When you're a total bad-ass like Black Jack, you need to wear the perfect clothing to show off your awesome baditude. So that means a black suit, a trench coat that mysteriously always stays attached to your shoulders, and an adorable, old-timey bow tie.

     Black Jack's choice of wardrobe seems as out-of-place as he is, but... err... "suits" him, nonetheless. (Sorry.) It can be said that his outfit does nothing to help him look the part of a protagonist; rather, he looks even shadier, like the classic caped villain, but with a trench coat instead of a cape. Not to mention that half of the time it makes it look like he has no arms.

     Of course, all of that is still really, really cool. I suppose one day, he was thinking, "Well, I've got these scars and this crazy hair, and people already think I'm a freak, so... what the hell! Why not just dress creepy, too?" (This may have to do with the fact that he often makes himself come off as the bad guy on purpose.) So just by walking past other people, he leaves the impression that he's more ready to tie a helpless damsel to railroad tracks than to save her life in an operation. But he doesn't give a damn about that, anyway.

     And as a side note, I have yet to see in any of his incarnations of him actually wearing the trench coat.

     Unlicensed or not, Black Jack is still the best surgeon in the world. Period. Because let's face it: who else can perform open-heart surgery, brain surgery, and everything-else-ya-got-in-there surgery... by himself? Or how about operate by moonlight, or better yet, in pitch-black darkness? Nobody, that's who.

     Remember, Tezuka himself was a fully-licensed doctor before he decided to become a full-time manga-ka. He had created Black Jack to be the kind of doctor he would have liked to have been if he hadn't pursued drawing comics. Moreover, Tezuka used the story of Black Jack to express his insights on the value of medical science, human integrity, and the thin line separating life from death.

     Black Jack, it seems to me, is perhaps the embodiment of medical science at its best, and a source of justice and righteousness in an otherwise corrupt society. He charges the large sums of money as a test to his patients; if they are willing to live, they are willing to pay. However, if he suspects someone to be a dirty, rotten scumbag, he still heals them, regardless... but they are always guaranteed swift retribution. For every wrong he encounters, he manages to find some way to undo it, whether by his hand or by fate's.

     It is interesting that while Black Jack may be such the incredibly perfect surgeon as he is, he still has flaws about him that can occasionally stop him dead in his tracks. Every once and a while, he requires the valuable lesson that medical science is not all it's cracked up to be, and that even he himself doesn't always have the skill to pull someone from the grasp of death.