What is XP?Get rewarded for being a good fan.Every review, rating, list and vote earns XP. Stack it up to climb 100 levels across Lifehaki.Start earning
During the 1996 Olympic Games, dozens of unknown athletes establish impossible world records, dazzling global audiences with superhuman physical achievements. Two years later, these extraordinary competitors begin succumbing to horrific cellular disintegration, organ failure, and violent seizures. Unlicensed surgical genius Black Jack is summoned to investigate the mysterious affliction, coined the Mozart Syndrome, which soon spreads beyond professional athletics into celebrated artists and intellectuals. Confronted with a worldwide public health crisis, Black Jack must unravel a pharmaceutical conspiracy that treats human biology as a test subject for artificial evolution.
⚠ Background — may contain spoilers
Black Jack exposes the global pharmaceutical syndicate Brain Trust, discovering that corporate chief Jo Carol Brain mass-produced an artificial endorphin to manufacture a genetically superior elite class. The drug induces phenomenal genius at the cost of rapid, lethal internal liquefaction. As Carol herself succumbs to advanced Mozart Syndrome, she detonates the desert research complex to destroy all evidence. Black Jack narrowly escapes the inferno, successfully performs emergency operations on the remaining surviving patients, and reasserts that medical skill must preserve fragile human dignity rather than serve corporate arrogance.
Black Jack is still Black Jack, and this is still one of the better series out. But the minor offense of the outright sexuality in a series I think is better off without was enough for me to nix out a star.
Black Jack is an engaging dramatic mystery with an intriguing protagonist. A bit stronger character work with some of the support characters and a bit of background clarification for Black Jack probably could have pushed the title to the top tier.
