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4.0 out of 5 stars
Black Jack tends to victim of civil war in 5th anime volume, July 21, 2003
This is the fifth volume in the famed BLACK JACK OAV series, based on Osamu Tezuka's pioneering manga about a maverick medical doctor of extraordinary skill and daring who takes the toughest, most demanding jobs. For some reason, the best BLACK JACK episodes tend to be the ones that place their hero in situations involving war and revolution. This applies to Vol. 3 (BLACK JACK: CLINICAL CHART, PART 3) and this one, Volume 5, "The Owl of San Merida," a tale of a patient with an odd affliction which takes him back to his hometown, once the site of a bloody and brutal civil war. Black Jack and his young assistant, the diminutive Pinoko, a grown woman in a child's body (who also serves as narrator), are on a three-week tour of Europe when they encounter Leslie, a handsome young man whose nightmares culminate in a series of old gunshot wounds spurting blood and then resealing themselves. Black Jack himself witnesses this bizarre phenomenon and wonders who did the original surgery. Leslie doesn't know, but Black Jack's investigation leads all three to the town of San Merida, Leslie's birthplace. They meet Ernesto, an old caretaker who offers the only link to the events of 20 years earlier. And the story he tells of a medical miracle achieved in the midst of battle is easily one of the most imaginative and compelling in the entire Black Jack series. Any more discussion will ruin several surprises and twists. It's a sad and moving tale, executed by the animators with great care and skill. One of the best things about the BLACK JACK series is the editing style that director Osamu Dezaki (GOLGO 13) brings to the production. While never straying from their storytelling obligation, the animators follow an editing strategy dictated more by the flow of images involved in the story and by the characters' emotional reality than by moment-to-moment events and physical reality. We see a lot of intricate details of the settings, frequent flashbacks and dream images, and cutaways to weather patterns, landscapes and flocks of flying birds (like something out of a John Woo movie). The music is evocative and includes a song, well translated into English and sung by the English voice actors, that purports to be an ancestral lullaby of San Merida. It's a haunting and beautiful song and adds a powerful additional layer to the complex emotional fabric of the piece.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Anime super-surgeon helps a man haunted by ghosts of war, March 20, 1999
By A Customer
The Black Jack: Clinical Chart series brings the work of Dr. Osamu Tezuka (1925-1989), Japan's "God of Comics" into the 90s, under the skilled hand of Osamu Dezaki. Clinical Chart #5, "The Owl of San Merida", is one of the finest of the series. Black Jack and his handmade assistant Pinoko are vacationing in Europe, when they meet Leslie, an army officer who's tormented by ghosts he does not recognize and bleeds from bulletholes that appear and disappear in the blink of an eye. The search for answers leads them to a town devastated by a civil war, and, like Leslie's ghosts, this war tragically goes on and on... With brief nudity (specifically, a mother nursing a baby) and violence illustrating Dr. Tezuka's contempt for political egotism, this is a brilliant humanist statement by a pop culture genius.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
excellent and innovative, December 23, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Black Jack: Clinical Chart, Volume 1 [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Black Jack is a one of a kind of anime because of the new storyline . we see there the evolution of the creator of astro boy. I just can't wait to see the next chapter... excellent graphics also .
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