilt-ridden over a friend having been severely injured because of his own recklessness, suddenly Spider, a ''recurring gag character'', [[MoodWhiplash pops up next to Jack to chew him out for it]].
274%%* WhiteHairBlackHeart: Dr. Kiriko. He's prematurely white-haired and morally ambiguous.
275* WholesomeCrossdresser: [[spoiler:Dr. Megumi Kisaragi, aka "Kei". She chose to present a male appearance after her cancerous ovaries were removed. A person skimming the story might easily be misled into believing that she'd spontaneously turned into a man.]]
276%%* WorldOfHam: Oh yes.
277%%* {{Xenafication}}: Yuri in ''Black Jack 21''.
278* YouKeepUsingThatWord: Pinoko, who started out as a fetus in fetu, is repeatedly referred to as a teratoma, a type of tumor that grows recognizable body parts inside it due to genetic mutations. All the evidence we see in the story however, such as the fact Pinoko claims that her brain has been alive and conscious inside her sister's body since birth, would indicate she's actually a parasitic twin who became embedded in her sister in the womb rather than growing from her later on. In real life there is some debate in the medical community about whether some or all cases of fetus in fetu may be highly differentiated teratomas, but the parasitic twin theory is generally considered more likely.
279%%* {{Zeerust}}: The earlier manga featured this with a computer controlled hospital.
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