Young Black Jack

Episode 7

Since this series of Young Black Jack is set in 1968, it often feels like the show is running down a list of important historical events. The Vietnam section took place against the backdrop of the Tet Offensive, in the early part of the year. Now we've skipped forward a few months to the spring. Martin Luther King Jr. is dead (April), and his murder has resulted in riots through major cities across the United States. That includes Chicago, where Hazama has landed in order to work with a famous American doctor. (Maybe he'll stick around longer for another big protest in Chicago.)

Maiko comes with him this time, where she runs into Tiara (yes really), an old friend. Tiara is working at the hospital here, but she's also nervously keeping an eye on Johnny, a childhood friend who is now a civil rights activist. The peaceful Johnny catches the attention of more violent activists, in a bad way; they beat him up for sticking to non-violence after they've decided on more militant action. These guys are the most stereotypical Anime Thugs ever, with the icky addition of fitting racial stereotypes.

The episode was generally better than the preceding ones, so I'll get the bad out of the way first. First of all, the idea that the civil rights movement didn't "turn violent" until after King's death is not true. Violence had always been a contentious issue within the movement, with other activists (like Malcolm X before his change of heart) advocating other means for various reasons. The issue of which method was most effective, and whether it's a good idea to play to the majority's sympathies or not, is so complicated that it runs through just about every activist movement in history—including the modern-day black liberation movement. Portraying that side of the issue as populated by mindless, stereotypical thugs indistinguishable from apolitical bad guys in countless other anime is a problem. Luckily, the episode eschews the other side of that coin by not portraying Johnny as a saint.

I appreciated that this episode acknowledged the role that the press played in the civil rights movement. In one of my previous reviews, I talked about how the press turned public opinion on Vietnam, and Young Black Jack gave that short shrift despite including a photojournalist character. Here, Johnny names it as the direct reason that he keeps jumping into the fray during protests. Journalists will spray photos of peaceful black protesters dying to white racist violence everywhere, and the world will witness black pain—even if, in his case, it's purely emotional pain. (More on that later.) It's true that journalists' coverage of non-violent marches being met with police brutality is believed to have turned public opinion on racial injustice. Of course, it didn't change overnight, and arguably still hasn't changed enough, which is why some activists advocated for different tactics that might achieve revolution more quickly.

Johnny keeps jumping into violent circumstances because of the medical issue of the episode: he can't feel pain. This is foreshadowed by how he only reacts to his wounds when other people notice. This is complicated by his mile-wide martyr complex and possibly other issues—this is just the first episode in a multi-parter, so it hasn't revealed everything yet. Something feels off about Johnny though, which I appreciated. The series makes him sympathetic but doesn't make him perfect. It's the sort of moral ambiguity that I would have appreciated episodes ago, when the show came down too clearly on one side of a complex conflicts over others. This episode not only advocated its sides a little better, but also made at least one person involved feel real and multifaceted.

Hazama theorizes that Johnny has a genetic inability to feel pain, which makes it shocking that he's managed to survive to adulthood with such a cavalier attitude toward his condition. People with CIPA have to be diagnosed early on and monitored growing up so they don't, say, severely burn themselves every time they try to cook. However, this congenital diagnosis is disproven when they talk to Tiara, and she mentions Johnny crying from injuries as a child. Hazama also dismisses his condition being caused by an accident, for reasons he doesn't make clear. So Johnny's issue is clearly psychological—possibly caused by PTSD, based on next episode's preview. Alternatively, it could be due to one of the more magical /supernatural causes that would be par for the course in the Black Jack universe. Then again, this series has largely eschewed the impossible outside of the "magical" solution from episode 2. Young Black Jack is not the same as its source inspiration, and it usually insists on grounding itself in medical realism, even if its treatment of political and social issues is more idealistic.

This episode would be an enormous improvement for the series, if not for the aforementioned stereotypes and a more fundamental issue: pacing. Episode 7 doesn't have enough material to sustain interest throughout the entire episode, so there's a lot of lag in-between. It doesn't help that its approach to social issues feels preachy, even as the series attempts to handle them with more nuance. This show doesn't usually bore me, even when it's trashy. There have been a couple episodes like that though, and I'm not happy to be bored again.

I had very low expectations for Young Black Jack's handling of racism, but even though it was far from perfect, there were some surprisingly promising elements here. I don't expect it to sustain that momentum, but maybe it will pleasantly surprise me again. I just hope it keeps up the pace next week!

Rating: B+

Young Black Jack is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rose is a music Ph.D. student who loves overanalyzing anime soundtracks. Follow her on her media blog Rose's Turn, and on Twitter.