The website for the new live-action show based on Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack manga shared some fresh news. They introduced a new actor and revealed the show’s premiere date: June 30.
Marika Matsumoto joins the cast as a patient with Lion-Face Disease. This condition makes people’s bones swell, making their face look like a lion’s over time.
The picture below displays Matsumoto in three stages: before the disease (center), as it progresses (left), and wearing a horse mask to cover her changing appearance (right).
The show is set to debut this year and stars Issei Takahashi as the main character. The cast also includes Shizuka Ishibashi, Takayuki Yamauchi, Eiji Okuda, Tetsuya Chiba, Ryosuke Mikata, Takashi Yamanaka, Kai Inowaki, Isao Hashizume, Shohei Uno, and Taichi Saotome.
Hideo Jojo is the director, with Yoshiko Morishita handling the screenplay and Takashi Ohmama composing the music.
Isao Tsuge is in charge of designing the costumes and supervising the character designs.
Osamu Tezuka’s original Black Jack manga tells the story of a brilliant doctor who operates without a license. It was serialized in Akita Shoten’s Weekly Shōnen Champion magazine from 1973 to 1984.
A new Black Jack manga called Black Jack Mechanical Heart – Heartbeat Mark II hit the pages of Weekly Shonen Champion magazine on November 22.
It’s a unique creation, partially generated by artificial intelligence, and spans 32 pages. This follows a previous project called TEZUKA2020, which kicked off in February 2020.
In that project, a manga named Paidon was produced using AI to study and replicate Osamu Tezuka’s distinctive style.
About Black Jack
This show is a medical drama starring Black Jack, a talented but unlicensed surgeon. He’s known for his incredible surgical skills, often performing miraculous operations to save patients on the brink of death.
However, he demands a hefty price for his services, which causes him to be shunned by the medical community.
Black Jack lives a quiet life in a remote clinic with his assistant, Pinoko, whose life he saved. Patients who have been abandoned by other doctors turn to him as their last hope for survival.
