I haven’t been too excited about Vertical’s release of Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack since I purchased a copy back when it was a $15 trade published by Viz. While I found it highly entertaining, I’m always hesitant about recommending the series because of one story that I found deeply offensive.

In that story (SPOILER warning, of course) Black Jack prepares to meet a man tells the story of a woman he loved. She eventually fell ill (as you would expect of any new character in a medical manga) and it turned out to be ovarian cancer. The doctor was able to save the life of his love with his incredible medical skills, but he had to remove her ovaries and uterus to stop the cancer. The twist is that the man Black Jack is meeting is the ex-lover he saved. After the surgery, she began living as a man because without ovaries or a uterus, she “was no longer a woman”.

Now, that’s how the story reads in my Viz copy. However, in reading TangongaT’s review, I see the story described as:

an episode showing Black Jack’s lost love has a surprisingly fluid take on gender.

That, at least, sounds like a more positive version of the story… I wonder if Vertical’s translation found a way to make the story a little less offensive.