BJ "U-18 Knew"; which animated BJ series was it in

[Jeffbert]

I really want to know ASAP, as I am about to create a page that makes reference to it!

[Amrith]

In the TV Special "Black Jack : The 4 Miracles Of Life".

[Jeffbert]

So, it was 1 of the 4?
--Oops, I found it on the BJ Basics page. #3 of 4.

Do you think the animated version, though created post-Tezuka, is an accurate retelling of the manga?

[Amrith]

There are a lot of new things in the mixture.
For example, in U-18's case, large screen time for Pinoko - although she is not in the manga version - with the pseudo-"humour" which habitually goes with her, and a remade/improved story about the link between U-18 and the daughter of the woman scientist who built it. It's not exactly the same thing.

Makoto Tezuka's Black Jack is an "all family" version.
Satisfy today's children was among the goals of the animated TV series. Sometimes, it means cut the sad drama to insert happy endings - the episode of the orc is very representative of this. Generally, we don't see blood, organs and all the anatomic details of the manga during operations. Moreover, the TV series includes a cast of recurring characters which are not - under that form - in the manga version, especially Sharaku and Wato from "The Three Eyed One". The mood is more light-hearted, slice-of-life styled, and Black Jack smiles in each episode. Pinoko is almost the main protagonist of the series, so the tonality of most of the added sequences absent from the manga is often childish. Harsh chapters - about death penalty, viral contamination, euthanasy - are "forgotten" in the adaptation process.

However, it remains an interesting series because of the excellent Akio Ohtsuka and the brought up to date star-system, incorporating recent and unusual characters and references - Midnight and Kirihito to name two. It does not match with the excellence of Astro Boy 2003 but it's ok. Accurate is not the word, even if the message and the core narratives are still the same.

After Black Jack TV's 62 episodes, there is Black Jack 21, a mini-series of 17 episodes by the same team. Here, the story is completely modified, with "revelations" about Dr. Honma past experiments and others inventions that are never showed in the manga. The structure of the independant stories is always based on the manga but there is a long investigation about death of Black Jack's mother that occurs while the "case of the week" episodes, and it's totally new - with very thin link with Tezuka's canon.

[Jeffbert]

Thank you!