Cheap Black Jack: A Surgeon With the Hands of God (Video) (Osamu Dezaki) Price

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Customer Reviews of Black Jack: A Surgeon With the Hands of God

A lot of solid plot material wasted.
Dark. Sombre. Maybe even film noir in its execution, Black Jack: The Movie carries forward the art-house style of direction that we've seen in the OAV series. Cut scenes utilizing a freeze-to-manga style which can be very effective in ending or transitioning, except here, it's so often that it loses its effect, and even becomes annoying. Director Dezaki Osamu also has a penchant for using thermo-graphs to show what's happening to the victims as they succumb to the disease, but again, it would be much more effective if it wasn't used so often. After a while, your mind gets numbed to the whole experience. One thing that did work very well -- a lot of background material is cut in and out with a series of expositionary scenes; these help progress the story without really interfering with the flow.

Many of the minor character roles harken back to the older days of Japanese-style entertainment. Over-the-top, exaggerated dramatics and vocalisations are the norm here, to the point where it can almost be laughable. This is a production that's just crying to be rewritten and re-released as an English dub. The basic material's there; the execution is questionable at best.

And the story? Well, I'm not a doctor, so I can't say that I'm an expert on the realism of the show, but I can say this much: unbelievable. A viral infection that presents itself as a tight, compact growth which can be removed via scalpel? Last time I checked, virus are not much more than bodies of protien, which have to take over host cells to live and divide. Even more oddities appear -- the armed version of Doctors Without Borders, the "MSJ" -- Medical Surgeons of Justice -- who apparently have no qualms about violating the Hippocratic Oath by arming themselves with automatic assault weapons. Go figure.

Character designs aren't all in the comic style as done in the original manga, but are generally much more dramatic, angular and stark. Pinoko, and a pair of Laurel & Hardy comic relief type art collectors are the exception, but the style is much more palatable for the anime audience.

The end result, however, is disappointing at best. The story's unbelievable, and the direction is uneven at best. There's a lot of material here; it's too bad that it's been wasted.

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An Excellent Japanese Animated Film!
This film is about a medical scientist who tries to cure a very deadly disease in olympic athletes through brain sergury. It has a great complex story and brilliant animation. I wouldn't recomend it to children, because it contains some violence, but I'd recomend it to adult animation buffs!