Black Jack

A poacher traps an endangered Iriomote cat on a remote island and boards a ferry. On board is Black Jack and Pinoko, along with a haughty politician. The wild cat escapes, causing a ruckus, and injuring the politician and a passenger's baby. The politician tries to get treated first by offering money, but Black Jack begins by operating on the Iriomote cat.

Sharaku is a middle-schooler who is often bullied. One day, Pinoko saves him from Kong, a bully, and they become friends. Sharaku suddenly becomes gravely sick and Black Jack is called into the hospital to operate on him. However, a freak accident causes an IV needle to break off and be carried away in his vein.

At Tom, their favorite cafe, Black Jack and Pinoko encounter a boy with a physical disability who is intently reading a book by a handicapped person. Inspired by the memoir, and as a way to rehabilitate his legs, he decides to walk 350km from Hiroshima to Osaka, by himself.

Pinoko and Sharaku are playing in a park when a stray dog grabs Pinoko's purse and runs off. They chase after the stray, but the dog is suddenly hit by a car outside of the park. Pinoko gets Black Jack to operate on the dog, and is successful.

The bully Kong comes home to his sister Chako, who has been diagnosed with tuberculosis and another unknown disease. Chako, having heard about Black Jack, wants her brother to find him and take her case.

Doctors at Manaka Hospital hold a conference to decide the successor to the recently deceased hospital director. There are two veteran doctors with 20 years experience, however, one other doctor with similar experience is overlooked, Dr. Shiitake.

A boy is reluctant to go to school because he is afraid of his strict teacher, Mr. Muramasa. The teacher explains to this co-workers that he tries to motivate students by a tough-love approach.

Black Jack and Pinoko visit a zoo to see a white lion cub named Luna Luna, but the lion is sick. Pinoko and the lion's keeper beg Black Jack for help, but he refuses.

Black Jack takes Pinoko to his favorite sushi restaurant. The sushi chef, Taku, after years of training, feels that he is now ready to make the best sushi in Japan for his blind mother. However, while heading back to his mother's home, he is hit by a truck and loses his arms. The truck driver Akira is shocked to learn of the victim's predicament. The two later meet at the police station.

An old lady is forced to leave her son's hospital where she is living when it becomes full with patients. The son's wife proposes to have her sent to a nursing home, but the son refuses. Pinoko and Sharaku befriend her and offer a place to stay, but she politely declines.

Black Jack receives correspondence from overseas regarding a 200-year-old patient suffering from a painful disease. A relative of the patient offers 10 million dollars for successful treatment. Black Jack at first decides not to go, but later changes his mind. He and Pinoko fly out and is greeted by Miriam, the letter writer and relative of the patient.

Pinoko notices that Largo has fetched a pearl. She shows Black Jack, which surprises him, and he heads out to the shore. Pinoko and Largo follow, and they come across a bay filled with shining pearls. Black Jack tells Pinoko the story of the killer whale Triton. Five years before, Black Jack discovered the injured orca and treated him.

Pinoko and Sharaku watch a TV show, and Pinoko takes a liking to the monster villain of the show instead of the hero. Sharaku is friends with the show staff and Pinoko ends up visiting the set at the TV studio. She becomes a fan of the actor inside the monster suit, Takao. The staff notice the actor's badly swollen leg and ask Sharaku to introduce Black Jack.

Kazuo is a star gymnast at the local high school Everyone has high expectations that he will medal at the athletic competition, but he feels pain in his left arm. His classmate Toshie notices the swollen arm is getting worse, and alerts his mother. Kazuo is sent to a clinic where he is diagnosed with gangrene. Against the doctor's advice to rest, he continues to practice for the competition.

Pinoko visits a pool with Sharaku, and despite Black Jack's warning not to go into the water, she goes in with an inner tube. She begins to drown, but is saved by Musashi, a lifeguard who also works as an animator. They become friends, and she becomes interested in his animation work.

Black Jack performs an operation to treat an aortic aneurysm. The four foreign doctors who watch the surgery are astonished with his technique. They are from the world medical federation, and upon finding out that Black Jack is unlicensed, decide to help him get a license from the Japan Medical Association.

Rei is the school's star vocalist, and is popular among the students. Kumiko notices Rei coughing in pain. However, she continues to sing, practicing for a contest coming up in three months. Rei asks Kumiko if her father, Dr. Honma, can examine her. Rei reveals that her father had passed away.

Jun has a best friend that he has never met before in person. He is Tom from New Zealand, with whom he chats often online. Although Jun's condition doesn't allow him to play sports, he tells Tom he plays baseball. Jun's mother disapproves of the charade, but he says that Tom will never find out. Jun's parents discover that Black Jack can treat him, albeit for a price.

Black Jack and Pinoko are on vacation in snowy Nagano. On the bus, they see a mother who is taking her daughter Tsuyuko to a village clinic. Suddenly, Pinoko has stomach pains, and she and Black Jack get off the bus with the mother and child to visit the Kowa Clinic.

Kumiko returns home from school to Cafe Tom. The mustachioed owner Tetsu had taken her in after her father Dr. Honma passed away. After a while, Black Jack enters the cafe, soon followed by a police detective. The detective inquires about Tetsu's cafe, and the owner replies that after his run-in with the law, he has since been on the straight-and-narrow.

At Cafe Tom, Black Jack and Pinoko listen as Kumiko relates her first love. She was about to fall off a rooftop when a man rescued her, but she doesn't recall his face or name.

While out shopping, Pinoko spots a field and goes off looking for four-leaf clovers. She runs into a boy named Tink, and they soon become close. She arrives home and starts to write a love letter.

Kiyomi is a school physician examining students when Black Jack arrives on the island, inquiring about her brother. Her brother came to his aid while he was overseas and his medical kit had been stolen. However, Black Jack learns that he had passed away rescuing children in a mudslide.

At a construction site deep in the mountains, an ominous shadow approaches, and workers are attacked. Injured workers are taken to a hospital at the base of the mountain.

Coming back from a business trip abroad, Black Jack runs into a medical school classmate, Ando. He is returning from a medical association trip to South East Asia and insists that he and Black Jack have dinner to catch up. They share a same plate of food, but then Black Jack suddenly asks Ando if he had gone through quarantine. He had not.

At Cafe Tom, Pinoko becomes interested in the abacus used by the owner. This causes Black Jack to recall a while back when an elementary school boy Eiji and his teacher and father visited him.

Black Jack arrives at a state-of-the-art office building that is nearing completion. He gets out and tells Pinoko and her friends to stay in the car. The owner of the building, Toranomon, is about to begin a tour of the new building when Black Jack arrives. The doctor had arrived to ask him to pay up for a previous operation.

Black Jack and Pinoko travel overseas to visit a former patient. The patient had phoned the doctor reporting persistent fever and skin blotches and claimed that the operation was botched.

Black Jack is introduced to Sono, who is the daughter of an Ikebana (flower arrangement) master and head of the family/school. Doctors have pronounced that Sono only has a few months to live. Her father wants her life extended by at least half a year so that she can participate in next year's examinations and become the next master.

Black Jack and Pinoko are staying at a mountain-top resort hotel. A man who was trapped under a falling tree and in critical condition is brought in. Despite the son's pleas, the doctor on-call refuses to treat him due to a strike at the hotel and leaves.

While Black Jack is operating on a patient, his hand suddenly becomes paralyzed. He consults with another doctor, and they both believe that it may have to do with the fact that Dr. Honma had operated on him 20 years ago.

Black Jack and Pinoko go visit a remote island and meet a fisherman acquaintance and his son Taichi. The fisherman wants his son to go to high school on the mainland and borrows Black Jack's boat to receive the enrollment forms. Before he goes, the fisherman warns Taichi to stay away from the western shore.

Satoru, a friend of Sharaku, watches a movie about aliens and later witnesses a meteor streak across the sky. He then notices a strange lump on his side and is later admitted to the hospital when it becomes even more swollen.

Hachi lives in a neighborhood crossed by high-speed rail tracks. Each time an express train rumbles through, Hachi's wooden house shakes, and he complains of sleep deprivation and migraines. Hachi's wife suddenly complains of abdominal pains, and Black Jack realizes that it's an aortic dissection and performs emergency surgery.

Black Jack begins operating on a young boy with a serious condition when the hospital is taken over by armed men. They hold the patients and staff of the hospital hostage, and phone the police for ransom.

Pinoko is frustrated with the poor condition of their house and complains to Black Jack that she wants to move. However, Black Jack tells her he has no intention to move or renovate. He explains the reason. Ten years ago, he bought the dilapidated homestead when the carpenter that had originally built the house appears.

Black Jack is kidnapped as he is arriving home and wakes up on a boat in the ocean. He is forced to operate on a gang member who had been severely injured during an armored car heist. Black Jack warns that the wounded man, a brother of one of the gang members, needs a blood transfusion, but the gang insists they will escape into international waters.

Sharaku, his sister, Black Jack, and Pinoko are on an overseas trip visiting an archaeological dig headed by Sharaku's father. That night, a glowing staff that was recovered from the dig site guides a seemingly possessed Sharaku deep into the jungle. Black Jack, Pinoko, and his sister follow him.

When Black Jack finds out that the mother wants her son to get better to send him off to war, he gets angry. She explains that her husband was executed for speaking out against the war.

A traffic cop, Kotaro, begins talking to a statue in the likeness of a police officer, opening up in ways he can't with actual people. He soon becomes obsessed with the statue and starts taking care of it, such as cleaning off graffiti. A group of thugs who have a grudge against him vandalize the statue. Kotaro stakes out the place in order to capture the vandals red-handed.

A movie director, Tenma, announces at an awards ceremony that his next film will help save lives. Later, Tenma visits Black Jack and explains that he wants to film the doctor performing surgery on a patient with collagen disease.

A doctor, Futoppara, who graduated from the same medical school as Black Jack now heads his own hospital. He is arrogant, and dismisses another young doctor's opinion that perhaps a certain patient was misdiagnosed.

Black Jack arrives at a laboratory set up on the savanna. Dr. Togakushi had invited him there to help with research into a mysterious illness that is making animals and now people shrink and eventually die.

On Pinoko's birthday, Black Jack remembers how Pinoko came into his life. One night, four years before, doctors brought a masked woman to Black Jack's house. She had a Teratoma, a cystic tumor caused when one twin does not develop fully but continues to grow inside the other. Other attempts to remove the teratoma failed because of a "curse."

Black Jack reminisces about his high school days, when he was known as Kuro Hazama. His classmate Gera, loved to laugh, and Kuro tried to find out why. He didn't understand how he could laugh, especially after finding out that Gera's parents abandoned him after amassing large debts.

Pinoko and her friends visit a culture festival at a high school. However, a gang of delinquent students headed by Jaws, a boy from another school, is wrecking the event.

The plane Black Jack and Pinoko are on crash lands in the Arctic during a blizzard. The passengers panic until a world-renown violinist, Morozov, calms them down with his music.

Pinoko finds money that is mysteriously showing up at the Black Jack residence. She and Black Jack are puzzled but soon discover a Japanese Robin which is leaving the money. Eventually, Black Jack finds the robin's nest, which contains a male bird, a recovering female bird, and a bottle of medicine.

A man with bandages wrapped around his face visits Black Jack. The man reveals his swollen face and explains that he has a bizarre condition with a carbuncle. It turns out that he has dissociative identity disorder with two personalities. A violent personality emerges when his face becomes distorted from the carbuncle.

The president of a printing company, Eizo, wants to hire Black Jack to play the part of his son. The doctor declines, but Eizo explains that only his son is acceptable to his older brother Eiichi to perform surgery on him. Black Jack relents, and soon hears the story of their dying father.

Black Jack runs into a blind acupuncturist, Biwamaru, who has a keen nose and goes around healing people with his needles. He has even treated some of Black Jack's patients, and the doctor warns the acupuncturist to not approach his patients anymore. Biwamaru replies that he goes anywhere where there are sick people to heal.