Tezuka’s Black Jack and GUNNM
So recently I heard that Tezuka’s (the goat/father of manga to many, creator of astro boy) famous dark series Black Jack has a plot point very similar to Mars Chronicle. In particular the Maske Tumor. I always when I first read MC found the idea of the tumors so insanely disturbing yet fascinating and the twist that Yoko was basically one is one of the most ground shaking twists in the series. It’s a twist you can tell he was building to for an awfully long time.
I started reading Black Jack out of curiosity for this despite never having read one of his works and so far it has been really cool. Great art and body horror. Great paneling. Great premise.
In it, the titular Black Jack is an underground surgeon that does sketchy but precise surgeries that most people dont offer. In one, he removes a tumor from a woman that is sentient and contains the growing embro of her twin sister with fully formed body parts and brain. He puts the parts into a shell and lets the literally cancerous sister live a new life similar to the way Yoko came about.
The origin of Pinoko also kind of reminded me of the very start of GUNNM with Doc Ido being a similarly sketchy yet heroic character giving Alita/Gally a new shot at life.
On top of that, the series does have strange bruises/sores that have faces on them unrelated to the tumor storyline. I had no idea until now that these face shaped sores are a kind of youkai/folktale in Japan.
Considering how big a deal Tezuka and Black Jack are in manga and in japan and considering the timeline, I guarantee this series had an influence on Kishiro. It’s such a specific plot point that I can’t see how it wouldn’t connect. I’d like to research more about the yokai too.
Sorry for the huge ramble but I guess what I’m trying to get at is that nothing is truly original even my favorite story ever (GUNNM) and every story and idea has its own lineage and I love learning about these kinds of things and wanted to share this with others (im sure someone else has posted about this before i just havent seen it)
Excited to read more Black Jack tbh.